Saturday 22 June

Writing this a couple of days later and times and dates have defeated us both – I just asked Pete ‘what time was kick-off on Saturday?’ and he just laughed.   So I think it was after 10am when we piled into a small bus with very narrow seats and set off for Ostuni ‘the white city’ which is another UN heritage town and is being well preserved.  Very touristy and popular as a day trip or for people to stay there to get the benefit of the town and of the beach which is only 8km away.  

The drive was about an hour and we were getting higher so the scenery was different, getting back to bright oleanders, grapes, and what looked like sugar cane but might have been reeds?   There was a short game of I Spy and a long discussion amongst three people (not me) about the results of the rugby etc; Pete has discovered a sports app called ‘Tribe’ and he is wasting vast amounts of the 12GB data on his UK sim card on sports results.   However, they were happy.

We had to park downhill a bit from the old town centre, quite steep getting up finally to the cathedral though winding round lanes and tourist streets made it easier.    The large white granite cobbles were treacherous and three of us (including me) slipped over too easily.  

The city was victim of a plague in the 12^th century and it was noticed that people in white houses didn’t seem to be affected so since then most houses have been whitewashed, hence the ‘white city’.  Maybe there was some sort of mineral in the white rock that protected people, hard to say.    30,000 people live here but that number doubles every day in the tourist season.  

And today’s surprise destination was the cathedral (of course), famous, bling rating is medium+.  It is mostly grey marble with what I thought were very tall panels of marble inlay but on close inspection they were all painted, several dozen, extremely well done.   There were side chapels and it had good information panels in Italian and English, all of which were sponsored by the local Rotary club so that was a good project for them.     From there we all went our own way back through the town and shared a panini for lunch, plenty of cafes and take-away places to choose from, all price ranges.  There were little tuk-tuks nipping round doing the tourist routes, we saw well-dressed wedding guests and a decorated church, plenty of tourists like ourselves.    The white everywhere is hot, but pretty especially when you see bright geraniums or other potted plants sitting on steps leading to ……who knows where?  Everything by that time (1pm) was starting to shut down for the siesta including the public toilet!   We ended up buying an orange juice from a café just so I could use their facilities, and that was a surprise going down a very narrow stone staircase to quite a large room with a vaulted ceiling, obviously a cellar of some sort, quite impressive.   Our holiday has been full of surprises. 

Back on the bus we drove for about 45 minutes to an olive oil factory where the pleasant mid-20’s son of the owner gave us a tour – nothing happening at this time of year of course but we got the gist of it all.    They produce 60,000 litres of olive oil per year from their own olives and some bought in, but are going for an organic certificate so that will stop soon.    He showed us the old olive press with 300kg granite rollers (they keep cool when working so don’t damage the oil which can only be processed in a maximum of 27 degrees in the factory).   Everything gets pressed by the rollers, the pulp is spread on mats stacked one on top of the other then pressed to get out as much liquid as possible, oil is separated from water (which is put on the farm), some pulp gets used for fertiliser.   They get about 15% oil weight from the total weight of olives.     But now they only use this press for local people who have a small crop, want to use the traditional method of pressing so bring it along; mostly older folk and he guessed it would slowly die out. 

In the other side of the factory was the REAL press – automated, self-separating, put the olives in one end and the oil comes out the other with everything else being diverted off as it passes through the machine.   Labour-saving, cleaner etc.    The whole place was spotless though he said they high pressure clean the machines just once a year at the end of the season.  It’s on 15 acres and they have five staff plus ten extra for the harvest from September to February – we saw photos of that and they’re out in the cold with gloves on in December.   They grow three varieties with staggered harvests and sell some mixed and some ‘one variety only’ oils.

At the end we had an olive oil tasting, tried four different oils like drinking wine or on bread – I like my olive oil best with fresh bread and balsamic but that wasn’t on offer today.    The lemon flavoured oil is made, not by infusing with lemon, but by crushing whole lemons (30%) in with the olives so you really do get that sharp lemon flavour, quite tasty.  We were each given a small can of oil as a souvenir which was unexpected, and a couple of people bought oil to take home.

We had a short drive after that to Alberobello, a town famous for its 1200 trulli houses with their distinctive white paint and conical roofs, quite a sight and a real tourist attraction.    The main street seems to be flat with a hill one side covered in trulli houses and a hill on the other side which looks like a fairly ordinary town.   So there was no doubt that we’d have some climbing to do later on.  Our hotel had a central reception point with a restaurant downstairs and on the roof, and the group was scattered in trulli over a fairly wide area of the hill.  Not sure if the hotel owns some of them, but some of us felt we were in a time-share, or maybe Air BnB, as it was all self-contained with kitchen facilities and even a yard (Jill and John even had a friendly cat!).  We had to trundle down the hill, across a short block, back up the hill on another road, around a couple of corners (thankfully just a slope, not a hill), all the time amongst these lovely buildings – everyone was escorted to their houses by a staff member so they must get really fit.      Our place had two trulli and a square extension at the back.    The living room trulli had a wooden ceiling with an open trapdoor which would have been used traditionally by farmers for storage, like an attic.   The second, smaller, trulli was like a lobby and had a door out to the paved yard and one through to the quite big bedroom and bathroom.  We were very impressed.

All met up at 4.30 and climbed up the hill to see some of the oldest trulli and to learn that they used to be built from stone with no mortar, and the roof tiles were laid on a slight lean to make sure water ran off properly.   People used to be taxed on their houses and could disassemble them fairly easily and say ‘I don’t have a house’ so that was a pretty good tax dodge.    They were built for storage or for living in and in the orchards everywhere on our travels in this area we could see the remains of dozens of plain stone trulli, some collapsed, but all very distinctive with the conical roofs.    We enjoyed the walk around and in the end went to a vantage point on the opposite hill for the perfect photo of us and the trulli.    And one of me and Jacopo – he’s quite tall………

The group sat and had drinks, then back to the hotel for a meal, then trundled up the hill again to our cosy trulli house, I was pleased with the photos taken on the way back, it was all very calm and peaceful.   

Sunday 23 June

Calm and peaceful………we were awake at 6.15, stepped outside into our little yard to a pleasant 23 degrees and I noticed the neighbours for the first time – we’re surrounded by olive trees to the side and back, over a whitewashed wall, and just out of sight is a quite long fence covered in Chinese jasmine, the perfume is all around.   AND THEN……just after 6.30 the neighbour woke up and had either a small chainsaw or a weed eater going full bore so that would have woken everyone else but you can’t blame him or her for beating the heat.     We met for breakfast at the hotel, all set for the bus trip to Matera.