TRULLI TOWN

This area of Puglia is all about olive trees and vineyards.  It’s amazing to me that anything can grow in the rocky soil here, but according to my Italian friend Donato, you could bury an olive pit in concrete and a tree would sprout from it!  And Donato knows his concrete.

I’m happily ensconced in the lovely home of my friends Tina and Donato, who are very, very gracious hosts.  Tina is a great cook, and if I stayed here too long, I would be in trouble.  Their eating habits are a bit different from mine.  They have a coffee and a sweet roll early in the morning. Then for lunch, between 1 and 2 p.m., they eat a pasta course, a meat course, and fruit.  Dinner is really more like my typical lunch—a panini, or pizza, or an assorted antipasto—and they eat it at 9 p.m. or even later.  I’m trying to adjust.

Today, we went to “trulli town”, better known here as Alberobello.  This is a trullo.

Trulli are dry stone huts that were constructed as temporary field shelters and storehouses or as permanent dwellings by small proprietors or agricultural laborers. They date back to the 1400’s and are unique to this area of Puglia. 

Imagine an entire town of trulli…...here are some photos I took as we roamed this charming and unique place, where many of the trulli have been converted to small shops, bars, and restaurants.

This is a twin trulli.  See the symbol on the left side of the roof.  Many trulli have Christian or magic symbols on their roofs. The number of cones on a trullo usually represent the number of rooms in the complex.  Many have only one cone.

                                      A typical trulli street

Your typical trulli tourist

Here is the church in trulli town.  

             The outside

A side altar on the inside...unfortunately my picture of the main altar turned out very blurry.

And this is a really interesting stone pulpit.

After our tour of trulli town, we drove to Polignano di Mare, a lovely seaside city with great charm.  Some sea views……

Some street views.......

And a view of friends having a good time....

Tina and Donato

Tina and the Trulli Town Tourist

We stopped at a small takeout restaurant before we left that had two things for sale, bread and focaccia.  There were six different kinds of focaccia, and it was different from anything I’ve seen in the U.S.  It was like a bread pie with a top and bottom crust.  I got one filled with prosciutto and mozzarella, and it was delicious.  Donato had one filled with ground meat, and Tina’s was a mix of onions and olives.  We liked it so much that we bought some to have for our evening “snack”.