Posted by Seth Miller on March 28, 2013 under Hotel, Trip Reports | 
It was just over two years ago, in February 2011. It was St. Valentine’s Day, in fact. Maybe that should’ve been a tip-off that there was something different about the bed and room that night. My wife and I were in Rome, wrapping up a quick weekend trip to Lecce and I had managed to book a forced overnight on the return, allowing us to visit with a friend of ours in Rome. It was there that the awesome happened.
We were staying as guests in the lodgings adjacent to San Silvestro in Capite, a minor basilica in Rome. The church itself was incredible to see and our room was also quite nice. It was certainly not ornate; actually rather sparsely furnished. The lack of furnishings actually make it appear even bigger, I suppose, as did the high ceilings.
But the best part of the story came just over 2 years later when I got an email from my friend and our host there. It turns out that Pope Francis had a close connection to an Argentine priest who was affiliated with San Silvestro. A quick check of their archives indicates that, over the years, Jorge Mario Bergoglio visited his colleague in Italy a few times and on at least one of those visits he stayed in the guest room at San Silvestro, the same room my wife and I were in on our quick visit.
And so there it is: February 14, 2011 was the night we slept in the same bedroom as the new Pope.
Posted by Seth Miller on April 13, 2011 under Trip Reports |
The drive from Santa Maria di Leuca to Gallipoli is relatively easy. At least it appears that way on the maps. And yet, as we drove along the coast of Puglia and tried to make our way up to the port town we struggled. Mightily.
Town after town and turn after turn we followed the signs pointing us towards our intended destination. And for about 10 minutes in the middle of the drive we simply could not get any closer than 14 kilometers. I do not know if it is the Italians having fun at the expense of those who don’t know better or just a quirk that comes with trying to navigate across small back-roads around that region. Or maybe there was some strange geographical quirk where a number of roads ran around a radius from town in a manner that doesn’t make much sense. Hard as we tried, we seemed to make little progress in getting any closer to town.
Eventually we made it, though not without quite a bit of laughter and a few choice words muttered about. Once into town we headed straight to the old city and the marina – the more scenic sections.
The marina and seawall are quite lovely to wander around in. And if you head all the way out to the end of the sea wall there’s an awesome view from the top of a navigational marker.
Of course, you have to be willing to climb up onto the navigational marker to get that view.
The rest of the marina is similarly pretty, with typical small fishing vessels tied up along the docks and various fishing nets and other gear accumulated.
And one not so well parked boat.
Gallipoli was fine and definitely worth passing through as we circumnavigated the heel of Italy, but probably not worth going too far out of the way for. I’m sure there were parts we missed; it was getting late and we wanted to be back in Lecce for dinner so we didn’t really dally.
Read more of our adventures in and around Lecce, Italy, here.
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Posted by Seth Miller on April 12, 2011 under Trip Reports |
We happened upon the cave by accident. We had no idea what we were getting in to and the decision to pull off the road was a snap one made thanks to a simple sign noting that there were caverns at that particular turn. Standing in the mostly empty parking lot I called upon the power of Google to help verify that what we were walking in to was actually worthwhile. I needn’t have worried. The Zinzulusa Grotto is phenomenal.
Just a couple miles north of Castro, Italy, the Zinzulusa Grotto is a Karst cave and is considered to be one of the most important examples of this geologic phenomenon in Italy. The name comes from the word zinzuli, meaning rags. The extensive collection of stalactites that have formed over the years have a similar appearance to rags hanging, hence the name.
The approach to the cave consists of a long set of stairs followed by a walk along the cliff side. The views are quite impressive but pale in comparison to the interior. The stalagmites and stalactites throughout are a mix of boring brown rock and bright colors, toned by the minerals in the water that seeps through the limestone, forming them.
The interior has a long corridor that can be explored as well as large pools of water down below. The pools are brackish, a mix of the Adriatic Sea and underground rivers that flow through the area and which caused the creation of the caved in the first place. In addition to being rather pretty, the pools also house a number of endemic species of aquatic life. During the summer season boats are available for tours at the water level.
Towards the back of the area open for tours is a space known as the Crypt. The ceiling soars 25 meters above the floor level, creating a rather enormous room. The Crypt used to be inhabited by bats; they’ve since left for less trafficked areas, leaving the room open for tourists to enjoy.
