An Apulian Cooking Class

The famous Lama Monachile

Today's activity of choice WAS to be a DIY tour of the baroque city of Lecce, the "Florence of the South". However, after yesterday's heat trauma and perusing the stone and hard surfaces in online images of Lecce, we were content to enjoy the sea instead...and do laundry.

The day was pleasantly low key. Visit the beach. Wash our clothes. Nap and watch Netflix. 

Custard pasty today for breakfast

The Italians on holiday don't really wake up early. This beach would be insanely packed later...

Nearly 9am still no one awake!

Our evening activity was an Apulian cooking class. Our teacher was Anna Maria, a local from Conversano, a village about 10km inland from Polignano a Mare. Like many Italians, she was a hoot. We got the opportunity to chat in length as the other 6 participants of the class were 30 minutes late. It turned out that Anna Maria had a degree in political science, which declared was the most useless ever, as here she was now teaching tourists how to make orecchiette. She was also about to become an international TV star, having hosted Channel's Nine Getaway to film a special on the region!

The cooking class was fun, but more simple than the one we did in Verona. The pasta used a different flour and had no egg. Most of the class was spent trying to perfect the roll of the knife to create the shape of the orecchiette. The sauce she used was also based on Mutti as per our previous class. Highlight of the class was Maria's facial expression when one of our American cooking buddies asked how she made her "gravy" and her response when one of the American kids wanted to eat the pasta with no sauce...Why? What is wrong with you?

Maria chatted about food in Puglia while serving us freshly made focaccia, taralli, olives, and home made wine. We had time to chat, make new friends and eat good food! A lovely way to end our time in Polignano a Mare.

The brutally honest but hilarious Anna Maria

After kneading the dough, it is rolled into long strands. Cut small bits off and shape with a knife in a rolling motion. 

Eccola!

Very simple. Tomato based sauce, parmesan cheese and pasta. That is it!

So tasty

Look out for her on Channel 9's Getaway!

Matera & Alberobello

Alberobello

By some miracle with Herculean efforts, we survived what was a brutal trial of endurance. The Italian Meteorological Service had issued excessive heat warnings for the regions on an almost daily basis for a while now. The only difference today was that we'd leave the comfortable breeze and water of the coastal towns to explore inland...please do remember that the author of this blog is distinctly heat averse.

So what would make a heat sissy brave what she loathes I hear you ask? The UNESCO world heritage sites of Matera and Alberobello. Plus we had already booked the tour and it was non-refundable...

Before I expand on our day, a little bit about both Matera and Alberobello. Matera is a city known for the Sassi area, a complex of cave dwellings carved into a canyon. The town is ancient and unfortunately came into disrepair with the declining economy of Southern Italy hundreds of years ago, and was labelled the "national shame" of the country before eventually being evacuated in the 1950s for poor living conditions. Restoration started in the 1980s and today many cave houses still remain empty and abandoned.

Alberobello started because of the Italian's flair for skirting the law. The local feudal landowner wanted to evade taxes and thus invited shepherds and farmers to build "Trulli"s, the characteristic cone-roofed huts that makes the town unique. As no mortar was used, the inhabitants were asked to take down the roofs when the tax-man. No roof = not a house = no tax. Genius. This went on for 300 years. Gotta love Italian ingenuity!

As previously mentioned, we picked a tour which included a pick up from Polignano a Mare rather than having to go to Bari to start the tour. We were picked up 0745 at the designated meeting point just outside of the old town. Lara and I decided that we could make our free 0730 breakfast and then 12 minute walk for our 0745 pick up. Lucky Pasquale was fast. We arrived at 0746 and we were not the last ones! That honour goes to the 3 overweight Indian ladies who unfortunately really struggled with the heat. We needn't have worried about being late, once we arrived in Bari to pick up our guide, Sylvia, as well as the rest of the touring party, we had to wait for many late arrivals...

