Just Back From Puglia

We landed in Bari with a car booked and almost nothing else decided, which is a luxury we allow ourselves only in places we already know. Puglia rewards that. The roads are flat and straight through the olive groves, the towns appear white against the dust, and lunch is never a problem.

The thing we tell everyone about Puglia is that it has not been polished yet. You can still walk into a family run place at one in the afternoon, have the menu explained rather than handed to you, and leave having spent very little and remembering all of it.

We stayed in a masseria for the first half of the week, a working farm with a handful of rooms and a long table under the trees. Mornings were slow. Afternoons were spent driving to the coast, swimming, and driving back. That was the whole plan, and it was enough.

In the second half we moved south into the heel, where the two seas meet and the water changes color depending on which coast you are standing on. We drove between them in a single afternoon just to prove it to ourselves again.

If you have loved Tuscany and want the version that still feels like a discovery, this is the trip. Bring an appetite, take the car, and give it more days than you think you need.