Bari and Altamura Walking Tour

6 September 2017 

At 8.05am we departed Rome Central train station on a high-speed train to Bari capital of the Puglia region of Italy. Travelling along at up to 250 kph the ride was quiet and smooth. The countryside was mostly flat and filled with grain.

"Lunch" provided free on train

After just four stops we pulled into Bari, located on the east coast above the 'heel' of Italy.  A small port and ferry terminal activates the northern side of the town with the southern side being a beachy type of place. In the middle is the old walled city and the mandatory cathedral.

We found the door to our AirBnB just near the port area but we had no one waiting to meet us as suggested in our emails from the owner. The building has several apartments in it so we just pushed a random button and spoke to an elderly Italian gentlemen and explained our situation. All he heard was 'blah,blah,blah' as he understood no English at all but to stop us annoying him he pushed the button to let us into the foyer. We still had no idea where we were to go so I stayed with the luggage and Julie climbed 4 floors looking for our accommodation. By the time she came back Julie had met everyone in the building including the owners of the AirBnB. Up we went and were greeted by Mum (owner) and daughter (?).

We were welcomed in and shown around the lovely apartment, told how everything worked, what to do and not to do etc, all in perfect Italian. All we heard was 'blah, blah, blah'. Finally Mum and daughter were convinced we were confused enough and left us to work everything out. There was a vital bit of information left out of our orientation program and that was how to operate the washing machine which we soon found out did not work. Water came in, water went out, and that was about it.  However, after enquiring by email we received the following detailed instructions which helped "hello, I am Maria the mother of Nicola and the owner of the house. the washing machine can be used for the colored program and it does not work for other programs. for Aprils when it's over you have to wait a bit and then with fox open the door. do not worry if it worked so much for the program but it was erratic. you put the centrifuge and the water goes away.I did not think about explaining it.I forgot it. failed to let me know. we will."  Now we understand ...

It was eventually established that the machine wasn't working at all but it did make a lot of noise when it tried to so we received the next message about the problem  "I do not know why it did not work I let you know later if a person comes to check it out." A neighbour lady was sent over to confirm it wasn't working and that it was definitely making a noise - "the bell rings a lady called Mary open and sees the washing machine thanks". She spoke no English but we had a long conversation about something that required a lot of gesturing and she confirmed the washing machine was not "jiggling".

A repairer was immediately organised by the owner and he was coming next week about four days after we had checked out  "I'm sorry but it does not work, I'll see you call a technician but I can not make sure it comes during the stay. If the technician tells me one day in those days I'll notice it.". So everything was now clearly sorted as you can see. 

Next was dinner and we chose an authentic local pizza place just a mere 1.6 klm walk from our accommodation through local streets. At first we straight walked past it which was surprising as it is located in a short dead-end street. Even looking back where we came from we could not see it. As we walked back it wasn't until we were opposite the entrance we could see the entrance. A big italian man, looking like Robert Barone from Everybody Loves Raymond, stood at the door and after explaining we were from Australia and after a feed he let us in.

Papa

After turning on the lights and the little airconditioner we were seated. No English was spoken by he or his family but we were regaled with all sorts of stories supplemented with wild hand gestures. 

We ordered two pizzas, a beer for me and a glass of wine for Julie. Julie's wine came in a glass - a whole bottle of it. My beer was a tallie.  Next a plate filled with stracciatella cheese which is just beautiful. Next the pizzas combined with more stories and laughter on both sides as no one had any idea what anyone was saying. We quickly became long lost friends reinforced by two plastic cups of limoncello appearing. Julie is not a fan so, not wanting to offend our new family, I forced both down. The whole dinner including drinks came to 24 Euro (about $36) - what a bargain and a wonderful experience. We ended up going back a couple of nights later and had just as good a meal and time.

A small beer, a 'glass' of wine and an appetizer (with plastic cups) at 'Papa's' pizzeria

Svevo Castle

Our first full day in Bari was exploring the back streets of the old walled city. We spent hours wandering the 1800+ year old sandstone buildings filled with families with no more than two metre wide worn stone laneways separating them.

