Locorotondo, Alberobello

 And now we're caught up! T and I took one more daytrip, where we hit the little, beautiful town of Locorotondo...

...and then on to Alberobello, with its funny village of limestone houses with conical roofs, which looks like a town for gnomes and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

And now, too soon, by the time you read this I'll already be back home! I expect to be Stateside for the rest of the year. But I'll see you back here in 2022... ;)

Polignano a Mare

 If you Google images of Bari, you'll probably actually end up with an image of the beach at the town of Polignano a Mare, a bit down the coast. Drop dead gorgeous.

T and Food

 The biggest difference between my time in Bari and the rest of my time in Italy is that my friend T flew over from the States for her own European adventure and started it out by hanging out with me in Bari.

This also marked a transition from me mostly just self-catering in the places I've been staying to going out for dinner with her every night. So it was a week full of pasta...

...and pizza...

...and gelato...

...and caprese salads...

...and some less typical things that I tried. Like this "hot chocolate" that was actually warm chocolate pudding, and a little apple cake...

...and this delicious, rich dish that was pureed bean, cocoa-flavored pasta, porcini mushrooms, thin slices of dried tomato, and I can't even remember what else. But, yum.

The highlight was definitely having dinner one night with a very sweet family who are friends of T's, who invited us over for a typical Pugliano dinner. It. Was. Fantastic.

I fell behind!

And now I am at the airport on my way home to the States. But let me go ahead and give you some pictures from this final leg in my Italian journey. From Ostuni, I took the train to Bari, the biggest city of Puglia region. It definitely felt larger than any of my stops so far this trip (other than Athens, of course).

But it was a very lovely city as cities go. It sits along the coast...

...and has a charming old town like most Italian towns and cities do. In this one, there is a little street where a bunch of women spend their days making orecchiette, "little ears," the regionally typical pasta shape.

Which wasn't the only reason it was fun to wander Old Town.

Monopoli

There is water falling from the sky a lot lately here in Puglia province. I spent one day just hanging out inside hoping it would pass, but my days in Italy are numbered, so when it kept raining the next day, I just took my umbrella and rain jacket and hopped on a train anyway, to the town of Monopoli.

Yeah, that's what I said. Monopoli.

Partly I went there because I read that it had a beautiful boardwalk (no joke), which turned out to be kind of a joke. There was very little actual boardwalk, but there was a nice walking and biking path heading south along the coast from the city center, plus opportunities to access the rough, rocky coast itself. Plus the dozens of tiny little isolated beach areas.

The old harbor was quaint.

And I got super-busted a second after taking this picture and had to rush past pretending I hadn't just photographed them, but these two rando's just looked so cute standing there together under their umbrella, bursts of color on a grey day, that I couldn't resist.

The town was pretty cute, too.

 I was thoroughly soggy as I headed back to the train station, but it was worth it.

The Almighty ("Olmighty"?) Olive

Seemed blasphemous not to mention that anywhere there is not a building or a road in this region, there is an olive tree. So. Many. Olive trees. And in the stores, olives. And olive oil. It's like a dream I don't want to wake up from.

Ostuni

 Known as "The White City" (for cosmetic, not supremacist, reasons), Ostuni is a picturesque sight on approach from the train station at the bottom of its hilly locale...

...but then it's even nicer wandering around through the city.

Also at night.

And even kind of in the rain.