Trip to Bari and Lecce in Puglia, Italy

After a gorgeous day of riding around Puglia, we got back to Il Melagrano and changed our clothes to get ready for a 'field trip.' Our guides told us to hop into the shuttle and head to a local 'Masseria' for (yet another) wine tasting and dinner and even some education about the local food and culture.  Masseria Garappa Masseria Garappa  is a recently restored Masseria just a few minutes away from our hotel. According to a definition I found online, a Masseria is:  a fortified farmhouse found on the estates in the Puglia region and typically built in the 16th century. It is a complex of buildings generally running along two sides of a central high-walled courtyard. These buildings include the landowner’s dwelling-house (generally located on the first floor), the farmers’ houses (on the ground floor), the stables, the barns and the tool barns. A large solid wooden gate allowed carriages to get into the central courtyard. (from: https://www.masseriapagani.com/en/what-...

 Il Melagrano to Conversano and Polignano On Monday morning we woke up at 7:30 am in time to have a quick breakfast, meet the group, and get ready for our first full day of cycling. On this first day or riding, I did not feel like having breakfast as I knew there would be food offered along the route as well as lunch. As usual, our guides had prepared a humorous description of the day's route -- this is referred to as the "Route Rap." On Backroads trips, one leader typically rides with the group while the other leader and support crew drive the vans as 'support' for the ride. Our Group listening to the "Route Rap" before the first full day of riding It's not always easy to take a selfie while riding at fast speeds! Here is a Strava map of my total ride for day two, which was about 44 miles. As can be seen by this map, we headed first up into the hills to Conversano (and these were some of our first significant climbs of the trip) where we stopped in ...

PUGLIA CYCLING TRIP - Bari to Il Melagrano We met up with our two Backroads guides at the Bari Train Station in Puglia, Italy on Sunday afternoon, April 24th. Susan and I had just spent a very relaxing few days in Lecce -- about 90 minutes south of Bari. We had a total of 16 friends joining us for this trip and most of us managed to get to the train station in time to meet the guides and get on to the shuttle bus to a local Agriturismo where we would have a quick lunch and then get on our bikes for the first ride of the trip! After we ate lunch, we changed into our cycling gear and went through the safety protocols and "Route Rap" for the afternoon ride. Typically, the first ride of a Backroads trip is just a warm-up ride -- so nothing more than 25 miles and not too much climbing. We rode through some beautiful terrain on our way to our first hotel, the Hotel Il Melagrono . We stopped about halfway through the route to check bike fit and give everybody the option of going str...

We left Masseria LiveLi after about two hours and headed to another winery. This location was the storefront for a very large winery called Paololero. Since I had not had any breakfast, I was happy to see that they were offering snacks along with our wine! We were introduced to a young man named Alessandro who is the son of the owner. Alessandro walked us through a few white wines and then some gigantic red wines.  We really liked the Paololero NegroAmaro so we bought a couple bottles. By the way, we didn't see any screw top wine bottles anywhere! Alessandro was charming and really got into the details of the winery with us. We found his Instagram account and exchanged info. We would like to order some of their wines in the future.  So that was it....two wineries, but it was plenty. After that it was nap time!

On our second day in Lecce, our hotel had arranged for a driver to take us to two local wineries for some wine tasting. We went for a quick walk in the morning and had a small, continental breakfast and were picked up by Fabio, our driver at 11 am. Fabio did not really speak English at all, which made it a bit challenging. But we worked it out. The first winery we went to was a 25 minute drive from our hotel and it is called "Masseria Liveli." Masseria Liveli Masseria LiVeli is a beautiful historic winery in the Salento region of Puglia. Though the original winery was built hundreds of years ago, it was purchased and restored by the Falvo family from Tuscany about 25 years ago. The renovation of the main winery building and wine cellar is absolutely gorgeous: We got a tour of the winery by Stefania, a native of the Lecce region. There were two other couples with us on the tour -- one couple from Miami and the other from London. After the tour we sat in...

On Wednesday morning we departed from Bari on our way to Lecce . It was an easy train ride of about 90 minutes as Lecce is only about 80 miles south of Bari and is near the Adriatic coast. While on the train, we could see gorgeous views of the Adriatic to the east and the wide open valleys of southern Puglia to the west. Lecce is in the Salento region, which is a province in Puglia -- it is the true 'Heel of the Boot' of Italy. Because of it's rich history of art and architecture, Lecce is often referred to as 'The Florence of the South.' Our hotel is called the Fiermontina Urban Resort and it is right in the heart of the city of Lecce. It is a beautiful, relatively new hotel. On our first night in Lecce we went to a restaurant that is affiliated with our hotel that is just a few blocks away. However, prior to dinner, we were invited to tour a local museum that is also affiliated with the hotel. The museum is called the 'M.A.M.A' museum . "Designed by ...

 We left LAX on Monday afternoon on a Lufthansa flight to Munich. The flight was smooth and we arrived in Munich in plenty of time for our connection to Bari, Italy. It seems that Bari is a great 'jumping off point' for Puglia as it has a fairly large airport and train station. Once in Bari, it's a pretty short train ride to most of Puglia. We arrived in Bari around 5:30 pm and took a very short cab ride to our hotel, the Grande Albergo Della Nazioni.  Since we were a bit jet lagged, we decided to take advantage of the hotel's rooftop restaurant rather than venture into town and take our chances. This proved to be a good idea as the food was pretty good, although the service was incredibly slow. The View from our Hotel room The Shrimp and Artichoke Appetizer at the Rooftop Restaurant Our first local wine of the trip We are feeling good about the travel schedule of leaving the U.S. at 5 pm and arriving in the early to mid afternoon in Europe.  Neither of us sleep particu...