The day of the cherry festivals

A huge local event on this holiday long weekend is the Festa Della Ciliega. The nearby towns of Turi and Conversano are famed for their production of the Ferroviaire Cherry. This "red gold of Puglia" is also called the railway cherry, due to being discovered on a tree beside the railway that was being tended by a lineman. Of course, it could also be that this juicy varietal just ships really well!

Its a very big deal here. Puglia is Italy's largest cherry producing region, and these 2 towns are the epicentre.

So we go first to Conversano, the smaller of the 2. This ancient town is known as an art loving town, and in fact its Norman castle is proudly featuring an M. C. Escher exhibition today. A local helpfully offering tips to us was sure to note this as a top feature. It's amusing because the absolute beauty of his everyday background is what really stands out for me, not an exhibition!

Conversano is just lovely. It's peacefully pretty, and the festival seems low key this early in the day. But as we stroll across the plaza, suddenly we are greeted loudly and warmly by a small group of people - its our dancing friends from Marina Sera! What a coincidence! We are all very amused by this. I wish I could communicate better with this lively and friendly group. We settle for smiles mostly, and a couple words I can pick out are piccolo Mondo - small world😊. Indeed.

They are moving on to Turi shortly, the epicentre of cherry festivities. So we part ways, thinking we will see each other there.

Its an enjoyable roam around quiet golden alleys, appreciating the artistic touches while sharing a cup of local cherries.

Interesting fact about Conversano: the counts of Conversano had stud farms, breeding horses with Andalusian backgrounds. In 1767, one of their horses, named Conversano, became one of the principal stallions that established the famed Lippizaner horses.

A short drive over to Turi curves through numerous cherry orchards. Most trees are covered with rows of cloth atop them, and all have pathways of red poppies billowing beneath. It would be red above and below if they didn't need to carefully protect "l'oro Rosso", the Red gold!

Turi is so much bigger! Here festivities are far more evident. Rows of food trucks give way to stand after stand offering cups, bags, and boxes of cherries. Even the trees are for sale as small saplings, and we saw many happily being carried off to new homes.

Cherry gelato is on offer, and cherry decor festoons walls and buildings. This is enormous, I'm not sure we will see our friends at all.

But I've made a travel mistake....waited too long to eat! I really don't want food truck type food, but the timing is off. Too late for lunch, too early for dinner. So I have to settle for what is actually a pretty decent pork sandwich!

We can sense that anticipation is lazily building for likely evening events, but we're here in kind of afternoon doldrums. It seems time to go home for a quick swim and sun.....there's still an evening festival to attend!Read more