Through the small streets of southern Italy – Part 2

Welcome to the second part of the walk through southern Italy. In the following lines, I will tell about several very beautiful medieval towns and about two natural sights that are worth visiting. Finally, I will share some organizational tips about parking, overnight stays, eating and other useful things.

Ostuni

Known as the White City. A beautiful place to walk. It looks like the Italian version of Nessebar to me, with a very impressive old town, all glowing white as the walls are whitewashed. The road to it, as we came from Lecce, is very picturesque – beautiful fields with grazing animals, olive groves and greenery. Ostuni is a place where you can immerse yourself in the Italian culture – everywhere you are flooded with music, tiny little restaurants, flowers, amazing pizza and pasta. There is a pleasant surprise around every corner. The old town will take you maybe around 3-4 hours to be able to enjoy the beautiful little streets.

Small streets of Ostuni

Otranto

A small and picturesque town, located south of Lecce, with a very beautiful fortress, in which the old town is located. I also recommend the place for a beach, if the weather allows it, because the beach north of the city is very wide, with fine sand and clear water.

The fortress walls are quite impressive and if you take the right path you can walk along them and enjoy the beautiful panoramas around. You can also visit an Aragonese fortress from the 15th century – Aragonese Castle of Otranto, where the action takes place in the first Gothic novel “The Castle of Otranto” from the distant year 1746.

Cava di Bauxite is located very close to Otranto and is a lake formed by a former bauxite mine and for its red shores and beautiful surrounding greenery is worth a quick detour.

Polignano a Mare

It is located on the coast between Bari and Lecce. A tiny and picturesque town south of Bari. It is very suitable for a stop on the way and a pleasant 2 hours. There it is worth visiting the beach, the old town and a place to eat fresh seafood where we had octopus sandwiches and it was amazingly delicious – La Pescaria.

Заведението с вкусните сандвичи с октоподи и морски дарове

Lecce and surroundings

Lecce was the base for tours of the southern points. The city itself is medium-sized, around 100,000 inhabitants, and offers an unlimited number of wonderful places to walk, eat and drink in the old town. A few of the main sights worth seeing are the beautiful Basilica di Santa Croce and the ancient Anfiteatro. The city park also looked very nice but we didn’t visit it as we were only in town in the evening and it was locked. The old town is beautiful and full of life, there are many welcoming and cozy restaurants and bars. To give you an idea of ​​the prices, main dishes in a restaurant are around 10-16 euros, bottles of wine 14-18 euros, and cocktails at bars between 5 and 8 euros.

In the old city

South of Lecce, nearby we visited two quite beautiful natural sights – Grotta della Poesia and Grotte torre dell orso.

Cave of the Poetry

They are about a 10-minute walk from each other, and the whole area is high sheer cliffs, with the remains of an ancient fortress at one end. It’s worth a 2 hour walk around the area, and if the weather is right, you can jump into the blue and beautiful Cave of Poetry. A little further down is the Grotte torre dell orso, where you can walk through rock-cut tunnels leading to terraces carved into the sheer cliffs.

Martina Franca

The city officially has only about 50,000 inhabitants. We got there on a Saturday night and I was amazed at the many young people around and what night life was bubbling everywhere. There we slept in the old town in a several hundred year old house, which was a memorable experience for me. The old town itself is quite beautiful. It turns out that it’s almost impossible to get a seat on a Saturday night in Italy without a reservation, so if you’re going to travel over the weekend, you can keep in mind the importance of good planning. It happened with us that after we visited 7-8 restaurants and everywhere was full and there was a 10-person line in front, we had to have a house party in the old house with such wonderful parmesan, burrata and prosciutto. Fortunately, everything from the store there is incredibly delicious, not to mention the Italian wines, of which my personal favorite was this. 

The old town of Martina Franca

Bari

To be honest, we didn’t see much of Bari since we only spent the last night there. After visiting the small and calm towns of the previous days, I had rather the feeling of a big noisy city. I’m sure that there will be a lot to see too, but my recommendation is, if you have the opportunity, visit the other places to experience the true magic of southern Italy.

Quick tips

If you decide to plan a trip to Bari, I share some quick tips and impressions:

• Parking – we never had to pay tolls on the highways, but in the cities themselves almost everywhere in the more central parts is a zone. There are machines where you pay and it’s not expensive – between 50 cents and 2 euros per hour, in the most touristy places, but there are also daily charges, so parking is acceptable. You have to park in marked places only, the blue places are paid, the yellow ones are for locals and if you have an Italian number, from our experience, it’s no problem to park. White places for free, but such are found a little more often than bears in the Balkan mountain.
• Be careful when driving – in Italy it is an absolute madhouse with cars. Even in small towns of 50,000 people it’s full of cars and you have to be very alert every second because there are no blinkers and the Italians have their own way of driving which includes taking you over while you’re in your own lane . Fortunately, I wasn’t driving, but overall it has a certain amount of survivability. It’s not endlessly dramatic, like in Bangkok or Istanbul for example, but be careful and keep your eyes open while driving.
• Bring a water bottle, water is drinkable everywhere and is full of street fountains.
• If you miss the sun in the late autumn, this is the place! When it is already cold and winter in Bulgaria, it is still warm and pleasant there. It gets quite cold in the evening, but during the day it reminds us nostalgically of a warm September day.
• Lunch breaks at restaurants and shops – several times we suffered from our Bulgarian presumption that everything everywhere is constantly working. In Italy at lunchtime, generally between 2 and 4, almost nothing works and it’s quite an achievement to find somewhere to eat then.
• Must try Gelato – their ice cream. Whatever, wherever and however I tried it and it was great!
• Accommodation – overnight stays in decent places with a good location vary around 25 euros, at least now in the off-season.
• Italians don’t speak much English, but they are generally quite smiley and helpful, and with a little more hand waving, you get along just fine.

I hope you found the information interesting and useful. I want to especially thank Elena, Plamina, Gary, Belgin and Itso for being such adventurers, organizers and wonderful companions! With most of them this is not the first country we have discovered together and I can safely say that despite the incredible beauty, it is the people that make an adventure so special.

Our small artistic group

Here’s a map of the area where you’ll find all the towns I’ve told you about, including Alberobello and Matera, about which you can read here.