Puglia again

Puglia haunts me. When I return I cannot believe I am not there anymore. I think about when I might go again. It, like Italy itself, is no ordinary place to me.

The picture above is of Alberobello, a town famous for being the world’s largest concentration of trulli, the little conical houses of one small part of Puglia. In Alberobello everything is a trullo or a collection of them. The wineshop, the restaurants, the souvenir shops, the homes and hotels, all made of trulli. It is an extremely popular tourist destination, and that is the reason that last trip to Puglia I didn’t go there. This time we did go. Even in a very bad tourism year, it was pretty full, too.

Do you remember when Max came and stayed in my river? That was August. Max is such a great boy I have decided to become engaged to him.

Look at this fellow as he watches us eat a picnic in a park. Care to guess how many dogs I have known who would in that situation have thrown themselves at the windows until they broke one and could jump out laughing?

Not Max. He was goodness perdogified and was really happy after we packed up the food and got back in the car, happy just to see us again near enough to breathe on.

In other news, this post won a contest! I’m really excited to be expecting an autographed copy of Dolce Italiano from the author, Gina DePalma! A while back a lot of my friends at Slow Travel were making desserts as they cooked the book and I was jealous, but I need be no more.

I am working on copying a couple of things I ate in Puglia, so hang in there. For the moment I am having to clean spider webs out of everywhere because the scirocco blew while I was away!

If you can donate to the rescue efforts for Sicily, please do. The situation is so shocking I still can’t talk about it. Disasters everywhere, I know, and it is very hard to choose who to help. Thanks for thinking of us, anyway.