After waking up to discover the breakfast room's coffee maker was out of order (at least they had tea...) we hopped into the tiny car to take a look at the towns around Alberobello.
I could see how getting out of Alberobello would be even more important in the summer - that place is seriously set up for tourists! Some shops had signs on the outside only in Japanese, English and German - not even Italian.
Originally, we were going to visit Castellana Grotte, which is supposed to be an amazing series of caves, but when we arrived we found out that we would have to wait an hour for a two-hour tour, and that English tours aren't offered this time of year except to groups that book ahead. Since we were pretty short on time, we scrapped that idea and headed towards Ostuni.
We decided to make our first stop Ostuni because when the Rough Guide describes it as "one of Italy's most stunning small towns," well, what are you supposed to do?
Ostuni felt like the Cyclades. It's a whitewashed town set on top of a hill, with lots of winding lanes that turn into stairs. You can never tell if the path you're following might turn into the entrance of a home, or if it might just turn under a building and widen back out. It seems touristy (we heard some English-English), but not overly so, and it is very pretty.
The town is just made for wandering. We checked out the main piazza, and took a look at the cathedral,
before deciding to have an early lunch at about 12:30.
We walked into Osteria Piazzetta Cattedrale, on the strength of guidebook recommendations and their insane-looking 10 euro per person antipasti platter. They were totally empty when we walked in, but when we asked if they had space for lunch for two the waiters looked nervous and began to confer. I asked if perhaps they weren't open yet, 12:30 being very early for lunch around here, and they said no, they were afraid they were totally booked - but we could have one table for two since it wasn't booked until 1:30. It was, after all, Sunday lunch.
Relieved, we took a seat, and were brought a bread basket with Pugliese bread, walnut bread, traditional little round crackers, a free glass of sweet lightly sparkling white wine, and a warm piece of tomato bread. Before we had even ordered.
We ordered just the antipasti for two and a bottle of house wine. I couldn’t tell if the waiter was relieved that we’d be quick or perturbed at the tiny order, but he was very gracious. Very quickly, the food started coming.
There was fresh ricotta with tomatoes and arugula, which was delicious and very light,
and then more fresh ricotta topped with toasted almonds and garnished with a little olive oil. We liked it, but it really needed a touch of sweet with the almonds - perhaps a light honey, instead of oil?
Then, they brought out a dish that for us was a highlight - a crepe basket filled with a thick cauliflower soup. I'm definitely learning to love this lowly vegetable, though I'd probably like just about anything pureed with a bunch of cream. The crepe was a lot of fun to eat, too.
There were also these bruschetta, made with a baccala' (salt cod) paste - nice, just the right amount of fishiness,
and these adorable little meatballs, perhaps the size of the last knuckle on my pinky finger? They would be really cute for a party. This started the heavier antipasti.
We also were served a fried veggie ball with mint, which was like an extra-tasty felafel but made for boring pictures (think little balls of fried with a dot of pinkish sauce between them), an eggy eggplant souffle with tomato sauce, and little cigars of phyllo dough filled with very thinly sliced artichoke and served with a carrot salad made with very strange green and purple carrots.
After this succession of tiny plates, we were - technically - full, but we had seen a secondo listed on the menu that we really wanted to try out. And we had a little room, right? We debated for a little while, as by this time the restaurant had started to fill up with 1 o'clock and 1:15 reservations, and we had seen several other people turned away... but this did not end up keeping us from ordering the brasciola di asino con sugo.
Asino... well, we'd eaten horse, why not eat ass? Donkey, that is. (Is a donkey a domesticated ass, or did I make that up?)
In a slightly spicy tomato sauce, very much like the horse. Husbear's teachers at Apicius told him that it's really common in Italy to feed teenagers horse and ass, because they are high-protien low-fat meats. I have to say... I liked the horse better. More meaty flavor.
Just to round off what had somehow turned into quite the decadent lunch, we ordered two limoncelli - fatti in casa, or made in house. Why not?
The bill for all of that wasn't as bad as you'd think, looking at all that food. No, I won't give you the exact number.