Inside Basilica di San Nicola

Card game in a park

The streets of Bari

Archaeological dig 

The town's cathedral, Basilica di San Nicola, was built from 1087 AD and contains the bones of Saint Nicolas (60% of him) and is an extremely important pilgrimage site. The crypt, which we visited a couple of times, and which contains the remains, was always busy with devote locals and hordes of visitors.

Fishing with the locals

Day two - we caught the local train south along the coast to Polignano based on the recommendation of the owners of our accommodation as this is where they live. The village is just beautiful perched high up on sandstone cliffs. Again the old city has narrow stone streets with some ending right on the cliffs where we watched locals fishing for sardines. Because of it's beautiful cave grotto and stony beach, it has been discovered by tourists who started to swarm around lunch time so that was a sign for us to leave. Our afternoon was again spent in the old city of Bari just wandering, getting kinda lost but always popping out in a familiar piazza eventually.

Polignano

The main street of Altamura. Note the lack of people at this time.

HFholidays Altamura Walking Tour - after 3 nights in Bari, we were transported to Bari airport to meet up with the other members of the walking tour who were flying in from Gatwick Airport at noon. This went without a hitch and we boarded the bus and travelled an hour to Altamura, Puglia with 2 guides and 24 other guests for a week of walking in the heel and arch of the foot of Italy. Our accommodation is within the old walled city of Altamura and is very good. Breakfast and dinner is included each day as is all coach transfers to and from our walks.

The group is great, mostly English with only one other Australian couple and one Glaswegian Canadian. They all enjoy walking back home, are almost all (well) over 60 years of age, are quite fit, and are great company.    

While on tour, each day we go out to a different location to start a walk except for one day which is our "free" day.  Most days, we have a choice of a short (about 9 klm) or a longer (about 14 klm) walk.  As the weather is quite warm and sunny and having inside information from our friends who did the walks last year, we have decided to do the shorter walks this week to have more time to explore the destinations. 

Altamura's main street is fully decorated with lights that cover the facades of the buildings and form arches above. We have stumbled upon the annual parading of the effigy of the Madonna which is due to happen Sunday night. The whole town is abuzz each night from around 7.30pm. Even when we exit our restaurant at 10.30pm the streets are completely packed with 1000's of people,including children, dressed in their finery walking under a sea of colourful lights, listening to live opera and just 'being seen'. During the day bands play as they march down the main street.

The Madonna - the star of Sunday night's parade

Our hotel in Altamura

The main street in Altamura - note the crowds

A band passing us on our first morning walk

Our first days walk is to a massive collapsed underground cave that is today known as a hole in the ground aka The Pulo or sinkhole. The walk was not really very good and not popular with anyone, however it was good to get acquainted with a lot of the group. 

Start of our first walk to a sink hole - Pulo

Looks like it will be a steep walk

Not much to see on the way to the sinkhole

The sinkhole

Inside a cave at the sinkhole

Not much to see after the sinkhole

The highlight came towards the end of the walk when we stopped under a few trees for a drinks break. Over the road was a basic rural farmhouse from which came two Italian women with a bag of freshly picked figs which we all had a couple of. We thanked them as they returned up their driveway with their empty bag. Next thing they are back and gesturing for us to come in and visit with their family. About 20 of them were sitting around a big table under shade all having a drink. It was a big family Sunday lunch gathering with so much food cooked that they couldn't eat it all. We were all offered homemade sausages, rough red wine, bruschetta and more figs as we spent about 30 minutes in loud, heavily gesticulating conversation with only a smattering of English. They were a lovely friendly family and the whole experience was really wonderful. We all said our goodbyes after numerous photographs and shaking of hands.

Visiting our new family

Talking to our new family

Beautiful homemade sausages

Dinner is held each night from 8pm after a 7.30pm briefing about the next day's location and walk options. The restaurant is about 150 metres up the main street and down a narrow lane. Each night we are served 4-5 huge courses with two of the main courses selected the night before. We end up rolling out around 10.15 to 10.45pm, back into the always crowded main street filled with happy locals. The many young people about are not drinking and just merrily talking and mingling with their friends - a complete contrast to Australia.

Day 2 - Today's walk was to the UNESCO World Heritage town of Matera - the Subterranean City. The weather forecast was for morning storms with heavy rain. We had even received a heavy rain and flood warning via email from DFAT. Not surprisingly there was a storm with thunder and lightning and very heavy rain in the morning which lasted for about 1.5 hours after we got off the bus.

