Trani and the Adriatic Coast

We visited our local coffee shop for a farewell brew and departed for the Bari region to the north, still on the Adriatic coast for our last few days. As we left Lecce and got onto the SS163, the Fiat’s GPS told us 112 km to Polignano a Mare. This is just north of Monopoli where we had visited from Alberobello. 

The traffic was very well behaved, some really fast drivers whizz past, but the really good thing is everyone stays right (read left for NZ). This makes driving such a pleasure, no one sits in a lane holding up other vehicles. Kiwis don’t know how to do this, NZ needs to enforce the way Australia does. It's illegal not to keep left, and they’ll ticket you for not complying.

Polignano a Mare, is famous for a couple of things. Firstly it has a beach in the middle of the town, between quite high cliffs and with the region’s beautiful crystal clear Aegean waters. We stood on the bridge above the beach and tested the new Iphone’s zoom range. Pretty good it is too.

Then around the point in another piazza is a statue of Domenico Modugno, an esteemed Italian singer, who introduced the world to the song Volare. In my day it was sung by many including Dean Martin’s version in Italian and English. I did a one verse rendition to subdued rather than rapturous applause from the  crowd waiting for their chance of a photo with the statue. 

The town is absolutely right on the clifftop and has many touristy shops and some very good lookout points. 

We departed then for Trani for our final few Southern Italy days.

Francesco our host met us at Piazza Mazzini, and obligingly stopped the traffic so I could back up into a parking spot he thought more appropriate than where I had parked. His spot was just outside the police station, and had a security camera pointing straight at the car. Magic.

The apartment was about 50 m away, and is a very nice place. Bathroom a bit piccolo, but the rest pretty terrific and our host left us with the local pizza bread/foccaccia and the renowned local Burrata  Stacciatella cheese, which is effectively, mozzarella balls, cut open, and the stringy insides smothered in clotted cream. Delish. 

The apartment has a stunning rooftop terrace with views over the town, including the Duomo and out to the sea. 

For our first morning we had an early walk down to the port, hopeful of seeing some of the local fishing activity.

Sure enough they were there, mostly gnarly, smoking old fishermen, but the range of seafood, and the (small) size of some of the fish was a bit disconcerting. Lots of transparent prawns, small skates, small mackerel, tiny white and red sprats, no fish of any real size at all.

After breakfast we did a long town walk via the Duomo, and the port and then back through town. there were lots of palazzos here, reflecting past powerful families. Ann provided the morning tea at a sale of the century price. Just 5 Euro for two coffees and two very nice pastries. We also found a fruit shop and a little grocery that provided rations for a meal or two.

St Nicholas looks out over the port.

After a hot day we enjoyed the view and a little breeze on our rooftop terrace, with our pizza bread, beer, wine and mozzarella, nice way to end the day.

We started the next day with a short walk across town to the new coffee and croissant shop after a small breakfast of fruit and fruit juice at home. Back past the waterfront we visited the Typewriter Museo, celebrating Olivetti’s contribution to typing pools around the globe, and a host of other machines that were developed to revolutionise writing. Lots of equipment but also pictures of notable typewriter users. Alfred Hitchcock was there along with his typewriter, Agatha Christie, Marlon Brando, Ernest Hemingway and even Jacqueline Kennedy featured.

In the same museo was a collection of local artefacts celebrating this small city’s 2000 year tenure and history. Many pilgrims assembled here to do the short hop across to the Holy Land. Several crusades departed from here to attempt to recover some of the artefacts and holy things from early Christian times. The original quest for the fabled Holy Grail!!

We then moved on nearly 1000 years, just a few hundred metres actually, to the Museo Sinagoga Sant’Anna. Trani has had a Jewish population off and on for around 1700 years. Jews arrived here as early as 300, fleeing from persecution. Around 1500 more arrived from Spain fleeing again from persecution and other injustices. Frederick II was very welcoming of Jews and is apparently remembered fondly in the all-Italian signage in this museum. Charles V less so, forcing Jews to convert or leave!

There were four sinagoga here in ancient times, but only one now. The Jews here were sometimes protected and sometimes persecuted as the rulers of this little part of the world changed over time. We worry about colonisation in New Zealand, but I think people need to read the history books and understand what happened in this part of the world over thousands of years. Might was always right.

We joined a few of the locals at a harbour side café late in the afternoon to enjoy a drink with a different view.

We had picked Ristorante Corteinfiore for a local cuisine experience.

The chef is renowned for his creative approach to seafood and there was a range of fresh fish on display to choose from. My pasta dish had a sea urchin sauce, very tangy and rich. Set into the old town wall, this is a very spacious restaurant and we enjoyed a stunning fish starter (with instructions about tasting order!) Here's the descriptor; can you match the elements?

NotOnlyFish…(mixed raw appetizers without shell)

fish “carpaccio” with oyster sauce and salmon eggs 

prawns, potato flavored with ginger and lime and alga wakame 

carpaccio of red prawns and candied lemon 

salmon flavour Chartreuse and pear and mustard sauce 

tuna and orange teriyaki sauce

We shared a couple of pastas for mains: "Spaghettoro Verrigni" garlic, oil and chilli pepper, mussels and sea urchin sauce and "Spaghetti alla chitarra" with clams, squid, crumble and candied lemon. A highlight to end our Southern Italy stay.

The flight to Oslo was a 5.30 pm departure from Bari, so we decided to fill in our day with a winery visit in Andria just to the north of Trani. On the way we passed stockpile after stockpile of marble and stone with huge lifting frames dominating the adjacent yards. When we arrived in Andria we found a busy crowded very dusty town, and a very closed winery.

So we did a quick recalculation and headed for the Parco Nazionale dell'Alta Murgia, home to a Norman-era castle, Castel del Monte, that we thought warranted a look. It was constructed by Frederick II of Swabia, Holy Roman Emperor, and King of Sicily.

The castle was a grand octagonal structure with a tower at each corner. The walls were a couple of metres thick and all made with locally quarried stone, and doorways, columns and lintels sometime in a red speckled marble. Very striking. A nd it had possibly Europe's first flushing toilets!The building had a central courtyard with a large cistern used to store rainwater harvested from the structure's roof. It used to have significant carvings and wall decoration, however when it was abandoned by its owners in the 17^th century, it was subjected to theft by locals building other structures, and degradation by the elements once there was no residents or annual maintenance plan. Note the remnants of one of the many grand fireplaces in the central image below.

The construction techniques are impressive, huge arches support the roof in every room, and these arches are all held in place by their own weight, with a central keystone in each case ensuring that the weight is distributed equally to the four corners with supporting columns.

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The castle was built in the 13th centure by Frederick II and  was probably just a hunting lodge as it has no moat, but it has commanding views across Puglia, and makes a significant statement on behalf of the owner.

On our way to the airport we did a brief visit to Terlizzi for a brief walk around town,

before heading to drop off the Fiat 500X. This was a very nice car to drive around the small highways, byways and sometimes it seemed farm tracks. The war memorial in Terlizzi made for chastening reading, especially the large numbers of deaths from the local families.