Kiwi Roaming

Another of our day trips was to another UNESCO world heritage village – Alberobello, a city built to minimise taxes in the 1600’s of all things. Essentially by building their houses with limestone and importantly without the use of mortar, they avoided paying taxes to the Kingdom of Naples. The result is a house called a Trulli, with white limestone walls and a layered self supporting dome roof. There was an idea that these houses could be easily erected and torn down in a hurry. Some of the roofs were embellished with designs to denote which architect designed them.

We had struggled to figure out the most direct bus so on Sunday (the day before our trip) we spent about an hour checking out a bus stop and where to buy tickets. In typical Italian form they oversold the bus, we joined an orderly queue with other tourists only to be swamped by Italians – who verdantly do not queue – who pushed their way onto the bus. Luckily Steve and I got the last seats with about 30 people having to stand for the 70 minute trip.

I had made us a walking tour by reading people’s blogs. Our first stop was the Trullo Sovrano which is also a museum. It was interesting just how cool (temperature wise) it was inside, and how large this Trulli is given the design and construction. There are airflow slits which also act as spy holes in the rooms and very very low doorways.

The old town is virtually all Trulli’s now converted to either tourist accommodation or shops. We could see lots of new ones being built as we left town on the bus, these using tiles for the roof construction and modern windows etc, a reflection of how popular this town is.

Our walking tour took us past the cathedral, a few distinctive homes, down the Main Street and then uphill into the main old town area. We were impressed at the number of groves of trees dotted around to provide cover and my new favourite thing was the fountain in the centre of town, great for cooling your hands and neck in this heat.

The heat! wow. Arberobello is back up in the hills and all stone so the heat is trapped here. As we got to the top of the hill of the main town I started to feel woozy, we’ve had heat stroke before so I was quick to recognise the signs. Steve assisted me back down the hill where we found a seat in the shade at a wee bar. It was midafternoon so the chemists were closed for siesta already so lemonata, sensa glutene beer and a delicious panini along with copious amounts of water were in order. To be fair I didn’t come right until I was back in Monopoli and had a shower, more water, sat in the air-conditioning and napped.

Steve hadn’t been entirely excited about this day trip but found the place fascinating and really enjoyed taking photos. If it wasn’t for the heat we would have stayed longer but managed to share our money around and see great sites in our short stay – we got the 3:30pm bus back.