We spent eight days visiting the tourist attractions that Puglia, Italy has to offer.
Link to still image montage of Puglia visit:-
To view the video select:- https://youtu.be/ABEslE0Ba-g
Puglia, Southern Italy
We visited Puglia, Southern Italy in June 2019 for an eight day tour. The climate was warm and sunny and ideal for open air trips and excursions.
In considering a trip to Puglia, we decided to take a guided tour with the Travel Department, with the same guide on-hand throughout the entire holiday.
The tour comprised a seven nights stay in a four star hotel in Martina Franca on a half-board basis. All of our daily coach trips began and ended at our hotel.
After our seven nights at the Villa Rosa hotel we flew directly back to Dublin from Bari Airport.
A sense of Puglia, Southern Italy
The official currency of Puglia is the Euro.
During our trip we drove over 500Km and visited a variety of towns including, Locorotondo, Alberobello, Lecce, Ostuni, Polignano, Trani, Bari and Matera, all from our base in Martina Franca.
If you get an opportunities during your travels in Puglia to do wine tasting, we thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the iPastini winery. We also learnt a lot about olive oil at our tasting session in L'Acropoli di Puglia in Martina Franca.
Puglia, up until the arrival of the ‘Xylello’ olive tree disease, produced 50% of all of Italy’s olive harvest. The disease threatens to destroy the olive industry that, until now, has survived for thousands of years. The Puglia region is one of the least wealthy in Italy, with the result that in Matera, people lived in caves that they carved out of the rock. The Italian president forcibly moved all of the residents out of these caves in the 1952 and into public housing, in an attempt to disguise the poverty that it displayed. The caves lay abandoned until the 1980’s, when they started their transformation into a modern tourist classic destination, that we know today.
Our general experience of the people from Puglia was that they are extremely informal, friendly and generally very warm and welcoming. They work very hard to attract tourists to the south of the country, which is very different to the more established areas in the north and centre. Puglia has a lot to offer.
Recommendations for Puglia, Southern Italy.
There is a language barrier, if you speak only English. So it lends itself to undertaking a trip using guided tours, however, most of the younger generation speak good English.
In each of the six locations, we visited the local tourist trails and highlights on offer. We also visited some of the local vineyards and these left us with a genuine sense of the excellent of Southern Italian organic wines. In Puglia they drive on the right hand side of the road, if you normally use left hand side of the road driving, you should be ultra careful. With the exception of main roads, the countryside roads can become unexpectedly very narrow.
Our must see recommendation for a trip to Puglia, Southern Italy:-
(1) Our visit to Matera, which is the 2019 European Capital of Culture, was the highlight of our entire Puglia trip.
(2) Our second choice would be Alberobello, with its variety of trulli houses.
(3) Our third would be Ostuni, with its panoramic views of the country-side.
As always, the people we met on the tour and our Travel Department guide, Anna Maria, enriched the whole experience.
Cost of tour circa Euro 1000 per person.
“You should travel away from home, to really appreciate the value of what you have at home, on your return.”
To view the PDF format aide to memory, made daily during the visit:-
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