We left the Peninsula this morning with overcast skies and drove down the Adriatic coast for a while until we reached Barletta when we decided to get on the Autoroute till we reached the town of Trani. Trani is called the “Pearl of Puglia” and as we drove off the exit both mom and I wondered why- it was industrial, ugly and busy. Mom was honked at in this town for the first time this whole trip! As we drove closer to the water, the streets became narrower and it became much nicer. We found a parking spot (a feat within itself) and walked out towards a beautiful cathedral right on the water with a castle next door. It was beautiful- we were the only tourists- but freezing… the wind was so strong we hid behind the stones as we walked around it to protect us from the howling wind. When we finally found our way back to the Autoroute, we were on our way again heading south bound. We decided to try and fill up with fuel at a self service place and as we began to try to read the instructions, the full service guy came over to try and help us figure it out. So we did it and then we had to go inside and tell them how much we pumped for them to charge us. Well, neither mom nor I knew how to say 35, so we tried. In the end, the woman was very nice and taught us how to say it (if we remember it or not is a different question)! As we left the gas station, a nice windy thunderstorm decided to open up and for the next hour or so until we got to our hotel it was raining/hailing. Our hotel is called Masseria Chiancone Torricella, which had no sign outside and mom didn’t even think we were in the right place until we eventually found an entrance. Once inside, however, it is beautiful and comfortable. There are trulli’s everwhere around here and the restaurant we are eating in this evening is in a Trulli! For the next few days, all we are going to see are Trulli’s so you will see lots of photos.
I would like to mention an incredibly funny story from last night so we don’t forget it. So as you know, we didn’t stay in the scheduled hotel, but stayed in another wonderful hotel, where the food was excellent (I had linguine with mussles, mom had a white fish of sorts that we don’t know what it was, but it was good) and there was no English spoken at all! In the evenings, dad and jeff have been calling us at the hotels and then usually the concierge connects them to our room. Well last night, they both tried to call and couldn’t be connected for some reason and they both tried their best in Italian. The man asked dad about a camera and dad said yes thinking that they knew I was a photographer. Actually “camera” means room in Italian and so dad got no where when he called the hotel. Jeff at least was able to say uno, uno, uno (111) instead of one hundred and eleven (which we didn’t know how to say at the time) and the hotel owner came knocking at our door around 12:30 at night. So a fast asleep mom went to the door and he said something to her that we didn’t understand, but then our cell phone rang and it was Jeff. He said he could hear mom talking to the man and she realized that he was holding the phone talking about jeff asking for our room. Quite funny, because he couldn’t transfer phone calls and it seemed that he was using a cell phone or something similar to receive phone calls to the hotel. So, back to the cell phones we went. We have an hour of free internet for the next five days, so I will try and post a couple of days at a time probably to save time, just fyi for those readers looking in everyday.
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