Puglia, Italy Day 3: Trulli and Negroamaro in Alberobello

This is the continuation of this blog and this blog about our trip to Puglia, Italy for a friend’s wedding.

Monday 9/15
Aberobello

I am up at 8am. Wake Olivier up. Olivier does not want to be up at 8am. He shares his nightmares, of Chinese man and Jennifer Lawrence. He says it’s because he was wearing ear plugs.

He takes a shower. The bathroom smells like sewer. So does Olivier now.

We walk up town to cathedral, have croissants and cafe outdoors. Decide Nutella is Italian. These croissants are much better than the ones we bought in the Rome airport.

Drive from our AirBNB apartment in Ostuni to the beach at Terre Guancento nature preserve. Park near a farm growing tomatoes. Pick two tomatoes:

We walk to beach, wash tomatoes in ocean, eat them. They’re salty.

Lie on beach on hand towels we brought from the apartment and read, sleep. Take dip, pee in ocean. Sleep some more.

Back in Ostuni, drop off keys and have lunch at a pizzeria recommended by an Italian we met in Monopoli. We eat pasta and linguini. It’s not very good. Italians at the table next to us laugh loudly when I try to speak Italian.

Drive to Aberobello, an inland town with hundreds of trulli (more on that below):

Olivier refuses to look at map. He also won’t down-shift gears in the car when we’re on a hill. I drive stick too and say this is stupid. But Olivier says he never goes into first.

The drive is beautiful. See lots of olive groves, wineries.

Arrive in Alberobello, beet Francesco, our AirBNB host. He’s much more business than other Italians. We even have a contract!

We’re staying in a trulli — an ancient mortarless home that people in the region have been building for centuries. They’re made of huge limestone bricks topped with conical stone tops. Rumor is, they were constructed this way, stone by stone and without mortar to keep it together, back in Middle Ages so people living in them could quickly tear down their homes when the tax collectors came, so it would look like pile of rocks instead of a home. Proves people have always been trying to evade taxes.

We walk around town visit other trulli — there are over 1400 in the area — and take lots of pics:

Have drink at cafe off main road: Aperol spritz and a mojito:

We go for dinner at restaurant recod by Francesco. Il Guercio di Puglia: The waitress tells us it means “one-eyed guy of puglia.” He turns out to be a real person, famous in Puglia in the 1800s, who fought in “some war.” Waitress is not sure what war.

Olivier and I discuss boob jobs, fat vs sugar, why English people are fat, why Olivier is weird, hermaphrodites, cuddling. Oliver’s dad now says he is coming to wedding.

Our pizza is delicious, and the negroamaro wine so good: