The penultimate city on the trip was Puglia’s very cool port city of Otranto. We biked over the next morning after our 50-mile ride down the Adriatic coast to check it out, then hustled back to the masseria to hang out for the rest of the day.
Actual travel date: September 7, 2013
Outside of the medieval centers of the old cities, when we’re on the road, we don’t typically get lost on these bike trips. But, holy crap, we go all over the place trying to find our destination hotel or route starting point in the old towns. It’s really frustrating when it happens–particularly arriving into a new town, and the only thing between our current sweaty selves and lounging, scrubbed clean, with a couple of glasses of prosecco is the damn hotel location.
However, it’s somewhat comical after the fact, particularly when you get to see your attempts from the GPS output from the unit you brought over with you . . .
Here’s trying to find the hotel in Alberobello:
The hotel is top right, near the residential trulli area. We decided that looking all over the place on the hill to the south would be a better bet, apparently.
Here’s our desperate attempt to find the hotel in Ostuni:
Frankly, the way we ultimately found our way to the hotel was when Lisa spotted their little tuk tuk driving some guests up the hill into the historic center – centro storico:
And, although we haven’t gotten there yet in the blog posts, here’s our feverish attempt to find our hotel in Lecce:
We typically stop for a leisurely lunch in a town on the way during our rides, but we rode straight through from Otronto to Lecce and were hungry and thirsty when we arrived. We could not wait to sit down and relax for a late lunch, but these towns totally close down at 3:00, and it was almost 2:00 when we arrived. I actually turned off the GPS unit before we found it because it kept beeping and I was so pissed.
One of the reasons it took so long to find our place (we had directions, but they never really help after you’re in the maze of tiny streets in the centro storico) was that we knew that it was right across from the celebrated baroque basilica, so we were looking for that. The problem is, as you can see from the photo, there’s a big ass church every 200 feet in Lecce and all of them look like cathedrals or basilicas. So, we kept riding around and around these churches looking fruitlessly for our place. We split up (actually, I took off confident that I’d find it and come back for Lisa) and Lisa ended up finding it and calling me . . .
Our final ride was from the masseria near Otranto to Lecce, the “Florence of the South.” Full of over-the-top, ornate, Baroque architecture. It also appeared to have a higher cathedral/basilica density than any other city we’ve ever been to in Europe.
Actual travel date: September 8, 2013
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