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Puglia Day 1

Our flight from Munich arrived 15 minutes early in Bari, a good start to the trip. But our suitcase took 45 minutes to show up at sleepy Bari airport. We picked up our Fiat Panda rental car without difficulty at Hertz and hit the road for La Casale dei Fornici, the first albergo we had booked for this trip. We found it without too much trouble thanks to our trusty TomTom 930 PND. The initial impression of the Casale was good, a beautiful, modern hotel with a restaurant and a small number of rooms. We took a dip in the pool, then headed for nearby Polignano a Mare.
We couldn't find a place to park in Polignano, so we headed up the road to fishing village San Vito, which according to one of our guide books was "delightful fishing village". "Delightful" is perhaps an exaggeration, "modestly charming" would be more accurate. We were getting hungry, but it was much too early for restaurants to be open in Puglia - except in very touristy areas most restaurants don't open for dinner until 8 or 8:30. We discovered that a waterside bar, La Veranda di Giselda, wasn't serving hot food yet, but had wonderful fresh seafood salads and such. We had a fish salad with tomatoes and onions, and zucchini stuffed with shrimp, plus bread and olives and beer, all for 19€. We then drove back to Polignano, this time we found a parking spot. We were charmed by the old town and the views of the sea.


Back at the Casale we sat by the pool with a glass of wine for a while, but it was too windy to stay out long. We went to bed at around 10.30, but sleep came hard, as hotel and restaurant guests were coming and going. The room was rather warm, as we hadn't figured out how to work the air conditioning yet.
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