Today was an exciting and fun day exploring the Puglia region (the region in which we are staying on the ‘heel’ of Italy). Breakfast started this morning in the hotel restaurant in the same trulli where we had dinner last night, with some nice croissants, incredible chocolate spread (like nutella but sooo much better) and our daily dose of caffeine. Our first adventure of the day was trying to find the market in Martina Franca, which we eventually found (and even found a free parking space). The market was huge and apparently Martina Franca is known for its homemade designer clothing and its white wine. We were not aware of the clothing fact before we got there and actually both mom and I bought a skirt that was very cute at the market. We had to of course speak in Italian, or at least try, so we’ve learned a few necessary numbers in Italian and we are getting much better at ‘grazie’ and ‘buongiornio.’ After the market, we decided to make our way to Alberobello which is know for its over a thousand trulli’s. There is a special area even for pedestrian’s only in a Unesco site where many of the trulli’s are. There are stores, houses, restaurants and etc located in the trulli’s and we explored all of the streets with them. We found one store that had hand made linens that looked beautiful, but we weren’t going to enter because there was a sign all in Japanese and we figured it was a Japanese weaver, so there was no need to buy the linens in Italy. However, we were welcomed inside one of the trulli’s to see the loom and the linens were beautiful so we asked to see some more. The woman said the weaver was world famous and a terrific weaver and she was Italian. The sign was only in Japanese because during the summertime the majority of the tourists in this area are Japanese. So we ended up spending almost an hour in this store trying to decide which pattern and style we liked and bought too much, but they will become family heirlooms. We also learned that the whistle in this area is a sign of fertility. After we left Alberobello we made our way a few kilometers to the town of Locorotondo, famous for its white wine, trulli’s and ‘round’ hillside roads. We ended up just driving through, but will probably go through again to take some more photos. We headed to the towns of Crispiano and Ostuni, which showed the Greek influence on the area with white washed walls and more trulli’s. On the way to Ostuni, we found an Olive Oil Factory, which we decided to stop in, as we’ve been looking for actual factories to buy olive oil and wine in. We didn’t know what to do, so we walked into a door and saw men working- so we took some photos, a video and mom decided to ask whether we could buy a small olive oil compared to the huge jugs of olive oil that we saw there (all of this in Italian, by the way). So the man said to go to the main office and ask, but we didn’t know where that was, so he actually took us there and told the women that we wanted to buy smaller jugs of olive oil. She was lovely and took us over to their store for the factory and we tasted a few different varieties of oil which were delicious and we bought a few kinds to bring home! She also went through the entire process of making olive oil, from the olives (with the pits, or as they call it, nuts) to the final production. I have the whole thing videoed and in fact the process takes only 4 hours!! At this point in the day, mom and I were getting a bit tired from our exploring and decided because the sun was setting to make our way back home. We made it home to our hotel for the first time without the GPS, so we were very excited! Tomorrow we have plans to go to the Ionio Coast near Taranto and we are going to visit a few wineries and a few small fishing villages. A doppo. A domain. (until tomorrow, 2 ways of saying it)
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