Drunk Italians Dancing In The Streets And Other Very Good Reasons To Visit Lecce And Salento

by Dave Seminara on

As I sit in the cool open-air courtyard of our rented apartment, on a hard-to-find street behind Lecce’s Duomo, the sound of carefully spaced church bells punctuates the silence of the mid-day pausa – Italy’s siesta. Our American instinct is to get out and “do something” on this warm, sunny day. But our newfound Italian inclination is to laze about, digest lunch, and think about what we’ll have for dinner.

When the mood strikes us, we venture back into the web of streets in this sultry city between the Adriatic and Ionian Seas, smack near the butt end of Italy’s heel. The streets of Lecce’s baroque centro storico were made for walking and the town’s well dressed residents are out in force, eating gelato, enjoying glasses of wine in sidewalk enotecas and stopping to greet one another, with an exchange of cheek kisses and a flurry of smiles. Overhead, crazy flocks of blackbirds, called rondini, in these parts, swirl and swoop in wild packs, making a racket and creating an eerie, tropical din I’ve never before encountered.

On our first passegiata in the city, we notice music and a crowd forming on Via Templari Street and follow our ears to see what’s going on. A street-side piano player is leading a group of middle aged Italians in a rousing version of what I later learned is a famous WWI era, Neapolitan love song, “‘O Surdato ‘Nnamurato” (The Soldier In Love). I’m not accustomed to seeing people set up pianos on the street, and I hadn’t seen people have so much fun in a very long time. I assumed it was some sort of special festa we were unaware of, but onlookers quickly disabused me of that notion.

“Nesuna festa,” the youngest member of the group told me. There was no festival.
“It’s drunk Naples people.”

But you don’t have to be drunk to want to break out in song on the streets of Lecce. Every evening, there’s a free show waiting to be experienced in the city’s atmospheric baroque piazzas and narrow cobbled streets. Life is lived on the streets here – the weather is warm, the wine is tasty and the Pugliese people are incredibly warm and welcoming.

%Gallery-155506%

Lecce and the Salento peninsula, which makes up the south end of the heel, has long been a trendy place for Romans and Neapolitans to vacation, but it’s quickly finding its way onto the radar of stranieri (foreigners) as well, thanks to a stream of good press of late. In 2010, Lonely Planet named Lecce one of the top ten places to visit in the world, and just recently, Fodor’s named the greater Puglia region as one of four “undiscovered” Italian destinations to visit in 2012.

Fabio Leo, an engaging tour guide who works in Lecce’s tourism office, assured me that Lecce was poised to conquer the world.

“The last two summers we’ve had more tourists visit Salento than any other place in Italy,” he said.

“More than Rome, Florence or Venice?” I asked, not quite believing it.

“Assolutamente!” he said.

Mr. Leo’s numbers may be off by a few hundred thousand, but the point is clear – Lecce and Salento aren’t the far-flung backwaters they once were. Salento is prosperous enough that there’s a movement to secede from Puglia and become its own official province. Below you’ll find several reasons why Lecce and the Salento peninsula make up one of the most underrated regions in Italy.

Lecce. I was based in Lecce for 10 days and every time I thought I’d seen everything, I’d discover a new street or piazza that warranted exploration, an inexpensive restaurant so good that I wished I had time to become a regular or another baroque church I’d want to visit. The city has a relaxed vibe and a huge percentage of the town’s residents turn out for the evening passegiata.

Food and Wine. Every region in Italy has its specialties and Salento is no different. Try the orchiette, the minestrone di fave con cicoria, pasticiottos, and the Salice Salentino wine.

Great Beaches and a Terrific Climate. This is one of the warmest, sunniest corners of Italy and the beaches, on both the Ionian and Adriatic coasts are quite nice. One word of caution on this front – if you don’t have a car, it is very difficult to reach the best beaches in places like Porto Cesareo and the Ionian Coast between Gallipoli and Santa Maria de Leuca via public transportation, especially off-season or in the shoulder seasons.

Endless Day Trip Possibilities. If you have a car, make a circuit of the entire peninsula. If you don’t, your options will be more limited, but you can still get to historic towns like Gallipoli and Otranto on the FSE Regional train line from Lecce’s main train station, and you can also get within 5 miles of Santa Maria de Leuca, where the two seas meet. (Take a connecting bus to complete the trip.)