Still smiling, in the then still cool minibus

Olive trees everywhere

Sylvia gave us our requisite run down on the region as well as the history of each of places we would be visiting along our drive. We drove past many vineyards as well as carpets of olive groves. The reason why the water and air was so clear was that there was no heavy industry. Any factories in the area are medium sized at the biggest and most are family owned and related to food production eg olive oil and pasta making. By the time we reached Matera at 10am, the temperature had already reached 40 degrees. We walked around the Sassi area while Sylvia explained the architecture and gave us more history. The cobblestones were slippery even though it was dry so a warning to wear appropriate footwear should you choose to visit. We were so relieved when it was finally free/lunch time. We opted to go to La Latteria Rizzi, the restaurant recommended by the guide. She mentioned that they served local products, it was good value for money and it was the closest to where we stopped at the end of the tour! The food was great, we opted for the meat and cheese board and to share a pasta. It was so hot we had no appetite.

We had to walk through the "newer" part of Matera, still older than most of Australia 

Hard to appreciate from this photo, but this is the Sassi, made of buildings half in the caves and half outside 

One of the first cave houses restored

A better sense of how the city is built into the side of the mountain

The point of this selfie was to show that initially way back when the dwellings were built on both sides of the canyon, but they moved to one side and abandoned the other side, most likely because it was less steep

And yes they do have gardens somehow

The building at the end is the conservatorium, and underneath that "piazza" is a cavern which is now used as the auditorium

Back to the edge of the canyon and the "new" part of town

Lunch time!!!

Meat and cheese board, everything on the plate was so good

Mezze maniche pasta with mushrooms, pezzente sausage and yummy stracciatella cheese on top. So full of flavour

It was soon time for the hour and a half-ish drive to Alberobello. It was so hot the minibus a/c struggled, but it was still better than no a/c! Who knows what the temperature was by the time we got to Alberobello. The guide said this was hot but not too unusual, the worst is usually late July when temps would go in the high 40s. Yay for August. Alberobello was a town divided into 2, one half had the trullis where locals lived, the other half was reserved for the tourist activities ie souvenir shops, bars, restaurants etc We toured both sides but by now the brain was not really absorbing too much on the trulli archictecture...Kudos to Sylvia at this point, she was fantastic at herding us from one shade point another. There was a significant difference in temperature and how we felt in the shade vs in the sun. It was so hot I could not shop in the free time! My mother would be ashamed of me. 

Are we glad we went on the tour? Yes, I don't think we would made ourselves go if we hadn't booked anything and I really don't think I have the necessary skills to drive here! I appreciated the more condensed "look at we need to" version with the necessary information supplied rather than the wandering aimlessly approach. Did I wish the temperature was not crazy? Also yes. Both places would have lent itself to wandering enjoyment fi we weren't so busy looking for somewhere cool to sit and get a cold drink. Although both places did have many tourists, it actually wasn't too busy. Sylvia said that most Italian tourists would actually be AT the beach in August, and that it was much much worse in July because then you'd also have the school and geriatric groups.

The tour officially ended at 5pm and we were glad to be heading back to Polignano a Mare. Who would have thought that going to 33 degrees would be such a welcome relief! We grabbed some foccacia on our walk home to our apartment, showered and pretty much conked out by 7:30pm. All the grand plans of the picture-perfect postcard-esque photos went down the drain. It was pretty point and shoot and check later...

Not all the trulli are restored

The "residential" side

View of the "tourist" side of Alberobello

Don't remember where I took this photo lol

We're now on the "tourist" side

and found a miracle...a restaurant with a garden where there was no one else!

Our dinner. Looks plain but the tomatoes were so sweet and the bread divine. Not doughy but with a nice crisp on the outside and full of flavour

Polignano A Mare

Puglia, the heel of Italy, is known for its white-washed villages, as the bread basket of Italy as well as the producer of around 60% of Italy's olive oil. Despite being often overlooked by foreign tourists for the more glitzy, sophisticated and stunningly gorgeous Amalfi Coast, Puglia has been a popular vacation spot for Italians. Flying under the radar until recently, Puglia has had a recent surge in popularity as the rest of the world discovers it as a holiday destination. Traditionally a poorer area of Italy, what Puglia lacked in instant wow beauty it made up with abundant charm. On my bucket-list of places to visit in Italy, it quickly made the shortlist when we first started organising the trip. Our only niggly concern was visiting in August, when the whole of Italy goes on holiday and when the weather could be unbearably hot, especially taking into account Europe's recent heat waves. We decided to go for it, so let's hope this heat averse gal survives...

