Day 2 - Pulia Experience

Today we started our 4 day guided tour with Angelo of the Puglia region. Meeting him in our Bed and Breakfast lobby along with the other 4 travellers that will be with us from America. Judy and Jimmy from Florida and Pat and Kevin from New York.
First stop a walk around Gioia (Joyo) to see the castle, it’s museum and the historical quarter.

The Norman-Swabian Castle located in the centre of the village. The original core of the building was built during the Byzantine era around the year 1000. A few decades later the Normans added to it and the Throne Hall in this lovely! pic above was built by the Swabians in 1230.

Next stop was a lovely town called Altamura. This town is famous for its DOP(designation of origin) bread. This bread is made by local bakers, which hand down the original recipe through generations. The ingredients are sourced only from the local area and the wheat is a type that is only grown in this part of Italy thus the DOP classification.

We visited a very old bakery with a wood burning oven that was started in 1724.

Part of this tour as we were to find out where the unbelievable restaurants that we visited each day at lunch.

Today’s restaurant was in Gravina and as you can see that mushrooms and truffles were on the menu. The food was wonderful haven’t had anything like it before. Should of taken some pics.

After lunch we rolled back to the car to head to an amazing town called Matera.

This UNESCO town is a complex of cave dwellings carved into the mountainside called the Sassi area. Lots of walking down into the heart of the area and a glimpse of how a family of 9 lived alongside their animals in a two room cave makes one feel very lucky.

A view of what the area was like before the caves were transformed into dwellings.

Back to Gioia about 6pm, a long but very interesting day.