Our Blog - Southern Italy
A 2-week vacation, this time driving around Southern Italy. We will go through a few different regions: Puglia, Basilicata, and Campania. Here is a little map that will show our routing, basically in order of the numbers.
Part 1
We arrived in Naples (Map dot #1) after a morning flight on RyanAir. Not our favorite airline, but for a short, non-stop flight to Italy, it worked just fine. We picked up the rental car (which was interesting ... the first time that we picked up a rental car where they noted the 6 or 7 things of pre-existing damage including part of the driver's side mirror missing ... and then headed out of Naples. We'll come back in and spend a few days there at the end of the trip.
First area is Puglia, which borders the Adriatic Sea to the east, the Ionian Sea to the southeast, and the Strait of Otranto and Gulf of Taranto to the south. Its southernmost portion, known as the Salento peninsula, forms the heel on the boot of Italy. It is one of the richest archaeological regions in Italy, being first colonized by Mycenaean Greeks during the Bronze Age (1600-1100 BC). There is an estimated 50 to 60 million olive trees in Puglia and the region accounts for 40% of Italy's olive oil production.
A couple hour drive across the country to arrive at Map dot #2: Lucera.
After spending the night in Lucera, we headed South. A number of castles were built in the area by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, including Castel del Monte (Map dot #3), which is sometimes called the "Crown of Apulia". We didn't find anything there for lunch, so headed to Adriana for lunch and then to Barletta. I combined these into the Castel del Monte and Barletta blog.
From there, we headed to Map dot #4, Trani. An afternoon, night, and morning in Trani seeing the sights, then headed to Bari (Map dot #5) after getting lunch at a restaurant sitting directly on the Adriatic.
From here, it gets a bit crowded. There was a set of 5 different places that we wanted to visit that were near to each other, and then one outlier. We also decided not to stay at a single place and use it as a base to go to the towns around it. So from Bari, we headed down the coast a bit more and then slightly inland to Locorotondo (Map dot #6) were we stayed overnight.
The next day, we headed over to Alberobello (Map dot #7) to check out the trulli before heading to Martina Franca for the overnight stay.
Part 2
We spent the following morning seeing the sights in Martina Franca (Map dot #8).
Up to now, the drives have been fairly short but then we hit one of the long-drive days, first heading to Ostuni (Map dot #9) and then the long drive down to Map dot #10, Lecce. We stayed here for 2 nights in a 2-room suite in a former palace.
After checking out the sights, we left the next morning and headed back North to Ceglie Messapica (Map dot #11) before getting to Matera (Map dot #12) to stay overnight.
We spent the morning seeing the various sights in Matera before heading off for another long drive, this time to Pasteum (Map dot #13), which has some of the best Greek temples outside of Greece.
Our last stop before Naples was Sorrento (Map dot #14), where we spent 1 night half a day seeing the sights. Then we dropped off the rental car at the airport and headed into Naples (back at Map dot #1) for the rest of the time.
Part 3
And lastly, Naples (back to map dot #1). Last time we came here, in October 2007, we didn't spend much time in Naples itself but rather, just a base to see Pompeii and Herculaneum. We had great weather in Pompeii but it rained in Herculaneum and so we didn't really take time to see everything. This time, we spent a couple days looking at the sights around Naples itself and then the last day, we spent a warm, sunny day in Herculaneum.