Adventures of David and Paul: A Trulli Great Time around Alberobello

After leaving Matera, we drove toward Alberobello, with a stop in Locorotondo. It was a pleasant drive through farmlands and past many trulli, traditional stone structures that are found throughout Puglia. We parked on the outskirts of the old city of Locorotondo, and walked into the historic center. It's a small area, but is well maintained and was full of Christmas decorations. Unfortunately, almost all of the shops and restaurants were closed, despite a lot of tourists wandering around, because of the holiday (immaculate conception day). This thwarted our plans to eat lunch in the city, but we still enjoyed walking around looking at the architecture and decorations.

Some of the first trulli we saw. These are common across the region.

A plaza in Locorotondo.

The view across the countryside from the edge of Locorotondo's historic center.

Lots of tourists for the holiday, but almost everything was closed.

The city was full of nice decorations.

Locorotondo was a bit cleaner and more maintained than other cities we visited.

After exploring a bit more, we went back to our car for the short drive to Alberobello, just ten minutes down the road. Alberobello is a UNESCO world heritage site, famous for a dense concentration of trulli (singular is "trullo"). The town is full of these adorable stone huts.

We checked in at our hotel, Trulli Holiday, which is really just a series of trulli distributed throughout a neighborhood. The man who checked us in and walked us to our trullo was reading materials on the American civil war, and was excited to ask a few random questions about Atlanta's civil war sites.

The inside of our trullo.

The splendid view from our room's patio.

David in front of our hotel room.

We had a bit of beautiful sunny (but chilly) weather.

A street near our hotel.

The city is full of adorable nooks and crannies.

Another cute alley lined with trulli.

Our friendly neighborhood cat.

An overview of Alberobello.

Some of the trulli had more complex tops.

The main street was closed off for the holiday. The city was buzzing!

By now we were starving, since we weren't able to have lunch in Locorotondo. We wandered into the center of town and had a 3pm lunch at Largo Trevisani - we were the last customers before they closed in-between lunch and dinner. This turned out to be a delicious lunch, with very good burrata and a fantastic orecchiette dish.

Some amazing burrata.

Orecchiette with chicory.

Tomato and prosciutto on toast.

Yet more orecchiette. Yum!

After our very late lunch, we wandered around Alberobello's historic district for a while. We ducked into the Church of Sant'antonio di Padova, which is also designed to be like a trullo, then did a little shopping along the main tourist drag until dark, when all the trulli were lit up with Christmas displays. Alberobello, overall, was the most Christmassy place on the trip. On the way back towards the hotel, we grabbed some dessert cookies at Le Bonita de Central and popped into the city's main church, The Basilica di Cosma e Damiano. Right near our hotel, there was a small guided path that led to Christmas lights with audio telling a religious story. Each spot along the path had a different set of images and audio. It was a pretty thoughtful display. That evening it began to rain again, so we mostly just hung out in our hotel watching some Italian TV... too bad it's not Eurovision season.

Lots of tourists checking out the architecture.

Even the church is shaped like a trullo.

Inside the church.

Preach, random bush sign!

Paul! What did I tell you about eating random stranger's sandwiches!

A lovely holiday evening in Alberobello.

Lots of overlooks in this small town!

The main basilica is in the newer part of town.

Part of the trulli zone had Christmas story decorations accompanied by audio.

David usually has some of these random Italian cookies around Christmas with his family, so he was happy.

On Thursday morning we had breakfast at Cosi Com'era (included with our hotel stay), took a short morning walk around town, and then got in our rental car to drive to the Grotte de Castellana. When we arrived, it was pouring rain, and we were early for our timed tour, so we popped into a nearby cafe for a croissant and some hot chocolate to kill some time.

The cave tour itself was very interesting and lasted about two hours. There are specific times for tours in English, so make sure to check ahead. This cave system, the longest in Italy, was not explored until the 20th century, despite the opening being large and visible to people since pre-Roman times. Our tour guide explained that this was because people thought it was the door to hell, so no one ever bothered to go in! We were not allowed to take photos in most of the tour, but highlights included the "white cave" and the large number of "eccentric" stalactites that grow in weird directions. It was a very impressive cave and worth a visit if you have even a passing interest.

After the tour, we drove to the nearby city of Putignano to check out the historic center and hopefully find some lunch. We walked around for a little bit, taking in the architecture and atmosphere. It was interesting, but it was much less developed than Locortondo or Alberobello. It was interesting to see the differences between these historic cities that dot the Puglian countryside. In Putignano almost nothing was open in the center, but we found some take-away pizza and focaccia which we ate, sadly, in the car.