7 November 2024
Travel days can send you through quite a variety of emotions. You start with the stress of getting packed and out of your accommodation by 10am. And checking, double checking, triple checking, that you have everything. And because we prefer to stay in the historical town centers, you are rarely able to park the car nearby. So now you have to fetch the car, and try and get it as close as possible to your accommodation, to minimise the amount of luggage-hauling you have to do. Exhausted already.
Next you have to navigate yourself out of the city. Such fun… It helps, of course, if you know exactly where to go. Today, we aimed for Cantele, a winery outside Lecce. Italy has more than 240 different cultivars, so choosing or buying wine is quite a challenge. Puglia is mostly famous for the Primitivo anad Negroamaro cultivars, with the latter being quite dominant in the Salento region (the heel of Italy). Niel managed to taste both these cultivars, and happily bought some Primitivo. Unlike in restaurants, quality wine seems to be a great deal more affordable when bought directly from the wineries.
The drive to Ostuni took as through various small towns. Truthfully, I would find it hard to describe the smaller towns or villages as quaint, as we often imagine villages to be in most parts of Europe. We cannot help to wonder whether things look vastly different during the summer season, when more tourists visit the area. It sometimes feels like an entire town has closed down for the winter season. Or has it closed down completely, maybe? Weird emotions again – Is it hardship? Who does that cat belong to, if there are no people in sight? Could I take it home with me? 😉
I will refrain from saying too much about Ostuni for now, other than…. stairs. Many, many stairs. But also beautiful. But again – a travel day. So firstly you have to find your accommodation, and get the access code. This usually arrives in the form of a whatsapp from a foreign number. Today, it was all in Italian. Then we had to figure out how to get the car close to the accommodation again. The good news is, when we leave Ostuni, we know we will going DOWN the stairs, and not UP, like we had to today. We might be quite fit by the time we go home 😀
This evening, we decided to take a stroll around the old town. Stairs. We got lost. Stairs. We found our way again. Stairs. Exhausted. Beautiful. We love it!
Tomorrow we will explore a little more. 🙂