Incredibly Welcoming Locals. Italians are a friendly, gregarious lot in general but I found the people of Salento to be remarkably warm and welcoming. We had complete strangers offer to drive us to get pasticiottos, I was welcomed into a local soccer supporters club, and my two little boys, ages 2 and 4, were accorded cheek pinches and kisses everywhere they went.

[Photos and videos by Dave Seminara]

Toddlers Partying In The Piazza At Midnight: Tips for Traveling With Small Children To Italy And Beyond

by Dave Seminara on

It’s ten o’clock on a Saturday night and for Italian children, the night is still young. In the small, seaside town of Polignano a Mare, in Puglia, children of all ages convene in the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuelle to play soccer and tag, fill balloons with water in an ancient fountain and have the time of their lives under the not-very-watchful glances of their parents, who may or may not be very nearby.

Oh to be a small child growing up in Italy, or any number of other Mediterranean countries where the parents couldn’t possibly be more different from the hyper-cautious American super-parent. On Saturday night in Polignano, we let our boys, ages 2 and 4, play in the piazza until 10 p.m. and couldn’t help but feel as though we were doing something illicit.

“We could probably get in trouble for keeping our kids out this late at home,” my wife remarked.

But in Italy, especially on weekends, the night is just getting started around 10. Many restaurants don’t open until 8 – my children’s bed time in the U.S. – and you wouldn’t be a very nice parent if you didn’t let your kids have some gelato afterwards, right? Then it’s time to burn off that sugar in the piazza. In Polignano on a Saturday night, it’s not unusual to see toddlers strolling the streets and playing in the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuelle close to Midnight.Italians love to indulge their children. We were recently on an Italian cruise line, Costa, and were amazed by the protocols in their children’s club. First, it’s open until 1:30 a.m. Perhaps even more remarkably, the night owl kids are given sugary snacks at, get this, 11:30 p.m. each night! This isn’t a dirty little secret – the plan is printed right on their schedule. You could seriously be arrested in the U.S. for that.

You might not want to take a completely go-native approach to parenting while in Italy, but here are some tips for helping your kids enjoy themselves while visiting.

Take the train. Long bus and car rides are more confining than taking the train. On the train, your kids can walk around and on some of the regional train lines, the drivers will let your kids come into the driver’s car to blow the whistle if you ask (see photo). On Italian trains, children 4 and under are generally free, though in practice, I’ve noticed that most Italians don’t pay for kids who look even older. My older son is 4 and no conductor has ever asked us how old he is. The downside of train travel with kids is lugging your baggage. Larger train stations have elevators, which make it easier, ask for the ascensori (ah-shen-sore-ee).

Rent an apartment. Even in the U.S., sharing one hotel room with small children can be a tribulation, but quarters are even tighter in Italy, so if you want to preserve your sanity, look for an apartment. You’ll have the added benefit of a washing machine and a kitchen, which come in very handy when you’re traveling with kids.

Mangia. You can get plain pasta and pizza everywhere and there are McDonald’s locations in most larger towns and cities. Places that serve paninis, can make you something that approximates a grilled cheese sandwich. Nutella and gelato are available everywhere. Many restaurants don’t charge the coperto, or cover charge for small children. In practice, this is negotiable and if you balk at paying it for small kids, they’ll usually take it off the bill. Make sure you have snacks as restaurants open later in the evening.

La Pausa. Day trips are tricky to navigate in Italy, thanks to La Pausa – the siesta – when most sites, shops and many restaurants, especially in smaller towns and cities, close from about 1 or 2 p.m. until 4, 5 or 6, depending on the place. It might take some adjustment, but if you can get your kids to nap, or at least rest, during this time of day, you won’t feel so bad about letting them stay up late.

Set a Modest Itinerary. The American mentality is to try to run around and see the whole country in a week. Make peace with the fact that you aren’t going to see everything and go slow. There are pros and cons to using the home base/day trip approach to travel in Italy. If you choose the home base option and plan to make day trips, you won’t have to pack and unpack, a big plus if you’re traveling with a lot of baggage, but the downside is that day trips can be hard to manage in many parts of Italy where La Pausa is observed.

If you sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast and catch a late morning train to your destination. You’ll arrive just in time for the whole place to shut down for several hours. Depending on the transportation options, you might consider traveling during La Pausa – and arriving at your destination in the late afternoon, and then stay until dinnertime, enjoy the evening passegiata (stroll) – and then catch the train back to your base.

