Daniel Young Travels: Puglia

A menu from a good restaurant in Ceglie Messapica. Note horse and donkey dishes.

In Salerno we picked up a dirty Toyota Yaris from Avis and drove to Paestum, which is covered elsewhere. From Paestum we aimed for our base camp for the next three nights - the Masserie Salinola near Ostuni. But first we stopped in Matera, (for unknown reasons, in the captions below the typing system keeps changing it to Madera) a town more like biblical Jerusalem than Jerusalem itself. That's why a host of Jesus movies have been filmed there. It is also famous for its cave dwellings, in use for thousands of years and now being renovated for a yuppie generation.

The Masserie Salinola was a charming renovated salt warehouse in which the 11 rooms are domed brick structures with only the door having a window. The location, hospitality, food and ambience were excellent.

On the next day we drove a circuit of hill towns in the area, notably Alberobello with its plethora of trulli (mushroom-shaped stone houses) and Ceglie Messapica for a typical Puglian lunch of things like sheep entrails. All these towns have interesting old sections going back to the Middle Ages.

On the next day we drove South to Lecce and Otronto, the latter worth a detour simply for the fantastic mosaic floor of its cathedral. For the last day we left the Masserie Salinola stopped for a quick look at the fishing/resort town of Pollignano a Mare and drove to the Castel del Monte near Andria and then to Trani for its old town and beautiful seaside cathedral. We finished at a bed & breakfast near the Bari airport.

A panorama of part of Madera shows that, unlike Jerusalem, no condominiums have intruded on the biblical architecture.

This would not be complete without a tribute to the small tomatoes of Puglia, here represented by a set of Siamese twins

Some very nice, folky stone carvings on mythical themes decorate a church in Madera.