Day 2 Italy: Polignano a Mare and Best Dinner Ever!

Woke up around 6 this morning and Alice was up as well. Both wanting coffee, we decided to attempt the expresso machine in our kitchen. So that was a complete disaster! My first concern was that the disposable canister in the thimble was not creamer but the coffee. I don’t know how these guys get going on that tiny bit. Then we had real issues figuring out how to place it in the machine with it finally falling down some hole. We both related its fate to that of the lizards my brothers used to toss down the Fisher Price castle dungeon. Anyway, I had to take the hole thing apart using the tiny tools on my knife. Seeing this knife also had a corkscrew, we opened the wine.

We were exhausted when we got in last night and it was dark so we weren’t able to see much. Thus, the morning walk was filled with surprises. Turns out we are staying in a working farm which is where the word masseria comes in. Fortified farmhouses built to function as self-sufficient communities. These days they still produce the bulk of Italy’s olive oil but many of them also function as hotels, holiday apartments, or restaurants. Good find Alice!!

A shaded road winds through the cherry orchard while open winding paths head in another direction through the olive orchards.

Lavender is planted in large ceramic urns and poppies grow in wild clumps. There was rosemary somewhere but I couldn’t spot it. Following the sound of donkeys, I find the tiny farm with a one day old miniature pony, the donkey and a goat. A cheery fellow greets me and after a game of charades I think I agree that the baby horse is fantastic. I don’t really know. Smelling our bread warming up I decided to try for coffee again. In seconds my hostess reappeared with an elaborate tray, a strong shot of expresso, and many other accoutrements the tiny shot wasn’t going to give me time to enjoy. I would have been happy to sit there for hours but was confused about how to sip a shot.

Back to exploring, I followed a walkway covered in flowering vines to our pool then found myself coming through the other side of the trulli’s to our apartment where our breakfast waited on a large stone table shaded by another trellis.

the traditional fresh puglia bread Luigi told us about and that my authors both described in their books. Also plates of fruits, meats and cheeses. Finally, Cafe Americana with warmed milk also comes. What a start to a morning.

We’d been ignoring the fact that we didn’t have a car yet so Alice volunteers to tackle this. An hour and another bottle of wine later she tells us that we are headed to Bari airport for a car as the one we reserved in town was given away. Ok fine I don’t care what happens, it’s all perfect regardless. Johny arrives and we speed through small towns and past more vineyards, cacti, and farms back into Bari.

With the help of her phrase book, Alice manages to carry on quite a conversation with Johny. He’s very patient even ignoring all the women texting him on his phone. I think Johny makes the best of his taxi job. In fact, I suspect Alice has been practicing quite a bit!!! Suddenly she’s speaking to everyone ??

Finally, we take off in our fully covered standard Renault with Alice driving and me navigating. Alice and Mom wouldn’t allow me driving privileges so I design the trip and navigate. I was able to find Daniel, the British GPS man to guide us – and for anyone reading this thinking that a map is going to be enough or even your car GPS (Daniel) map system it is not!!! Against our commitments, we ended up having to turn on our data for help getting us pretty much anywhere. But anywhere always turns out to be the best place!

Boat trip on the Adriatic. So the first thing after getting the car was to go to Polignano a Mare and catch our boat trip which we thought was going to be a large ferry of some sort with a recorded speil of the sites, some caves on the Adriatic. What it turned out to be was a tiny private boat like anything we’d find in the Gulf with room for about seven passengers and two pilots. For a few hours they took us into old pirate hideouts all along the coast, places that could only be reached by boat. Apparently the towns were terribly pillaged by the pirates and quite often and watching the Italian trying to explain what happened to the women in the town was a little bit uncomfortable for him I think, we were very amused and think he needs to skip that part.

Upon request, David the pilot, stopped and let Alice and I take a dive into the Adriatic. I went first. My body went numb at the cold . I could barely fake being comfortable so Alice could experience the same effect. David got quite a laugh out of it. We spent about two hours on the water cruising down the coast looking at the small towns, pulling in and out of pirate hideouts, and admiring the beautiful fishing boats anchored along tiny towns. A cute French family had joined and a cuddly couple in the bow: everyone had a delightful time and lots of laughs (excepting the cuddlers).

