Well!! our clocks went back an hour as we crossed over to Italy….. this is always a problem when you’re at sea as you never know whether your phone alarm will have caught up with the time zone … it hadn’t so the alarm went off at 5.45am…. Checking it with my watch I reset it and had another hours shut eye!!!!
We had learnt, at supper yesterday, from a very helpful couple from Sidney, Australia; that the breakfast in the dinning room was quick, quiet and tasty so we gave it a whirl. Sure enough it was great… we were seated straight away and had a MSC Express … bacon , eggs, tomato, mushrooms and hash brown. Also a 8 /10 cup of coffee … yeah …We were in and out in less than 30 minutes.
Todays excursion meeting venue was in the Cotton Club.. Although the meeting time was 8.00am we didn’t actually leave until 8.20am as the ship was late docking.
We were quickly on our bus as soon as the gangway opened.
Today we are visiting Alberobello. This literally means “beautiful tree”. It is a small town near Bari in the heel of southern Italy. It has about 10,200 inhabitants and is famous for its unique trullo buildings. The trulli of Alberobello have been designated as a UNESCO site since 1996. Alberobello is known as one of “The most beautiful villages of Italy”. The bus took about an hour to get there and it parked up a 10 minute walk from the town square.
Unfortunately it began to rain quite heavily just as we arrived.
The guide told us that in the 15th Century a tax Levi was put on all new houses. The oldest buildings were circular in shape and the newer 16th century ones were square. Her tour took us around the streets of the oldest ones. They are all made from white rock bricks which fit together like Lego with no other materials holding them together.. all have conical roofs with drainage channels which either ran into their own private wells …
…or into the street and down into the river at the bottom of the hill. Today’s main road is where the river used to be and that’s where all the houses got their water from unless they had their own well. The roofs, like the buildings, are self supporting, held together in their conical shape by the forces of nature.. equal pressure on all sides. The roofs were embellished with decorative pinnacles representing the signature of the architect. Over the front door is an extended slab. If this is pulled out the front section of the roof collapses. It was designed like this so that in olden times when the inspectors came to tax the houses the owner would quickly pull out the slab so that the inspectors saw a lot of rumble and an unfinished house so no tax was levied. Our guide laughed and said Italians have been dodging paying taxes ever since!!!!
We walked up and around the streets …
A lot of the trulli houses are now shops.
At the top of one of the streets we came across the Church of St Nicholas.
Coming back down the quaint stone street I managed to slip as I stepped down one of the steps and landed flat on my bottom… thank goodness for the copious amounts of padding. No real damage just some aches and pains, dirty white trousers and a thumb which is more painful than normal… a big thank you to the elderly gentleman and our New York living Mexican acquaintance who rushed to my aid and helped me up. Amazingly the rain suddenly stopped. We sat having a much needed drink in the town square.
We returned to the coach in good time, as it departed back to the ship promptly at 13.00.
Our journey back to the ship was slightly longer as a road was closed and the bus had to U-turn… but we were back shortly before 2.00pm.
The ship was filling up with new cruisers. Bari is a start and finish point, which we hadn’t realised. In fact we were in the minority getting on in Athens. Luckily most the newbies had yet to discover the buffet so we had a relatively quiet lunch, followed by rest up time and a couple of paracetamol to help the now sore and achy knees and derrière!!!
We had our usual table in the main dinning room restaurant, thanks to Selvina who seats us each evening.
Another pleasant menu. The ship was still docked when we sat down and there was some lovely street art/ murals. Part way through our meal we started to sail away and we were treated to a rather nice sunset, across the wake of the ship ( surprising as we’ve hardly seen the sun today). A lovely sight.
After our meal we headed to our usually quiet bar only to find it heaving with people. There was some ABBA music playing and everyone was dancing … we think it’s a school holiday in Italy because our new cruisers have a massive amount of children with them….. I know I am old school but I really dislike seeing babies being shaken about in the arms of their hip-hop dancing parents… it can’t do the babies brains any good and children dancing on the dance floor when adults are trying not to squash them at 10.45 pm is not good… it’s adult time….Like I said I am old school….
We finished our drinks quickly and headed for the quiet sanctuary of our cabin…
A big shout out for Hannah who once again sorted our website out for us… I don’t know what I’d do if she wasn’t willing and able to sort all my blunders out… THANK YOU…. If any of you have WordPress sites and need a hand just drop me an email and I’ll ask Hannah if I can pass her details on to you.
Also before I say goodnight I am sorry if anyone’s emailed us on 2jsworldofadventure@gmail.com
I won’t be able to get back to you until next Wednesday because I have no internet on my iPad and I can’t remember my password to log in on my phone…. Sorry… if you’re desperate for a reply just fill in a comments/feedback on the website and I’ll pick your message up like that …. Sorry
Good night one and all.
2 J's World of Adventure 