Alberobello, Italy

Alberobello is a small town outside Bari famous for Trulli or these funny looking stone huts.

Turns out this is also a UNESCO world heritage site, something I did not realize when I was visiting, they could have better advertised that.

 Most of these buildings are stores, restaurants or little one room apartments.  Somewhere in this mess of buildings are a few hotels, so you can stay in one if you want.

 This is a view from across the street, you can look out over the concentration of Trulli.  I guess there is over a thousand and many more out in the country side.  As you drive up on Alberobello, you see these in all the fields.

 I want to watch them trimming these trees, it's squared off so perfectly.

 This is the old church in the center of Alberobello.  I think this church setup a stage in the main plaza a few blocks from the church, preparing for an outdoor mass.

 But since the stage is a few blocks from the church, the priest and many others need to have a little parade to get there.

 Can't forget Blessed Virgin Mary.

 The parade was quite long, had a marching band and everything.  You can see me in the tuba, orange shirt.

 This was the priest approaching the alter (stage).  I did not stick around to watch mass though, it's usually in Italian.

 One last look, this is about a 40 minute drive from Taranto.

History of Television Antennas

You can walk up this stair case in old town Taranto and see out over the old city.

Other than the roof line, you really can't see that much.  But you can see what I think is every revision of television antenna over time.  I like how the RF antenna's point in one direction and the sat-dishs point in the opposite.

Street Performers

In Taranto, when the sun goes down the Street Performers come out. 

 The funny thing is, Tanrato and especially the old town of Taranto is not so popular place for tourist to visit. I have the feeling that most people watching are locals who heard some noise and came outside of  their apartments.

 The performers are actually really good, juggling, juggling with fire, making and climbing on towers of chairs and other typical street stuff.

 The fire juggling was kind of crazy, the line between performer and audience was not clear, everyone keep getting closer and closer.

 Great show, this was the central plaza outside the main church in the old town of Taranto.

 He got 4 chairs high.

 That guy had the best view of the show, he should of charged or vended a few local Birra Raffo.

 As the show ended, most of the street performers stood up and lit this place up!

 After the show, my route back to the hotel was through the center of old town, lit by these modified old school lamps.

My First Wine Tour, Ever!

I took my first wine tour this weekend and really enjoyed the opportunity to see the wine production process up close. We visited a few places but only one winery provided a tour.  The first winery was filling 'jugs' of wine like we fill cars with petrol.   I have never seen this before but it seems to be typical in Italy.  Something we should consider adopting in the US.

Five liters  of wine cost 5.50 euro or around $7.  That is amazingly affordable, especially when you consider the quality of most of these jugs of wine is better than anything you can find at Safeway!

 Moving on, our tour was at a winery along the Adriatic Sea called Tormaresca, south of Brindisi.

 This winery had a few vineyards around Italy, but locally they had 5 hectare of land.  Being a non-farmer I had no idea what that meant, but it turns out that 5 hectare is about 2 square miles.

 The vineyard boss was in the SUV in front of our car, along our drive through the farm the boss stopped for a few minutes to talk to the workers. We passed them during what I think was their break time.

 Back at the main office you can see how grapes become wine.  Making wine is similar to making beer or sake.  It starts by fermentation and ends with bottling.

 This is the cellar.  Each barrel is 50 gallons of wine, this room, about the size of a basketball court, was filled to the ceiling!

 The smell of this room was amazing, a mix of fruit, oak and fermentation.

 Our tour guide was great, she toured us through the winery before explaining how each wine they made was great.  And she was right, each wine we tried was better than the previous wine.  She started with a 7 euro bottle of wine and ended with a 20 euro bottle of tine.

 I learned that during a wine tasting tour, you take a sip of wine and than pour the remaining wine in the black bucket on the table.  This blew my mind!  Kind of like, okay, please enjoy the best sip of wine you ever had and dump the rest out.  This did not seem logical or ECO to me.

 We were not crazy though, we 'revisited' most of the bottles.

 After tasting you have the opportunity to visit the show room.  You can purchase what you just tasted and other wines too.

 Because I don't have an apartment yet, I limited my buy to just these two small bottles.  I also got that purple book, it's a wine-map of Italy.

 Others on the tour got many more bottles than me.

 After the tour we had a great lunch in Grottalie, good food and of course more wine!

Most winery's in Italy provide tours, I hope to visit more shops.

Brindisi

Brindisi is a port city on the Adriatic Sea side of the heal of Italy.  I took a train from Taranto and visit Brindisi for a few hours, this is one of the places I'm thinking about moving too.

 I made the error of coming here during the mid-day when most stores are closed and everyone seems to not be outside.

 Brindisi is a fairly major port, from here you can visit other countries.  Many boats run over night trips to counties on the other side of the Adriatic Sea.  I'm not sure if these trips are expensive or not, but it sounds like fun.

 Other than the passenger boats, the port near the city is mostly fishing boats with a couple of Italian Navy ships.  Freight ships are at a port far from the city center.

The small fishing boats seem like they would be fun to cruse around in.  It's difficult to see but there is a small prop out the back end of the boat.  At first I thought they were 'paddle' style boats.

 Graffiti everywhere!

 It's so weird, but it seems like from 1pm till about 3:30 or 4pm there is almost no one walking around.  Cities seem abandoned.

I guess I should also note that most people consider fish from the Brindisi side of the boot to be more safe to eat than fish from the Taranto side.  Taranto is known as a steel mill town and many of the chemicals have washed (or been pumped) into the sea.  Many people have concerns about mercury and other toxins being present in the fish from that side.  After learning this I kind of avoided fish from Taranto.  But I look forward to fish from this side, because I'm sure toxins, water and fish can't flow or swim around the heel over to here!

Taranto Castle

One of the first tourist things I did in Taranto was visit the Castle.  Italy is kind of like Japan in that most of the cities have an old castle.  Looking at the map below, I moved to a hotel in the upper left corner and the castle is the orange area in the lower right.

 You can walk around the outer permitter of the island or take the maze through the center.  I picked the maze, this area is called old-town.

 The castle is not huge but it is old and imposing.

 Under the castle are a bunch of paths, some even lead under the river between the old town island and the mainland.  But that path is closed to the public, I think it's flooded.

 The tour guide was funny.  He is the person looking forward with the tie and blue shirt.  He would talk about something in Italian for like 5 minutes.  Then he would pause for a few second and look at us (us = the few foreign people) and say something like "to my English speaking friends, this is an old door way.  Dates back to the 12th century and was re-modled in the 1600's.  Okay, moving on..."

 Standard issue cannon, looking out over the Mediterranean.

 After the tour was over I ventured back into the maze of old-town.

 In the center of old town is the Cattedrale of Saint Cataldo.  It's a cool old church.