Julie and John

Other walkers Margaret, Carmel and Michael

The days activities were rearranged around the weather so that we were under cover a lot of the time in the morning and outside in the afternoon. The old city of Matera is just amazing with its hundreds of underground houses built into the walls of a deep gorge. There are ancient underground churches with frescos on the walls. HFholidaays arranged for a local guide to take us around and explain the history and the archaeology we were looking at.  Stunning.

The streets of Matera

Underground church

Ancient church

Underground houses in Matera

Our target in the distance - Castle del Monte

Next day was a walk through vineyards peppered with many trulli. Trulli are the original regional dry stone buildings with a conical roof. The wine grapes were ready for the picking and were lovely and sweet.

A typical trulli

A farmer collecting snails for lunch

A flock of trulli is a trullo

Castle del Monte

The target of the walk was Castle del Monte, a unique eight sided building constructed in the 1240's by, you guessed it, Frederick II. It's purpose is not understood as its design does not lend itself to be a fort or anything. It could have been a hunting lodge but it is too big. Anyway we went in and had a look then walked around it drinking in the amazing 360 degree views.

Wednesday is our free day to do whatever we want. One of our leaders, Gordon, kindly offered, on his free day too, to organise a bus and guide us if we wanted to the town of Alberobello, the best trulli town in Puglia.. In the centre of the town on either side of the main thoroughfare are little enclaves of trulli buildings. One side of the street the trulli are more lived in and very authentic while the other side is very commercial and colourful. We spent the day wandering the little cobblestoned streets and visiting a number of buildings, a great museum that showed us how they were built and even the unique two storey trulli church. In the fields around the town trulli buildings dominate the landscape and today are either abandoned and crumbling or maintained and used for storage.

Trulli roof (Trullo is singular, Trulli is plural)

Trulli in Alberobello

Alberobello Trulli town

A walk through Gravina

Our second last walking day again began with a bus ride this time to the town of Gravina. Gravina is an ancient town dating back to the Neolithic age when neoliths roamed the earth. Built on limestone and straddling a deep ravine the surrounding fields grow olives, walnuts and grains. Our walk took us through the town and across a roman aqueduct that straddles the ravine.

Across an aqueduct .....

... to the other side

An unwanted extra on the Italian movie set ..

.. and "action!"

We stumbled across a movie set, so we watched that for a while before being ushered through and basically shooed away by the producers.

and finally being shooed away.

Immediately we were surrounded by overgrown ancient tombs on the sides of the road.

Roadside tombs

The long hard uphill walk

The path travels past a trullo

The view from the top

We then walked up into the hills and through orchards of olives and walnuts. We came across a local farmer collecting some walnuts who came over and shared some with us. More archaeology dotted the fields as we walked back into Gravina.

Italian farmer showing Julie his walnuts

Julie handling his walnuts (that's Glaswegian Linda with the rainbow hair)

Reaping what he sowed

We sat in a piazza and had a coffee before being guided into the subterranean world beneath the old city of Gravina. In the early days, probably when the neoliths were roaming around, the limestone was dug out below the buildings and used to construct the town on the surface. Today almost every building has enormous privately owned caverns beneath them. The one we descended into was three levels and over 20 metres deep. It contained on one level a wine press, the next wine barrel storage and on the bottom the abandoned quarry area with partly carved blocks and implements.

The underground cavern

Underground church entrance

Inside the church

Beside this area was a now disused water reservoir that stored surface runoff rainwater. It was enormous and a marvellous piece of engineering. After a quick visit to an underground church, we ended our day in Gravina.

Our final day for this walking tour was spent walking through a planted forest. It was a nice long walk but had little to write home about so I'm not going to write about it.

Start of the last walk

Middle of the last walk

The end of last night's pizza on the last walk

One of the features of the week in Altamura was the food for our dinners.  The restaurant served us course after course of antipasto dishes, pastas, pizzas and desserts.  The meal started at 8pm and ended after 10.30pm. There was so much on offer that we often couldn't eat it all and everyone ended up tying to sleep on very full stomachs.   

So that's it for another hard week at work. Off to Sorrento tomorrow.

Bye for now,

Jeffn Julie