Day 7: Alberobello

My original plan for today had been to visit Brindisi, a coastal town further south than Bari. On Sunday before we travel home, I was then hoping that we could squeeze in a visit to an interesting little place I had read about: Alberobello. When I started doing the holiday research, however, it seemed like travelling to Alberobello on a Sunday was going to be a complete nightmare, with no trains running and buses being few and far between. So we decided to change things around and go to Alberobello today instead

The day got off to a slightly stressful start as we needed to make sure we were up and dressed for the time our breakfast was due to be delivered. This was supposed to be at 08.30 and we were ready on time, but nothing happened. We waited, and eventually at 08.45 the owner of the apartment turned up with a big tray of croissants, cereal and yoghurt. She also gave Tim a tirade of advice in Italian about all the places we should visit, followed by unclear instructions about what we should do with the tray once we'd finished eating, before vanishing. On the whole I think it might just have been simpler if we could have bought our own breakfast! But the croissants were delicious and full of Nutella

The trains to Alberobello aren't terribly frequent even when they are running and so we were aiming for a train at 10.45. We left the apartment with plenty of time to spare to walk to the main train station, which is only 1.5km away, but still nearly ended up missing the train. First of all we struggled to walk down the last portion of the road in front of the station, because there was a loud and noisy student protest taking place. We couldn't work out what was going on, but later read on the news that they were on strike over unpaid work experience.

When we finally got to the station, we became utterly confused by the sheer chaos of the rail network in Bari. Within the one station of Bari Centrale there are separate entrances and ticket offices for trains run by Trenitalia, Ferrovie del Sud Est, Ferrotramviaria and  Ferrovie Appulo Lucane. All of these are separate companies with their own ticket machines, timetables and departure boards. So if you go through the Trenitalia door of the station, which we initially did by mistake, you can only see the departures and buy tickets for the Trenitalia trains. We were trying to find the ticket office for the Ferrovie del Sud Est, which turned out to be located on its own special platform somewhere in the middle of the station. We found it in the end and managed to buy tickets, but it was touch and go for a while  

Alberobello is located a mere 55km to the south of Bari, but the train journey took the best part of two hours. It was a very slow train in the first place, so the journey was timetabled to be about 90 minutes anyway, but sometimes it just seemed to arrive at stations and sit there for no clear reason for a very long time. After an hour or so had gone by I began to get a bit nervous about finding the right stop to get off at, because there were no audio announcements, the electronic display board was broken and the railway stations in this part of Italy often seem to only have one sign announcing their name, and not necessarily in a place where you're going to see it before it's too late. It turned out I needn't have worried though, because when we did eventually arrive a train conductor walked down the train shouting "Alberobello" for the benefit of the tourists  And I can't complain too much because the journey was very cheap; €4.80 each per direction.

Once in Alberobello we followed signs for the historical centre, realising too late that these were actually traffic signs intended for cars and therefore that we were taking an unnecessarily roundabout route to where we wanted to go. Never mind! On the horizon we soon got a glimpse of the things we had come to see.

These are the famous trulli of Alberobello.

Trulli are little dry stone huts with conical roofs and they are a phenomenon confined this particular bit of Italy.

No one is quite sure why they were first built, but the most popular theory is that they were a way of avoiding property taxes. Because trulli were built without mortar, they could quickly be dismantled if people heard that a tax inspector was in the area.

Whatever the reason, hundreds and hundreds of them were built in Alberobello.

Today some of them are used as shops...

...some of them are barns...

...and some of them are restaurants.

As we wandered around the streets we were amazed by just how many trulli there are.

Some of them have mysterious symbols painted on the roofs.

And on the edge of the town we found the most unusual building of all; a church with a trulli-shaped roof!

We were hungry by this point, so we walked around the town looking for restaurants.

Eventually we found a trullo that had lasagne on the menu   Inside it was surprisingly spacious!

After lunch, we explored some of the more modern part of Alberobello, where there aren't so many trulli.

The modern town is quite interesting too, and has a very pretty church.

Behind the church there were more streets of trulli. These roads were less touristy and it seemed like people were still living in the trulli.

All too soon it was time for us to head back to the station to catch the very slow train back to Bari. Alberobello is definitely one of the most unusual places we've visited, but it was a lot of fun