We left the restaurant and found our car, which was just about completely parked in by a large SUV. Where are we again? (By large SUV, though, I mean a Toyota RAV-4... I think my idea of what a "large car" is has changed a little.) We did manage to get the car out, after a little maneuvering, and left town towards Cisternino. Goodbye to Ostuni!
Between Ostuni and Cisternino, we found this trullo for sale. There are a lot for sale - get in on the ground floor! I don't have any idea about prices, no.
We also saw a sign reading "Dolmen di Montalbano, II millenio a.c." - this means 2 millenia before Jeebus. So, we turned.
This is a dolmen. We were the only people there. It was very cool. (And here's more information about the little Neolithic tombs.)
Our books had two things to say about Cisternino. One, the town is nicknamed "La Vera", or the real thing, and two, they have a tradition of "fornello pronto", meaning shops where you can pick out a cut of meat and they'll cook it for you. We were interested in both, but after that lunch, we weren't going to be taking part in the second.
It is a cute little town, more like Ostuni with the whitewashed Greek-style streets, and less like Alberobello. No trulli in town. But very pretty, and some of the streets were perfumed with the scent of cooking steak. Seriously.
We loved all the little doors at various levels throughout the town - here's a good example. I can't imagine there's such a thing as a standard-size door in this town.
Many of the staircases leading into people's houses were seriously steep, but we saw a couple of little old ladies in black taking them like nobody's business. (I feel like the railing on the left was added out of concession to OSHA or the Italian equivalent, not like it's there because people use it.)
Since it was during the pausa, there weren't many people out - though the bar we went into to order caffes was full of people watching a soccer game on TV. Other than that, things were pretty quiet. I could see wanting to spend a few days here.
We didn't spend too much time in Cisternino, though, because we wanted to make it to Locorotondo before dark. (Still hamstrung by that early sunset.)
Locorotundo did not get its name from round crazy people, as you speakers of Spanish might think, but rather from the fact that it's set up in a circle. It's still a knot of tiny streets, though. We followed a funeral procession for a little way through these narrow lanes, thinking the whole time that the hearse was going to get stuck. It didn't - it's almost like they might have known where they were going?
These streets aren't whitewashed in the same way as Ostuni and Cisternino, and had a lot more of the ochre and sienna - colors I think of as Italian.
There were just a few trulli in Locorotondo, but when we went to the main piazza to check out its view, we could see them marching off into the distance.
We hung out with the locals for a while, reading the names on the town's war monument, and then went back to our car. We felt a pretty good sense of accomplishment - dipping our toes in three towns in one day? I loved having the car. I wouldn't want one anywhere near where we're living in Florence, but in these small towns, it was fantastic.
Back at the hotel in Alberobello, we relaxed and watched some TV - for instance, the famous "Chi Vuol Essere Milionario" - popular in the states as well. Then, we watched Strange Days in Italian, a movie that I haven't seen in English but which I imagine is just as stupid in its original language. Though it's still sort of surprising to see breasts on network TV, even if they're just Juliette Lewis'.
It took us a while to feel hungry, but eventually Husbear felt that he should go get some food. It turned out that that same Pizzeria Creperia 2001 was the only thing open, so this time he bought pucce, which were completely different than the ones we had in Lecce despite having the same name. These were sandwiches fixed on baked pizza bread. Yum!
Husbear did have a bit of a brain fart where he forgot "cotoletta" is a pounded fried veal cutlet, and ordered it thinking it was some sort of mushroom. (He asked what it was, and the guy behind the counter said "BUONO. MOLTO BUUUOONNNNO." So he felt awkward changing it after that.) (These sandwiches are brilliant. I totally love the idea of the pizza-paninni hybrid. Perhaps I could have choosen some more advisable fillings, but you just wait - these are going on the Must Make This at Home List and they are going to kick ass. -L. Pants)
He also got a few fried tomato and mozarella filled panzerottini. Yummy dinner, but extra-filling.
Tomorrow - our last morning with the car, and on to our last stop - Bari!