Playgrounds. Trying to find playgrounds, called gioca per bambini, near touristic centro storicos is tricky, but if you ask around you can usually find one in the vicinity. Many Italian towns also have pay-per-ride midway rides. Toy stores are also nice for the kids but note that many store owners aren’t wild about letting kids touch things. We’ve had some instances where we were followed around the store as though we were shoplifters.

Bath time. Space is always at a premium in Italy, and many hotels and apartments have showers rather than baths. If your kids are used to taking baths and don’t like the shower, let them handle the showerhead themselves to make it more fun for them.

Strollers. Navigating strollers in Italian towns and cities can be tough. The general rule of thumb is that you want to bring a compact, very lightweight stroller with you but understand that in some places, like hill towns, they’ll be essentially useless. Depending on the size and weight of your children, think about bringing some type of carrier. I don’t envy anyone who tries to navigate a double stroller in Italy.

Fun in the piazza. Find the liveliest piazza in whatever town you’re in and there’s instant entertainment for your kids, especially in the evening.

Italian TV. Let your kids watch some of their favorite cartoons in Italian. They’ll pick up some of the language and they won’t mind the fact that they don’t understand what’s being said.

Go with the flow. Italy’s a great country to travel in with small children but you need to have patience and a sense of humor. You won’t be able to stick to an American schedule and your kids won’t get everything they want, but if you go native while in the country, at least to a degree, you’ll have a better time.

Useful Terms.

diapers- pannolini
wipes- salviettine detergenti
playground- gioca per bambini or terreno di gioco
beach- spiaggia
plain- semplice
merry-go-round- giostra

[Photos by Dave Seminara]

A Photographic Tour Of Matera And Alberobello, Where Primitive Dwellings Draw Crowds

by Dave Seminara on

Most travelers are compelled to leave home by curiosity – the desire to know what life is like in different parts of the globe. Many of us, myself included, are especially interested in visiting places where people live a simpler life, without all of the modern technology that most of us in the United States take for granted.

But the more you travel, the easier it is to become jaded. In Italy, there are scores of beautiful small towns, each with their own piazzas, churches and corsos, where townsfolk take their evening passegiata, or stroll. Sometimes, it can become difficult to distinguish one place from the next. But there are several towns in Italy where some residents still live in primitive, cave-like dwellings that are quite out of the ordinary and well worth a visit.

%Gallery-155510%

Five years ago, I visited Sperlinga, a town in the interior of Sicily that is famous for its cave dwellings, and this week I had an opportunity to visit Matera, a fascinating small city in Basilicata that is famous for its sassi cave dwellings, and Alberobello, a unique town in Puglia with some 1,500 trulli, small, primitive homes with distinctive conical tiled roofs. Both places are UNESCO World Heritage sites and major tourist destinations but are nonetheless well worth a visit.

%Gallery-155508%Matera’s sassi are considered one of the oldest inhabited human settlements in the world. The town’s earthy stone buildings give it a biblical feel that inspired Mel Gibson to film part of “The Passion of the Christ” in Matera. (Most of it was filmed in an abandoned town nearby called Cracovecchia.) Only about 3,000 of the city’s 60,000 residents still live in sassi, but as recently as the 1950s more than half the town’s population was living in them, many in desperate poverty.

These days the sassi are big business, and if you have the cash, you can stay in a very nice one, complete with Wi-Fi, luxury bathrooms and memory foam beds – a far cry from the wretched living conditions chronicled by the writer Carlo Levi, whose writing galvanized the Italian government to forcibly relocate some 15,000 of the sassi dwellers into modern apartment buildings in the late 1950s.

Alberobello is a smaller town, filled with souvenir shops, and the distinctive trulli homes, which have eight different rooftop symbols. Many of the trulli have symbols painted on them, some with Christian symbols, some are primitive and others pertain to magic and the occult. While Matera has several ancient cave churches with stunning frescoes, the only real site in Alberobello is the town itself, which is well worth a visit, as is the surrounding countryside, which is also filled with trulli.

If you go: Matera can be reached by the regional FSE line from Lecce or the FAL train line in about 90 minutes from Bari, a Ryan Air and German Wings hub. I stayed at the Residence San Giorgio and highly recommend it. The nearby town of Altamura is famous for its focaccia bread, but the bakers in Matera have copied their recipes and you can sample some of the best tomato focaccia bread you’ll ever have at Panificio Paoluccio, located just off the main square in the new town at 22 Via Del Corso.
We visited Alberobello on a day trip from the seaside town of Polignano A Mare. You can rent a trulli if you want to sleep in the town, but most visitors don’t stay in Alberobello for more than a night, as it’s mostly geared towards day-trippers from Bari and other nearby towns. If you don’t have a car, you can arrive via regional train from Bari or Lecce. The nearby town of Locorotondo is also well worth a visit.