We managed to sleep until 4:30am so I'd call that a win! We got up and decided to walk around and try to catch the sunrise. It didn't disappoint, the town was quiet and we took the opportunity to explore the streets in the cool and without the crowds. By the time the cafe where we had breakfast was open at 0730, the temperature had already climbed to a warm 32 degrees. 

Fun fact. The Italian song 'Nel blu dipinto di blu', better known as 'Volare' was written by Domenico Modugno who was born in Polignano a Mare!

Gorgeous purple hues of the sunrise

Volare...oh, oh. Written by this man, Domenica Modugno who was born here in Polignano a Mare

Yes we missed the exact moment the sun burst above the horizon

Breakfast was included in the apartment rental and was served in this local cafe nearby

Lara finally used her Italian, and scored us free orange juice from the lovely Pasquale, the owner of the cafe

Espresso macchiato, fresh orange juice and Nutella croissant. Sweet!

The lights above are the lyrics for the popular song "Volare"! This street would not look empty again for the rest of the day...

As we had time, I was subjected to a "no-make up" make-up makeover by Lara in preparation for our lunch at Grotta Palazzese, a venue popular with instagrammers. We coughed up €195 per person for the cheapest 4 course set menu. The 3 options came down to essentially meat, seafodd or vegetation. We scrapped the vegetarian option immediately and went for the seafood. Malcolm would be appalled that one of us did not choose the meat option. The food was surprisingly decent, the weakest link was probably the seabass, but it was still tasty. 

And for those wondering about booking availability, I booked on 5 Jun for our 13 Aug lunch and there was plenty of slots of availability, at least for lunch. You can look at the Menu online if you were interested, which also has a list of allergens for each dish. 

Was it a worthwhile experience? We say yes! The waitstaff were friendly and we enjoyed our 2 hours there. There was no lack of entertainment with a background music of bossa nova covers of various modern hits including Britney's Hit Me Baby One More Time, and the parade of boats, kayaks, paddlers and hydrocyclers offering us excellent people watching opportunities. There was one who hydro-paddled with a Fendi bag, a whole family atop one single paddle board, others with doof doof music, the ultra beautiful, the Asians, and much much more!

Nobody says anything about all the steps! For those with mobility difficulty be warned that there was no lift

After all the stairs, you get rewarded with this stunning setting for a meal

Channeling my best Italian chic 

The main dining area. The waters below made for natural entertainment as we people watched...

Our linen napkins

The bread service

Scallop, topinambur, sour cream and truffle

Raviolo cacio e pepe, red prawn and caviar

Sea Bass, spinach, black garlic and herb bread

The waiter who had probably taken this shot a gazillion times, took a lovely photo of us!

This was labelled "Modern Tiramisu"

In SE Asia, it would a family with parents, children, grandpa reading the newspaper and the family pig getting on one motorcycle. Maybe this is the European version...

The grotto at the back of the restaurant

Lama Monachile Beach, the most popular beach in Polignano a Mare

After lunch, the heat became oppressive and we headed back to our apartment to nap. We needed to stay awake this evening as we had a boat tour organised. The tour included a pick up which took us to the harbour and we had an hour and half touring the caves of Polignano a Mare, as well as a quick dip in the warm waters of the Adriatic. As with everything Italian, there was some swerving on the road when another car nearly hit us, and some yelling on the water when there was a disagreement on the right of way to go into a cave. Gotta love them! And honest review? The caves themselves were interesting but average. However, it was a relaxing trip out on the water. The air temperature was comfortable, the scenery was pretty and most importantly the water was amazing in both colour and temperature! The rest of the 9 passengers on the boat were Italian as were most other tourists we've seen with only just a sprinkling of the occasional tourist of other nationality. Oh I digress, there was also a dog onboard, June, who was very cute and very well behaved. I know not what breed she was so don't ask...

Happy to report this time we stayed awake until at least 9:30pm. Goodnight and here's to another day exploring Italy's heel tomorrow!

Our ride to the harbour, still smiling just prior to our near death experience...

The water at Abbazia di San Vito

Remembered quickly why I generally dislike European beaces

Polignano a Mare from the water

Lovely bunch of people on the boat

There were many many caves along the cliffside

Grotta Palazzese

The colour! This is why we were so desperate to jump in!

Apparently a very Puglian snack

Just magic

Walking home in the now very busy streets