I know we’ve been quiet, but really not much has happened at our end and some things we had hoped to have happen can’t happen. Sadly this phase is more “making the best of things” rather than “doing the best of things”.
We’re still in Brindisi. We’ve been here now for over a month. The impact of the lightning on True Colors has been slowly becoming more apparent as time has gone on. The boat is sound but the electronics and electrical equipment are in a precarious state. We have had experts out to assess the situation and we are in the process of getting the necessary work started and funded by our insurance company. Everything has been slow here because it is August and much of Italy is on vacation with suppliers closed and/or unavailable for most of the month. Our yard, however, continues to be excellent but we must get the work going soon.
We have had to cancel our trip to Croatia and Montenegro (sorry, Nancy) and our latter days here may have to be on land (sorry, Meredith and Alasdair). I suppose this is what happens when you choose to live so close to Mother Nature but it remains a huge source of frustration and disappointment.
But the boat must be safe and reliable and this is my priority.
On the positive side, I now know a lot more about my boat than I did last year. Also, you get to see True Colors from a whole different perspective.
This is number 3 in our short series of “Where’s evidence of Lori in this picture?” And this is a trick question…..
OK for all those of you who said Lori must be taking the picture, you don’t know our leading lady very well. Neither deep under the water nor high above the water work at all for her - at a gut-wrenching panic kind of level. But she has found her true “Goldilocks solution” at the surface of the water. (BTW please notice the quality of the parking - that is NOT a lot of space on either side!!! And, of course, there was a cross-wind.)
So we have continued to make excursions on land - part in preparation for Meredith and Alasdair’s visit and part to keep us from going crazy. By train, we have visited Lecce, Polignano a Mare (where Alasdair’s parent will be staying) and Bari which is renowned for its shopping (more on that later). We’ve visited each of these places before but have taken the opportunity to spend more time in these places than our typical itinerary would allow.
Lecce is a classic little city - “the Florence of the South” and you can see why it’s called that. It’s also a college town and it has something of an Edinburgh feel to it. That is if you can imagine Edinburgh in temperatures of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit - difficult I know. It’s the classical building styles (in Lecce’s case original and in Edinburgh’s neo-classical) but you feel that the city planners would have understood each other perfectly.
“Street food” is a big deal in the south of Italy. People say it was “invented” in Palermo but we didn’t get to try any there. There’s a vendor near our shipyard here in Brindisi but, just as we were about to visit, he closed up shop (for what we hope is just his annual vacation). But Lecce has street food too but, because of the narrow streets, it is not so much “street” food as “close to the street in a little bar/restaurant kind of place” food. Nevertheless we had two very excellent panini-type sandwiches in one - perfect for lunch.
It also has a wonderful old-style paper and pen shop. So Lori can indulge me with a beautiful journal that one day I may be brave enough to write in!
Polignano a Mare (Polignano on Sea, for any British readers) is a quintessential old Italian seaside resort. It has a lovely old town with the typical narrow alleyways opening into tiny squares.
In the three or so years since we first visited the town it has been moving decidedly more upmarket with improved restaurants, craft shops and an astonishing number of B&B/s in the old houses in the historic center.
The town itself has a beautiful location perched on the top of cliffs that are burrowed out with caves.
Some of these caves have been made into spectacular restaurant dining rooms that you pay for with high prices and mediocre service. Check out TripAdvisor before you choose to visit one of these!
But the town proper has some wonderful seafood restaurants and we have enjoyed excellent Puglian specialties - raw seafood (tuna, swordfish, etc.) is especially good. And, for those of you old enough to remember Dean Martin, the song “Volare” that he popularized in the US it was originally sung by Domenico Modugno who was born in this town and has a statue in a little square on the southern edge of the seafront.
Bari is the “big city” in these parts. It is about 70 miles or so north of Brindisi but easily accessible by the train service that runs all the way along the coast. It’s a major seaport (like Brindisi) but doesn’t have much of an old town to speak of.
And this is BEFORE she's seen the shops
However, to Lori’s delight, it has a very upscale shopping district that you have to pass through to get to the historic part (now, who planned that, I wonder). Also, being August, those shops that are open at all are all having sales. A blouse and a purse later, Bari has lived up to its reputation as far as Lori is concerned.
One problem here is that, because it is not really a tourist town, restaurants close in August too (because all their customers have gone on vacation). So we have had some difficulty in finding good restaurants that are open. However we did find another excellent seafood place and one serving traditional Puglian specialties cooked superbly well.
in the next weeks, we’ll try to get back to some of the local hill-towns that we visited last time. All the while hoping that we will start to make faster progress on getting True Colors ready to sail again.