Photos and Videos by Dave Seminara

In Italy’s Heel, Obama’s A Rock Star

by Dave Seminara on

He may be facing a tough reelection battle in the U.S., but in the heel of Italy, President Obama’s still a rock star. A friend of a friend who lives in Lecce, a picturesque city of baroque churches and crumbling stone dwellings in Puglia, told me that while in town I had to try a pasticciotto, a muffin-like treat that is peculiar to this region.

“We have one that’s named after Obama too,” she said. “Ask for a pasticciotto Oh-Bam-ah.”

“And people will know what I’m talking about?” I asked.

“Assolutamente,” she said, reassuring me that I’d have no trouble getting my Obama treat.

We rented an apartment in the city, and I spent the following week wandering Lecce’s atmospheric streets, periodically ducking in and out of pasticerrias and bars asking for Obama pasticciottos. Sure enough, everyone knew exactly what I was after, but no one had them in stock.

But while I didn’t find any Obama pasticciottos during my first week in Lecce, I saw lots of young people, mostly girls, wearing the Stars and Stripes. I spent time in Italy in 2005, 2006 and 2007, during the George W. Bush years, and don’t remember seeing our flag very much, other than outside of hotels.On a day trip to Otranto, we met a group of high school girls on a class trip from nearby Bari, and they wanted to know if we liked Taylor Swift, Robert Pattison and Obama, three of their favorites. For them, Obama wasn’t just a politician; he was a pop icon.

It seems as though the U.S. is back in fashion in Italy, at least among young people, but I don’t know how much of that is attributable to President Obama. And to be fair, Homer Simpson is probably just as popular if not more so.

On our fifth night in town, we stumbled across a place called the Obama Takeaway, a little fast food joint run by Indian immigrants, that features a likeness of Obama tucking into a sandwich (see accompanying photo) on its sign.

A young woman at the counter, who spoke English and introduced herself as Chiara DiPasquale, told us that they didn’t have Obama pasticciottos, but advised us that the most well known place to get them was in a small town called Campi Salentina, about twenty minutes outside of Lecce. Chiara thought that a few places in Lecce also sold them but wasn’t sure.

On our penultimate night in town, we walked by the Obama Takeaway again, and Chiara was standing out front, taking a break. I told her that we never found the Obama pasticciottos and she immediately promised to help.

“I think I know someone who can get you the Obamas,” she said furtively, as though we were discussing buying some crack. “But how many do you want?”

“As many as I can get my hands on,” I said, sounding a bit like an addict looking to score.

Chiara took my business card and said she’d email me. I assumed I’d never hear from her again, but a few hours later, I received her message.

“I found someone who will drive me out to Campi Salentina tomorrow to get the pasticciottos, how many should we pick up for you?”

We have no car in Italy and are at the mercy of the local public transport, which is woefully inadequate, so I told her that I wanted to make the pilgrimage out to the Obama pasticciotto place with them.

The following afternoon I met up with Chiara and her friend and fellow student at the Salento University, Marco Scigliutzo, who was driving a Skoda. After stopping for directions once in the small town, we pulled up in front of an ordinary looking shop that had a large American flag flying on the balcony overhead.

We walked inside and I was immediately struck by a likeness of a smiling Barrack Obama, waving his right hand while holding up a pasticciotto in the left. We’d come to the right place, but all I could see were rows of ordinary, vanilla colored pasticciotto.

%Gallery-155086%

But my fear that they were out of Obamas was quickly put to rest, as the counter person asked us how many Obamas we wanted. Could we see the product first, I thought, once again feeling a bit like a guy about to score a kilo of heroin.

Angelo Bisconti, the owner of the place, called Cheri, since 1994, came out with a tray of the little beauties and told us his story. He was inspired by Obama during the primary in 2008 and thought he was going to “change the world.” So he experimented with a special Obama pasticciotto in his honor. At first, he tried to make it with some vanilla and some chocolate, in honor of Obama’s multiracial background, but that didn’t work, so he went with a lava cake approach – chocolate on the outside and on the inside.

