10 November 2024
When you stay in one place for long enough, you start seeing things for what they really are. Across the staircase from our accommodation is a small balcony with two planters with plants that are covered with pink flowers. No leaves, though, just flowers. We have been wondering how they manage to get plants to grow in these narrow alleyways, with not a lot of sunlight necessarily, and with winter on its way. Then I discovered – the pink flowers are fake. As are the plant and flowers that we found along our way to the town piazza. The latter could actually also do with a good cleaning – the poor flowers looked rather dirty. I can at least say that many of the flowers that we saw were actually real. And I suppose that chosing to not notice the fake, is sometimes not a bad option.
I’ve mentioned the Escape Room routine. It’s just one of three routines that we have while travelling. I’ve also mentioned the Comeback Routine – recovering from not obeying Miss Google Maps. The third routine is the Pack Horse routine. It’s really my routine only – when I have to go and fetch the car to try and get it closer to our accommodation, so we don’t have to both play pack horse to get our luggage loaded. And if I’m honest, I’m really a bit of a bugger for punishment, as my dad used to say. So I always set off with backpack, handbag and camera bag. What can I say. 😐 Parking, or the lack of parking, remains a thing. It just comes with the territory. In Ostuni, we were lucky to get a parking spot in the same area, every time. And it was one that we did not have to pay for, and within a fair distance of our accommodation. We’re not complaining. 🙂
We are often stunned by the sizes of the ‘small towns’ in this area. Or at least, we imagined them to be small towns. On our way to Alberobello today, we thought we might stop at Martina Franco. It turns out to be quite a large city, so we bypassed it. Then we thought we would stop at Locorotondo. We drove through it, but also decided not to stop. Also – much larger than we anticipated. But between these cities and our destination, we started seeing what we were so excited to come to Alberobello for. The Trulli’s. Almost the entire route was lined with smallholdings fenced with stone walls, and in many cases, featuring clusters of Trullis. It really almost looked like fairytale castles.
In Alberobello, we took a stroll to the cathedral near our accommodation, and down a pedestrian street to a piazza lined with many restaurants. There had been some marathon that had clearly just finished, so the piazza was alive with locals enjoying their Sunday lunch. So we figured we would join them.
We will leave the serious exploring for tomorrow though. But we are loving how completely different Alberbello is.
