Puglia

Exploring Italy's Adriatic coast

There is a lot to explore in Puglia so this post focuses on the region around Ostuni. It was a relatively short visit and there's plenty we missed so a good reason to go back! This part of Puglia is not flashy but has plenty of rustic charm along with a pleasing sense of being more remote than you actually are.

Getting There

For Ostuni and surrounds the easiest airport is Brindisi which has regular flights in from major hubs and airlines including BA and Easyjet from the UK. Our original flight to Brindisi was cancelled so we ended up flying into Bari on BA from LHR which is around 90km from Ostuni. The airport is easy to navigate and car rental was straight forward as was the drive to Ostuni. The folks at the rental car company had obviously been told to go hard with the insurance up-sell which would have almost doubled the price of the rental but there was nothing out of the ordinary with the driving that would have justified that in my view.

Where We Stayed

Airbnb in the countryside near Ostuni. The first thing you will notice in this area is the traditional trulli - dry-stone huts with a conical roof. They are ubiquitous to the area and come in all sorts of configurations where you'll see everything from crumbling originals to refurbished luxury accommodation. Ours was a beautifully renovated, stand-alone trullo next to the main house with metre thick walls and it's own bathroom - perfect for a reluctant 14 year old. There is something beguiling about a trullo - both to look at and be in. So much so that I immediately started researching buying and renovating one. Sadly this remains one of my many works in progress but you never know!

Ostuni

Ostuni, known as the Città Bianca or White City, is just that - a small city sitting atop a steep hill covered in white-washed buildings and winding streets. It's quite stunning when you see it for the first time as you approach from the valley. The older part of the city is worth exploring including the views from the city walls especially at sunset. The newer areas surrounding the old city are more functional given this is a working town which is helpful for supermarkets etc (e.g. Familia on Via Pietro de Laurentis). The center of town has a lively vibe with a mixture of locals and tourists when we were there in a Friday evening. On the main road into the old town there was a car park off a roundabout where we parked inexpensively and it was a short walk uphill to the town.

Beaches

The coastline near Ostuni has some nice beaches that are a mix of beach clubs and public access. It's worth setting your expectations in the mid-range in terms of quality, but a combination of unseasonably cool and rainy weather along with recent storms that dragged a lot of seaweed onto the beaches perhaps coloured our impressions somewhat. That said, it's refreshing to roll up to up to a free public beach, rent a chair or just sit on a towel with a cold beer and enjoy some of the beautiful Adriatic water for just a few Euro. We sampled a few beaches but a couple of seasons' experience would help to know the best spots.

• Cocarro Beach Club. We opted to skip White Ostuni Beach Club which seemed like Puglia's answer to the Folie Douche. Relative to other Puglian beach options, Cocarro was still at the expensive end however. They were certainly trying hard to deliver a high-end experience but it fell short of the mark relative to the cost. Nonetheless, we had a great day here renting a couple of large double day beds; a nice, if unremarkable, lunch in the restaurant and enjoyed swimming in the relatively clear waters. A good spot but not if value for money is a priority.

• Lido Morelli - this was a free public beach apart from a few Euros for parking nearby. A relatively long and wide beach with Mediterranean scrub and sand dunes behind it. The sand is fine and golden and the water clear. Definitely recommend for a classic day at the beach but bring towels, food and drinks (although there was a small bar serving beer).

• Lido Stella Beach. Somewhere between Cocarro Beach Club and the public beaches sits Lido Stella and its contemporaries along the coast. We spent a fun day here starting with the friendly chap sorting out the reasonably priced chairs and umbrellas (pay at the bar first to save some time) to the cold beers and panini for lunch. The beach itself was average with a lot of weed (post storms) and rocks but nice when you found some clear spots.

Lido Stella - photo: Lido Stella Beach

Towns

This area of Puglia has a rustic feel to it which is part of the charm. The same can be said for the numerous villages and the small back roads the GPS often guides you through. A few of our favourites that we would definitely return to are:

• Ceglie Messapica - a beautiful historic town about 20 minutes drive from Ostuni. One of the oldest in Puglia it looks over the low Puglia hills with winding laneways, ancient churches, palazzi and a Ducal castle which towers over the town. We had a fantastic dinner on the terrace at Ristorante L'Antico Arco but there is much more to explore food-wise in Ceglie.

• Locorotondo - the historic part of the town is round and perched on top of a hill that overlooks the trulli and farmlands that surround it - best viewed from the panoramic street that surrounds the town. There are plenty of laneways to explore that wind through the mixture of whitewashed villas and baroque archways along with many good looking places to eat. We lunched on excellent pizza and local wine at Pizzeria Casa Pinto down one of the laneways.

• Martina Franca - initial impressions and a bit of GPS confusion suggested we might have got this one wrong. However, a little persistence paid off and we found ourselves in the pretty historic centre with some stunning baroque architecture and more great places to eat around the main piazza and surrounding laneways. Overall a pleasant place to spend a morning wandering around.

• Cisternino - more whitewashed houses, narrow streets, piazzas and of course historic churches; Cisternino is well worth the visit especially if it involves orecchiette and Primitivo.

Ceramics

If you are visiting this part of the world and have a passing interest in ceramics, chances are you have heard of Grotaglie. The name comes from the caves that line the surrounding hills (deriving from grottoes) which offered protection from the Saracens that plundered this part of the country in the Middle Ages. Grotaglie is known as the citta della ceramica and in the quartiere delle ceramiche you will find plenty of options to purchase beautiful Italian ceramics at a significant discount to what you would pay at retail (e.g. The Conran Shop in London). I can recommend Nicola Fasano where we purchased a full dinner set and had it shipped to the UK at a very reasonable price (it arrived well-packed and unscathed). Stories abound in various travel forums about bad experiences and rip-offs so of course do your homework; but that was not an impression we were left with from the places we visited and purchased from.

Food

One of the main reasons to visit Puglia and indeed Italy, is of course the food. I'm just scratching the surface here but a few thoughts to get you started:

• Pizza - I tried really hard to find something negative about any of the pizzas we ate (with two teens in tow, that was quite a few); and failed.

• Pasta - An interesting fact I learned is that historically, pasta made from eggs was much more common in the north of Italy but a luxury many could not afford in the south. As such, much of the pasta is still made the traditional way with a simple combination of flour and water. The upside is the quality of the wheat in the region producing a pasta that has quite different characteristics and flavours than you might experience in other parts of Italy. Try the local speciality orrecchitte con le cime di rapa of course but otherwise just order it all - very hard to go wrong!

• Puglian Wine - Interestingly this was a bit more of a mixed bag. Primitivo, Negroamaro and Salice Salentino are among a number of popular varieties in this part of the world. Quality is definitely mixed however so my recommendation is to shoot for the higher end of the already low price point. While the idea of paying 3 Euros for a bottle of wine is always appealing, finding wine at the other end of the spectrum can be a bit more challenging. A good problem to have really but finding a quality wine store versus the supermarket is probably time well spent.

Overall

There is a a lot to love above this part of Italy. We hardly scratched the surface but will definitely be coming back to explore further. We did the obvious things you would do on a first time visit but I suspect that like much of Europe, repeated visits over the years would unlock the real secrets of this beautiful part of the world. It's also more reasonably priced than many popular European destinations. A dinner for four in Puglia might only be 50-60% of what you would pay in say Provence or the South of France. Overall, highly recommended and worth making the time to fully explore.