Bisconti said that he’d received a letter from the American consulate in Naples thanking him for making these wonderful treats and also mentioned that he went to the U.S. to promote his brand. He also sells bottles of Obama dessert wine with the President’s likeness for €10 a bottle. The Obamas have 457 calories and cost the equivalent of 65 cents. Bisconti claims that he sells about 1,000 of them per day.

The Obama pasticciotto didn’t disappoint. It tasted like a muffin on the exterior but then when we bit into them a bit further, an explosion of hot molten chocolate scorched our mouths. It tasted so good that my brain refused to process how hot the chocolate was, so I just kept chewing into it.

But once the whole thing was safely stuffed into my mouth, I suddenly realized that my gullet was on fire. I had to hop around a bit and get some water to cool off. But I was already addicted. These little beauties are awfully good.

Bisconti admitted that he wasn’t sure if Obama had a sweet tooth or not but said he was confident that the President would love the pasticciottos if he had a chance to try them. He said he sent the President a letter about them, but has yet to receive a response.

Bisconti said that other shops have tried to copy his recipe, but have failed. He claims to have the copyright to make Obama pasticciotto and could sue others who try to infringe on it. On the way back to Lecce, I wondered how someone could get a copyright to use a famous person’s likeness to sell gooey muffins.

“Couldn’t Obama sue him?” I asked Marco and Chiara.

“I think Obama has more important things to do than worry about a guy selling pasticciottos in Italy,” Marco said.

Torture Museums Look At The Dark Side Of History

by Sean McLachlan on


Ah, the Good Old Days, when everyone lived in a perpetual Renaissance Festival quaffing ale and shouting “Huzzah!” It must have been wonderful.

Not!

People died young, the cities were filled with rats and open sewers, and God help you if you ever got arrested. You’d be taken to a torture chamber in order to “confess” while being subjected to various imaginative torture devices, like the rack shown here in a photo courtesy Jan Mehlich. It’s from the torture exhibit in the Lubuska Land Museum in Zielona Góra, Poland. A victim would be tied to it and stretched until his limbs popped out of their sockets. The spikes on the cylinder would add an extra level of agony. This museum stands out among torture museums in that many of its objects were used in the local area.

Germany was a pretty rough place back in the Bad Old Days, and this has spawned several good torture museums in the country. The biggest is the Medieval Crime Museum in Rothenburg, with 2,000 square meters of displays on torture, execution and medieval law. Nuremberg has a preserved torture chamber underneath city hall.

Italy was a rough place too, and you can find out more at the Criminal Museum in Rome, the Museo della Tortura housed in the Devil’s Tower in San Gimignano and the Museum of Criminal Anthropology in Turin. The latter museum is interesting because it reflects the 19th century belief that a person’s physical features, especially the shape of the skull, could show criminal proclivities. Hundreds of skulls, brains and death masks from executed criminals are on display, as well as the weapons they used in their crimes and the instruments of their demise.

%Gallery-155223%Many torture museums are found inside castles. The Tower of London has some nasty instruments on display, as does Gravensteen in Ghent, Belgium. Like Poland’s Land Museum, most of the items are locally sourced in a kind of Slow Torture Movement. Check out my post on Muider Castle, which offers a peek at a medieval dungeon that’s an easy day trip from Amsterdam.

If you’re in Amsterdam and don’t feel like a day trip, check out the cheesy yet interesting Torture Museum. Also in The Netherlands is the Prison Gate Museum in The Hague, which may be the world’s oldest torture museum, having opened in 1882. It offers glimpses of such fearsome places as the Jailer’s Quarters, the Interrogation Room and the Judge Chambers. One interesting detail they tell you on the tour is that imprisonment was not considered a punishment, just a way to take a criminal out of circulation until the trial. To really punish an evildoer, they had to be tortured, publicly humiliated, or executed.

In Lima, Peru, you can visit the underground prison and torture chambers of the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition Museum is a sobering look at what happens when a single religion gets to dominate society.

As you can see, most of these museums display the horrors of the past. One museum that doesn’t shy away from more recent crimes against humanity is the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which shows what the Khmer Rouge did to systematically destroy Cambodian society. Gadling blogger Jessica Marati said it’s “one of the most maddening, saddening, and intense places you’ll ever visit in your life.” When visiting torture museums, it’s good to remember that these barbarous practices are still used by many governments today.