OK, I'll keep this one relatively brief. At this point in the trip we were starting to get overwhelmed by the many delightful towns and villages in remote southeastern Italy. Today we drove to Gallipoli, a coastal town of about 20,000 to the west of Lecce. I have no idea if the name has anything to do with the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey, site of an infamous campaign in World War I. I'll leave that as an exercise for the savvy reader (please report back if you learn anything).
Gallipoli is yet another BST (Beautiful Seaport Town), as you can see here:
The town is on a narrow peninsula, and has the typical narrow alleys of all these BSTs. So narrow in fact, that it was impossible to get a decent photo of the facade of the cathedral:
We were especially impressed by the facades of many houses here, not only the typical variations on white, there were many colorful buildings:
After our picnic lunch, custom made in a butcher shop, we headed back east via Lecce. Anja was running out of reading material, and most of these small towns don't seem to have much in the way of German or English books. I was reading John Grisham in Italian (with lots of help from the dictionary), at the rate I was going I wasn't going to need anything new soon.
We parked close to the old town, near where we'd parked a few days before. The city was like a ghost town (it was a Friday afternoon). We knew that the G8 finance ministers were having a meeting here, we'd seen the preparations on our first visit. But we didn't imagine to what extent the city was closed down. There were police and security guards everywhere, all the shops were closed, and it wasn't even possible to enter the old town if you weren't a resident. Sadly, we headed back to the Conca Marco, pondering what Anja could read next (she was leery about trying my Trollope in English).
At the Conca Marco we quickly changed to our beach things, later we had dinner again at San Foca, where we both tried horse for the first time ever (Dale Cosper: if you're reading this, I'm sorry!) The Italians seem to be quite fond of horse; it was quite good, tasting pretty much like beef but with a slightly different note reminiscent of game. The restaurant in San Foca has oven-roasted potatoes that are to die for!
Gallipoli is yet another BST (Beautiful Seaport Town), as you can see here:
The town is on a narrow peninsula, and has the typical narrow alleys of all these BSTs. So narrow in fact, that it was impossible to get a decent photo of the facade of the cathedral:
We were especially impressed by the facades of many houses here, not only the typical variations on white, there were many colorful buildings:
After our picnic lunch, custom made in a butcher shop, we headed back east via Lecce. Anja was running out of reading material, and most of these small towns don't seem to have much in the way of German or English books. I was reading John Grisham in Italian (with lots of help from the dictionary), at the rate I was going I wasn't going to need anything new soon.
We parked close to the old town, near where we'd parked a few days before. The city was like a ghost town (it was a Friday afternoon). We knew that the G8 finance ministers were having a meeting here, we'd seen the preparations on our first visit. But we didn't imagine to what extent the city was closed down. There were police and security guards everywhere, all the shops were closed, and it wasn't even possible to enter the old town if you weren't a resident. Sadly, we headed back to the Conca Marco, pondering what Anja could read next (she was leery about trying my Trollope in English).
At the Conca Marco we quickly changed to our beach things, later we had dinner again at San Foca, where we both tried horse for the first time ever (Dale Cosper: if you're reading this, I'm sorry!) The Italians seem to be quite fond of horse; it was quite good, tasting pretty much like beef but with a slightly different note reminiscent of game. The restaurant in San Foca has oven-roasted potatoes that are to die for!
Comments