Puglia- The Heel of the Boot, Part 2

Easter Sunday. Surely everything is closed in Italy, yes?

Mostly true, but not entirely!

We headed out first to the Grotte di Castellana, an underground series of caves that are accessible by tourists. Using our Alitalia boarding passes, we scored a few euro discount on the complete tour of the cave system. A few times a day they offer the tour in English and German. This proved to be a huge advantage since our Italian isn’t fluent and the Italian groups were HUGE!

You're only allowed to take pictures in the first cavern.

The caves were really spectacular, especially the end of tour gem, the White Cave. It is really something. Everything is white because of mineral deposits. There are several other sections, noted quite literally by our tour guide, “a cone of gelato”, “the Italian flag”, “the Leaning Tower of Pisa”. 

The caves were really amazing and well worth the visit. 

After leaving the caves, we headed to the small town of Locorotondo. This was the cutest little white town. Everything is white. Restaurants were full of people celebrating Easter lunch. We wandered the town, snapping pictures of interesting oddities, like the “Lenten Witch” that dangled above the streets.

Locorotondo, a cute little white town, with the Lenten witch hanging in the street

Then we headed down the road just a bit to Martina Franca, a larger town nearby. We just wandered around the town here as well. It felt similar to Locorotondo but has a full collection of Baroque architecture on display in the historic center. Four of the ancient city walls still stand today, amidst several old palazzi.

stairs to nowhere?

  
You can see where our trip took us with this map I created. Each different color of pin represents a different day of our travels. 

At this point, it was time to head home. Arriving back at our trullo, we prepared a small antipasti spread to celebrate Easter and then bundled up in blankets to sit outside and enjoy the clear countryside sky for several hours. 

Yum! The crudo we had was some of the best we've ever tasted!