New Year's Eve and back in Peschici

It's a gorgeous sunny day, so a short diary and off into the sunshine. Tomorrow is forecast wet, so I'll do more writing and photo editing then.

It's good to be back home even though we left behind underfloor heating and a jacuzzi in Alberobello. Almost trullied out after 2 good days of exploration. They are very striking buildings from the outside.

And from within

That is one of the piccolo trullis on the North side of the town where the living Nativity was staged.

The Pietradimora B&B was one of the larger trulli's on the South side of the town with the main cone being over the bed.
The view looking up from the bed is impressive. But . . . . . .
Thw conical shape will be great for cooling in the hot summers but it did mean that in our wonderfully warm room you could feel the cold cone above you and so there were no limbs outside the blanket at night.
The other downside is that the acoustic characteristics of the cone mean that any sound underneath, say like someone snoring, like the Whispering Gallery in St Pauls, are amplified about 10 fold. No names, but guess who had a sleepless night !

All was forgiven over breakfast

Thw 30 miles from Alberobello to Ostuni is non stop cones, and lovely old walled cities like this one at Locorotunda.
We are 10 years too late to snap up a bargain - I blame Amanda Lamb. But we will return.

Trulli wonderful

Late Monday afternoon and we are still in the land of internet connections in the most fabulous B&B in Alberobello, the Pietradimora -http://www.pietradimora.it.

It is superbly renovated, with just 3 guest suites in a trulli with staggering views over the heart of the city. Underfloor heating, jacuzzi, heated towels and the wonderful Daniella as our hostess.
It rightly has the top rating as the most popular accommodation in the area.

This is the view across the town from the roof garden.

Our 150 mile drive South from Peschici yesterday took us through the Foresta Umbra, this time covered in snow.
When we arrived in Alberobello the town was bursting at the seams and after we had grabbed a space to park we went off into the town, armed with Daniella's advice.

She had mentioned a living nativity in the Church opposite and so we went to get tickets. They were free and our time was at 5:05pm. I had expected a stable scene with the usual Nativity figures.

How wrong I was, as you will find out when we post the full story. Nearly 3 hours later and having experienced some amazing tableaux we did see the stable scene.
It was the most amazing experience. Later, over supper, we met people from Rome - 4 hours away and Naples, 3 hours the other way, who had come just to see it.

More after we have collated the video and still images.

Today was the Trulli highway to Ostuni - images and story to follow. The Brits are already here though. Daniella said over breakfast that they had arrived in so many numbers the area was becoming known as Trullishire !

Trabucchi on Christmas Eve

Today is a cold and gray one in Peschici so, apart from a forage for driftwood at the local beach, it's a day for hunkering down with a good book.
Time also to go back a couple of days to Christmas Eve when on our trip out we stopped at the top of the hill leaving the bay of Peschici to get a shot of the glorious beaches to the West when we noticed that the bar across the narrow track down to the trabucchi we can see from our house on the far side of the bay was open.


So down the track we went and met a man who said that he was open but only had white or rosé wine. That was OK with us so armed with a tumbler of local rosé we investigated this working fishing platform.


It has so much standing and running rigging it's like being high up in an old square rigger.


All the standing rigging is galvanised wire and everything is supported back to holes in the rock.

Joints in the wood are made with wire lashings

The blocks are handmade

and so are the windlasses

After a great photographic hour we headed off for lunch.

Happy Christmas

A blog free Christmas day, and a very different one to the way we usually spend it.

We spent Christmas eve in a restaurant in the old town, Fra Stefano and there we started with a traditional Southern Italy Christmas Eve dish of seven different fish dishes, one for each day that God took to make the world.
Mussels, large prawns, octopus, anchovies, squid, tuna carpaccio and a staggering mussel souffle. I finished with more fish from the grill and Suellen broke with tradition and had the beef.
At 10:45 she went to the church next door to midnight mass and didn't get home until 01:40. Christmas morning was bucks fizz with breakfast and then into the town for 12. We couldn't believe the view. Corso Garibaldi, the main street was packed, with everyone dressed in their finery, young girls in incredibly short skirts, young men with impeccably gelled hair in shiny silk suits, ladies in fur coats and everywhere, people kissing and shaking hands.
This photo doesn't do the scene justice. We sat at the bar/gelataria in left of the picture above, had a Campari soda and watched the 'passageria'.
At 1 o'clock they all just drifted away and by 1:10 the main street was deserted so we came home and had smoked salmon and fizz for lunch.
Our main meal was at 6:30. Beef carpaccio, turkey, roast onions & potatoes, carrots, peas and no Brussel sprouts.
Christmas pudding steamed for 3 hours, flamed with brandy with cream to finish.
Wallace and Gromit on the TV - A great great day.

Carpaccio and Prosecco

The Peschici Lottery win 1998

Domenico Lamargese owns the Mille Cose, Peschici's only newspaper shop.
In 1998 he came up with a system which involved 99 people taking a €20 share - the Italian lottery was on its eleventh rollover week and on 31st Oct 1998 the syndicate had the only winning line scooping the 63 billion lira jackpot.
In the two months before the cheque was presented at Christmas 10 years ago it had accrued another 306 million lira in interest (€180,000)
With the 100 winners all being from the town of then just 4,000 people, it meant virtually everybody knew or was related to one of the winners.
Not good news for everyone as a young Peschici woman engaged to be married dumped her fiancé, who was not part of the winning lottery pool, to wed his brother instead, who was among the jackpot syndicate.
Each winner received around €300,000.

