Ceramic stopover

Our trip to the southern part of Puglia had come to an end.  We had a drive to our next and last location.  The drive was a bit longer, a bit under three hours.  Normally, I would punch that out in one guy without any problems, but things were now different with the baby Pickle.  Instead. I arranged for us to make the journey in easy stages.  We would stop twice on our way to our final stop.  The first place we stopped was in Lecce for a last and short visit.  The drive wasn't too long.  I was familiar with the roads now, so we arrived and parked in less than 40 minutes.  Once there, we went for one last visit to the gelateria we had been visiting on each visit (so much so that the staff had started to give us free items) and let baby Pickle play in some of the wonderful parks on the outskirts of the old town.

We had left the masseria a bit later than I had wanted and so we were now in a bit of a strange time.  Too early for lunch, but later than where we should have been.  I took us back to the car and as I left the parking garage, I managed to scratch the rear bumper on the a small post.  Annoying, but thankfully minor.  I looked through my options of where to take us.  Should I do the last part of the journey in one go or should I still go through with my plan of making one further stop in between.  We still needed to eat, so I thought it best to do one more stop even if it meant we would be a bit later.  Looking at the map and where we needed to be, I set my phone for the town of Grottaglie.

The drive was relatively uneventful.  The roads were good, and we drove past the city of Taranto with its enormous port facilities.  We had read that from a tourist point of view, that Taranto didn't have as much to offer as other places in the region, but I couldn't help but wonder if I should have visited.  This famous and ancient of towns has such a storied history, and its name had popped up frequently in the books and histories I had read over the years.  Maybe for a future trip, but for now I had to keep driving.  We arrived in Grottaglie in the early afternoon.  It was extremely hot.  We parked the car and went to look for lunch.  The town was completely empty.  The heat of the day probably kept people away, but even with that explanation there was still a bit of a deserted feel.  Everything was well maintained and in good condition, it was just empty.  We found a restaurant that seemed to still be open.  We went in and they apologised to us profusely that they were already closing.  We were disappointed and a bit lost as to what to do.  We had come late enough in the day that it looked as if we had missed the lunch service for most restaurants.  As we stood to the side contemplating what to do, one of the elderly looking chefs seemed to realise our problem and pointed us down to the lanes next to the restaurant, directing us to another restaurant that he was sure would be able to take us.  We followed his directions and found the family restaurant that still had some guests.  They told us they were closing, but would take us in if we ordered quickly.  We happily obliged and were soon seated with icy drinks to cool us down.  It was a family restaurant and it seemed all the staff were in some way related.  Baby Pickle roamed up and down the restaurant.  The other guests cooed and waved at him as he explored all everything he could.  From inside the kitchen, the old matron of the family appeared as she heard the outside commotion and her face lit up seeing him walking around.

 

We enjoyed our time in the restaurant and probably stayed a bit too long.  We were the last guests for the day and the staff seemed to be waiting for us before leaving themselves.  We could see they were enjoying playing with baby Pickle, but I'm sure they still wanted to leave.  So after settling the bill, we headed out into the town to look around before we continued on our journey.

It was still very hot when we started to walk around the town, but the worst of the heat had subsided.  The small lanes and streets were still largely deserted.  Strangely, it didn't feel as empty though.  Even though there were no people, you could see and feel the signs of life everywhere, like everyone had just stepped away for the briefest of moments (which I guess was the case).  There were lovely murals on the walls, flowers growing everywhere and the houses were a mix between renovated old buildings and some very modern builds.

We had been told a bit about Grottaglie by the people at the hotel we had been staying at in Monopoli.  When asked about where the best places to visit in Puglia, the son had listed this as being high on his list of locations.  One thing in particular that it was famous for was its pottery and ceramics.  So far we hadn't seen too much.  We started to walk outside of the old town, through the large town walls.  I checked the map and there seemed to be a long winding road that would take us back to where we had parked our car.  As we past the walls, we could now see all of the ceramic stores one another.

Veronica disappeared into one of the stores and I kept on walking along the street with the baby Pickle.  There was a large shop off to the side that caught my eye.  I started walking in as Veronica suddenly appeared and followed me in.  I tried to converse with them in my limited Italian and they seemed to light up, trying to explain to us all the various ceramics that were in the store.  As usual, more than anything it was the baby Pickle they seemed to be most interested in as he laughed and squealed at them.  Almost everything we had seen in the region apparently came from Grottaglie.  We happy that to date, we had bought nothing.  Veronica looked at the various traditional "buds" that were a symbol of the region and grabbed a few for us and for friends.  As she was paying, she also noticed a few things for the kitchen and so immediately bought those as well.

We slowly made our way back to the car.  There had been no shade so it had been sitting fully exposed in the sun.  We had only been away for a few hours, but the dustiness of the area and of the roads made the car look like it had been sitting abandoned for years.  I opened the doors and felt the wave of heat push out.  It took a bit of time before the car was cool enough for us to put baby Pickle in, let alone for us to set off on our drive.  The drive to our last stop took far longer than expected.  The roads were good and very picturesque, but they changed halfway through from multi laned higways to single lane roads.  A long line of cars backed up as a single car decided to crawl slowly along the road.  At each opportunity to overtake, the cars behind it baffled me with their own complete reluctance to overtake.  They seemed to be completely content with driving 20km below the speed limit and following this car.  Eventually, I saw my own opportunity and embraced the crazy Italian driver inside.  I saw a very long stretch of road.  There was no traffic coming the other direction and there was a long distance of clearly uninterrupted visibility for me.  I pulled out and overtook the line of three cars that seemed determined to meander along this road.  I past them all and raced into the open road, finally free of the obstacles.  I looked into my rear view mirror.  It appeared that I had galvanised the others as car after car also followed my lead to get past.  We made a turn right and started to climb up higher.  I started now to get a little bit worried.  I was driving a hybrid and the distance indicator had previously been giving me and estimate that was more than enough for me to reach our destination.  This was all based on our highway driving.  As we continued to climb up through the winding roads, the estimate continued to fall.  Would I even make it?  I kept glancing at the estimated distance and comparing it to the GPS distance.  The numbers were converging more than I wanted.  We began to see more buildings and apartments.  My fears subsided and I could see our end destination coming into the screen.  It was definitely tighter than I had hoped and when I finally parked, the estimate was less than 20km left of driving.

 

None of that mattered anymore.  We had arrived at our final destination in "Puglia" (though not really).  The ancient town of Matera.