Puglia #1

We were now a team of 5 kiwis who made our way out to the Bari airport where we were met by our friends and hosts for the next 7 days, Lyn and Chris. These two amazing women live in a beautiful home called The Gables at Wainui on the Peninsula. They bought a house (  called a Trulli  ) in the Puglia region of Italy and have had it renovated to use as their summer home in Italy. For some reason they seem keen to escape the Peninsula winters. They have been running tours to different areas of Italy for 7 people for some time now and Pen and I decided we should do one of these.
We also teamed up with an Australian couple who had been with the girls before. After about an hour from Bari the country side  changed and there were stone walls everywhere and some of the stone houses that are characteristic of this area started to appear.

This is the Trulli we are staying in.
They were built in this style hundreds of years ago. It is a complex of 4 self contained units all clustered together. The Trulli we have meals in is 60 metres down the path and there is a large pool a few metres from our place.

 It is owned by a family who are friends of Lyn and Chris. The girls' trulli is a kilometre down the road and we had wonderful pizzas there the other night.

 Lyn and Chris doing what they are so good at.

Their trulli started off being rubble when they first bought it. It is about 7 km from the nearest town so it is a really rural scene. There must be thousands of Trulli in Puglia. The countryside is rolling with old olive and  grape vines everywhere.

Our first tour with the girls was to a town called Martina Franca where we looked in the Ducal palace at room after room of fresco paintings and also a Picasso exhibition of his ceramics with his paintings on them. Not quite my style of painting.

It was a Sunday so there were lots of people sitting around in the shade in their Sunday best ready to go to church.

Down the street under shade trees was a huge monthly antique market with some great finds.

On our way back we called in to a family who own our Trulli and enjoyed a huge lunch they turned on for us. We sat in the shade on straw bales under the olive trees. It is owned by a couple who don't speak English and their three sons who do.

It was a very special occasion to have a meal with an Italian family. The three sons have all got jobs in the nearest town but help out on the farm whenever possible.