Santa for the nonnis, padlocks, murals and the Christmas shop

We kept seeing this rather scruffy Santa Claus in a little white Fiat van stopping around the town. When we caught up with him he was giving a couple of old people small gifts. He explained that Christmas wasn't just for children but nonnis (grandparents) too.

We told him we were old too but he wasn't impressed.

A close up of the young lovers of Peschici's vow of love

And another mural. When you have boring steel shutters to protect against the elements, why not make them attractive ?

That door really is a shutter !

Finally to the Christmas shop. There is no Tesco equivalent in the town, or nearby. I would guess that Foggia - about 90 minutes drive away might have something, but here we have half a dozen shops selling fruit and veg, about the same number of butchers and assorted general purpose shops selling almost everything.
Out at 7:45 to get early to the butcher who specialises in birds, to get our turkey leg, and some carpaccio as a starter.
Then to the Inoteca & veg shop for the next on the list. A brussel sprout free Christmas - hurrah !
Then the bread shop, the vegeme supermarket and back home by 8:30. Every shop full of laughter - what a contrast to the Sunbury Cross superstore.

I have found out about the lottery win - more later.

Wherever you are reading this - a very happy Christmas from us both.

Padlocks explained, now to to find out about the lottery wall

The padlocks railing is explained. It's the Peschician version of the fad that started in 2006 in Rome.

"Every week, hundreds of teenage couples visit the Ponte Milvio and testify to their everlasting love by writing their names on a padlock and clipping it to a chain wrapped around two of the bridge's lampposts. They then throw the keys into the Tiber.

The fad was immortalised last year in I Want You, a romantic novel by Federico Moccia, which has just been turned into a film."

Here they throw the keys into the sea below.

The next conundrum is the lottery win. In the town is a news stand and bar called the Mille Cose
On the left of the bar is a marble slab with a list of lottery numbers with one line highlighted and beneath that a marble recreation of the cheque from 1998
63,601,317,316 lira at about 2,000 to the pound when it joined the euro is 31 million pounds.
So who won, where did it go and why the plaque on the wall ?

1/3 driftwood, 1/3 forest of umbra, 1/3 Mario the logman

= paradise

Peschici bay is about half a mile of perfect sand stretching to the west of the town. It is fringed by wall to wall bars, restaurants and gelataria, all closed for the winter.
It's an invigorating stroll and when I saw the hand painted sign on the rocks at the furthest end of the bay, ever the optimist, I had to investigate.
Up a few rocks and then onto the scaffolding.
Round the corner and a short climb and there was the bar -closed - below. But what a great location.
Peschici has murals everywhere, and it seems to be the speciality of the town as we have not seen them anywhere else on our travels.

This is a very good one of the beach houseowner and his dog.

The tree is real, the window, window box, man and dog are all paint.

Eugene needs more cowbell !

Thanks for all the comments - My new axe is not one of your Pink Floyd types, nor even a modern solid steel model, but something made locally and probably unchanged in design for 1,000 years.

A great day in the Forest of Umbra about 20 miles away. A few cars driving through but we were the only ones on foot.

The forest is not silent - it rings with the sound of cowbells, every one a different pitch, which creates a great musical effect with dozens of individual sounds from nearby to far away across the valley.

These cows forage freely through the forest and look in superb condition. The beef in the butchers reflects that, perfectly marbled and giving a true meaning to free range. The cows do leave quite large hazards on the pathways - best to be avoided !

And so to another breadshop - this time in Rodi di Gargano - 20 miles from Peschici. A wonderful shortcrust pastry onion, anchovy and spinach pie became lunch in the forest.

To end the day out - sunset in the harbour. I have identified our house near the church tower.

Red Bras and Salt Cod for Christmas

The market had everything you would expect. Clothing, shoes, Christmas decorations and loads of food.

Three mobile cheese shops.

Salt cod from Norway

And it seems every good Peschician lady wears a red bra for Christmas.

Eating out in Peschici

Early start today to visit the big Saturday market.
We had our first meal out in Peschici yesterday, most restaurants are closed for the winter and the few that are open are lunchtimes only. That's OK with us as we enjoy buying and preparing food.
The Al Castello is in the old town with staggering views into the bay - but yesterday it was very quiet.

The old town has many murals. Some,like the one below, are very realistic.

Breakfast and silt

Friday morning and another nice day. 10C, sun and light cloud with a 50% chance of rain.
Below is breakfast - cold meats, hard & soft cheese and the decadent burrata.

I mentioned the torrential rain yesterday. The rain in the Gargano hills flows down the Chianara river to the sea leaving a very visible silt/saline line out into the bay.

Plans for today - none

Bread, wine, lego and three wise men

I first left the UK in 1976 and went to live for two years in Malta. There I discovered the wonderful rustic Maltese bread - "hops". The local bread in Peschici is virtually identical.
Large round loaves, hard crisp crust, soft inside. Great fresh, not as good within hours. Here are our bread shop girls, who always seem to add a free panini when we buy there.


I was going to do a qualitative survey on the range and different type of food shops, but I've given up. It's too complicated. Some butchers only sell fresh meat, others also do processed hams and salamis and some sell cheese. Some veg shops sell just veg, this one does everything.


And so to lunch - down to the nearest beach to forage for driftwood for the fire after last night's storm. Rustic bread, cold cuts and a glass of rosso. The back shelf of the Chrysler is great for picnics.


I've seen the town described as lego piled up at the edge of a cliff. A very accurate description.


And so back to the old town and to the church next door. The services become more frequent as we approach Christmas.


Forget your hastily thrown together Nativity scene. This is 6 feet wide and 4 foot deep.

Tonight, is local rabbit in the oven, driftwood logs on the fire and goodish red wine.