Heading back into Alborabella, we parked in the town and walked around among all of the hundreds of Trulli houses. David the boat captain was the first person to be able to describe the history of the trulli house. Apparently they’re designed in this way because the Roman tax collectors (which these peasants could care less about -where’s Rome?) would tax people on their houses. So, the enterprising peasants decided that when the collectors came through to collect taxes they could pull one stone from the roof of their house which would make every other stone fall into the center and they could claim they had no house and therefore would have to pay no taxes. It really is one of the most fascinating places I’ve ever seen and I couldn’t believe somewhere like this still existed. We really hadn’t seen many other tourists. In fact, we didn’t even see that many women, just lots of men hanging around the streets chatting, smoking, and drinking. We’ve run into a few French people and one British couple. But, we assume it’s not the usual tourist season as the Trulli houses on the main streets sell the usual tourist items and trinkets of which we picked up a few. Someone is buying this stuff. I was able to find Katherine a soccer jersey for the Italian team that she likes and Alice bought some charms. I also picked up some local almond liqueur made by a local lady whose family had owned this Trulli since – I don’t know but it seemed a long time by her expansive hand movements. Her son gave us a great tour and history of his grandparents home and told us about growing up in the area before it was discovered. Seemed they had a good gig going as the other tourists liked the extra effort and history he was adding to their experience and he was selling way more than anyone else. You felt you had to buy something especially after he let you walk up onto his Trulli balcony and take pictures of the town. He didn’t look Italian at all but none of us seemed to care.

We walked around a little bit more and stopped at a local café and had some of the regional wine (Primitivo) and finally tasted the olives that we’ve been seeing on the roadside and at our lodging. There’s also some sort of local cracker that we keep being served that none of us are real fans of. I think it’s the local bar snack that they bring every time you order something.

I think that we would all agree that the most amazing thing that has happened to us was also the most unexpected thing. None of us being big foodies, we decided to try out the place highly recommended in our sparse tour book. It was described as a place to sample everything fresh in the area. It turns out that that was a big understatement. Walking in through a tiny door that would’ve gone otherwise unnoticed, we passed several counters of people happily cutting, chatting, slicing, preparing every vegetable one could imagine. When we were seated we realized that our table faced the garden where everything that we were about to eat had been grown. David, our boat captain had described some carrots to us that came in all sorts of amazing colors. Having gotten on a chummy level with him, we didn’t believe him when he said that each carrot tastes differently. We truly thought he was kidding us. Here we found ourselves wanting to apologize at our mistaking his pride in the local vegetable for humor.

Thinking that we were being conservative, we ordered the anti-pasta and two entrees. After eating around 12 plates of the most amazing freshly prepared vegetables I’ve ever had in my life we had to tell our waiter that there was no way we could honor our entrée commitment and he knowingly smiled and said he thought that would be the case and had not begun preparing it yet. I cant describe in words the preparation of all of the vegetables that we had but one of the most memorable items were the mashed fave beans I could’ve sworn were potatoes. Another item that was amazingly spectacular were the onions wrapped in just a tad of bacon. Certainly the mushrooms and the green beans prepared were in freshest most simple way were another contribution to success. We are still amazed at how they were able to slice a cabbage so it looks like a piece of flat mozzarella cheese. All of this was accompanied by local red and white wines brought to us in glass bottles from local vineyards. To top this, I will say that I’ve never had better service in my life. Not only was the wait staff extremely attentive but was able to discuss Mark Twain and much of our southern literature with us. We’ve promised to send several copies of Watt’s books to the restaurant as an appreciation for the extra effort that they put into the most amazing dinner I can ever remember having. Again, I wish I were a better food critic so that I could describe this place properly but I really was not prepared for this experience and it really was farm to table in the most respectful way that I can imagine.

After getting a lost for a little bit in the town, passing groups of boys playing games in the square and old ladies walking their dogs, we found our way back to the car (this too required help from locals prepared with maps and hand gestures to make up for our lack of Italian). Daniel lead us several miles out of the way before we reluctantly turned on our data and typed in the address of the hotel. After trading an hour for what turned out to be 6 KM, we finally were able to lay our heads down and say that we might’ve had the best day we’ve ever had together and more than any of us hoped for. It seemed that at every turn we were guided back in the direction that we needed to be going by the kindest locals not tired of tourists, but appreciative that we saw the beauty of their area and were so happy to share all that was so dear to them. Throughout our day no one was in a hurry, no one ever seem to be turning our table, and everyone wanted to engage in conversation and wanted to share their history and love of place. Life should be about sharing our love of place, honoring our own unique and individual histories while respecting differences. But I’m afraid as more people discover this area, these Trulli’s too will soon be too expensive for the locals to keep. So, the people that know the history here and that create their real value become separated from their past and the place looses the soul of itself. It’s progress and I contribute and there’s no stopping it I suppose. I see it in my own small southern town. Closing thought: I’m almost worried that the rest of the trip won’t live up to what we experienced today.

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