Day 119 Lecce peace, Gallipole mad!

Wednesday 18/07/2018 (Day 33SZ) Ceglie Messapica, Puglia 72013, Italy

Today is my gorgeous niece Allana’s Birthday! Happy birthday Lan..

We wanted to get washing done today but Gianfranco isn’t about and we need him to use his washing machine, so we have to wash our undies by hand or we will be both nickerless.... as if you needed that info ha ha.. But washing is always a challenge when travelling... the longer you travel the more you discover it’s a difficult task to achieve sometimes...

Having done mine by hand and John his we set off after breaky for Brindisi, another fairly large city... it has surprised me how big so many of these cities really are especially... down this lower end of Italy..around 87,000 people live here... on arrival the first thing that greats us is a huge citadel wall, that runs right to a castle at the end... Castle Swabian called in ancient times the land castle we couldn’t go into it as it is an active Naval Base and very heavily guarded... there are 2 castles in Brindisi this one and Castle Svevo called in ancient times the Sea Castle. We did a quick walk around to see what was visible, plus as we drive in we pasted a huge city gate arch so went to check that out... then back to the car where we drive out to the coast where there were pretty rough seas... but the funny part was all theses people over the rocks in the rough seas sun baking to a crisp... from here we could see Castle Svevo it was massive, we are unsure if you could access it, however as we were running out of time we were unable to go and find out.....

Back to the car where we headed along the inner port of a Brindisi to have a closer look at Castle Swabian, from the back of it and once there you could see it was also huge.. but the most noticeable thing was you could tell all the added bits into it over the centuries, they were quit distinguishable....

Off we headed now to Lecce... Pronounced Laychay..... another Castle citadel wall to check out, huge open squares and the most notable thing was it wasn’t over run by tourists.. to be honest there were hardly any... to John’s joy we found his mate Macca, I didn’t have any Maccas today didn’t even finish what I bought the other day in Verona... then we wandered around it’s alleys trying to find in the map from the tourist info centre, however it was a pretty terrible map... we did find it by accident not the map 🗺 the arena that was in the middle of the town square area, kind of... sadly you can’t wander in amongst it but you can see it easily from the outside... so easy to see most things here as hardly any tourist around..... from here we did the alley crawl and again we kind of lost our way but found it again... it’s all part of the fun of the alley crawl in these amazing old cities... we walked around until 3.30pm... then off we set to Gallipoli not the Turkish one the Italian one.....
We arrived at Gallipoli at around 5pm... yet another Island citadel, with a huge castle and city walls around the whole island... gorgeous crystal aqua blue waters surrounding it... just so pretty, Marinas and small boat harbours... plus it was over run by tourists... so different to Lecce.......all the touristy traps and shops to boot, but it did have atmosphere... lovely little city wall restaurants all set up to entice the tourist in... funny part is they shut at 2.30 then open at 7.30pm... or don’t open until 7.30 pm..we were walking around the wall at 7.00pm and they were all preparing to open just then...

To finish off our time in the Puglia area we stopped at the restaurant/bar at the spot we entered the citadel... it was cheaper and once we ordered gave us as part of our drinks package, a bowl of olives, a bowl of nuts and some crusty grissiny type eats... I couldn’t get over it... we ordered a drink the other day at lunch and got a whole big bowl of mixed olives... no way would you get as part of you drinks package at home anything like this... in some parts you get breads olive oils and balsamic vinegar as part of you welcome to being at their restaurants.... we did enjoy our snack and that kept us going until we got home at 9.15pm... a long day and dinner to prepare...

It will be sad to leave here, so much to investigate and explore, but our time has ended here so into our next adventure... onto Sicily... the sad part is leaving the piece of here in The country..

One thing we have noticed big time is the sheer Volume of Nigerian refugees all trying to make a living one way or another... beside the road to wash your windscreen, selling jewellery, at supermarkets trying to find you a car park, so many different ways and yes sadly girls selling their bodies... all trying to live... This is the sad part of travel seeing the life of those who are doing it tough....Read more