The cave was “discovered” in the late 18th century but has only been excavated and open to the public for about 50 years. Amongst the things discovered were vases and votive axes dating back roughly 5,000 years. Pretty amazing.
The excavated part is huge. Only a small portion is open to the public but it is still incredible to walk through the carved out paths that have existed for millennia.
Read more of our adventures in and around Lecce, Italy, here.
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Posted by Seth Miller on April 5, 2011 under Trip Reports |
If there is one thing the Italian countryside has plenty of it is picturesque little towns. Heading south and east out of Lecce, this combines with the long coastline along the Adriatic to make the picturesque even more so. The region is compact enough that it can be covered in a relatively casual day, which is exactly what we did.
The first task was to get out to the coast. We started relatively early on a Sunday morning and by the time we arrived in Otranto the town was just beginning to wake up from its slumber. There were a few locals out and about, either fishing or grabbing their morning coffee, but for the most part the town was quiet. It is easy to see how this area can become bustling in the summer. With a protected cove of a beach and cabanas set up along the shore, it no doubt attracts sun worshipers in quantity. On this February morning, however, it was just us and the fishermen out and about.
Towards the end of our walk through town and the marina a local farmer was setting up shop. Given the opportunity to add to out picnic bounty we fumbled through the half dozen or so words of Italian I can muster, along with copious (polite) hand gestures to make it clear what we wanted to buy. Once the fruit was secure it was back to the car and back on the road.
The coastal road along the Adriatic is truly an amazing drive. The towns built along side might be smaller than those in the Cinque Terre region but the views are no less amazing. Mixed in with the small towns and beaches are reminders of the World Wars, with pill boxes and sentry emplacements. Stark reminders that not everything along these beaches was all fun and games.
We passed through several cities along the coast, stopping in some to take photos and stopping in one at the lure of a sign on the side of the road promising a grotto. The caverns of Zinzulusa were actually incredible, dating back thousands of years and quite accessible. The tours only goes in a small portion of the way but it was very much a worthwhile side trip.
Eventually we found ourselves very much at the end of the road. Situated on a bluff overlooking the end of the heel, Santa Maria di Leuca boasts tremendous views of the coast, the town and marina below and the confluence of the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas.
This is where we chose to stop for our picnic lunch. The scenery was tough to beat and we were getting pretty hungry. Fortunately we had plenty of supplies to sate that hunger.
The tale of how we acquired all the food is a rather entertaining one. Speaking nearly no Italian and traveling in a region of the country where they didn’t seem to speak much English made for some interesting negotiations of selections and quantities. Fortunately most of the meat names are the same (we’ve simply co-opted the Italian versions into English) and my fingers were sufficient to indicate the number of slices of each that we wanted. Not without a bit of confusion and a bit more comedy did we finally complete the necessary transactions for the cheese, bread and desserts; with our collected bounty from the various vendors in Lecce we were set for a great meal.
I’m a big fan of the picnic as an alternative to traditional dining out. In this particular case it was effective on multiple levels. We kept our food costs relatively low, avoided the typical junk food that comes from tourist-focused shops and we were able to guarantee that we’d actually find something to eat in rural Italy on a Sunday afternoon. The last was our primary motivation this time around and it worked out quite well for us.
The views from atop the bluff were stunning and the picnic was delicious, but we also had more driving ahead of us. We were on our way to Gallipoli and it was time to get a move on.
Read more of our adventures in and around Lecce, Italy, here.
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Posted by Seth Miller on March 14, 2011 under Trip Reports |
Nestled in the heel of Italy‘s boot, Lecce serves as a great base for exploring the Puglia region of the country. The city is small enough that it is easily explored on foot and has the added advantage of mostly maintaining the original layout that it had 2000+ years ago. This leads to many narrow alleys and walkways that are not particularly orthogonal to anything and which provide a sense of being lost in history. And, if you’re not particularly careful about navigating, you can be lost in Lecce, too.
Our hotel, the Casa dei Mercanti Townhouse, sat directly on the Piazzo Sant’Oronzo at the center of town. We paid a bit extra to be this central versus some of the other options but it was absolutely worth it. From that base we were no more than a 10-15 minute walk anywhere in town. Combine that with the incredibly friendly and welcoming host and the fact that it was a full one bedroom apartment and it simply couldn’t be beat.
A video version of the tour.
There are a few museums in town worth visiting, though it is worth noting that we were there off-season so the operating hours were more suggestions than hard and fast times. In two of the cases we were apparently the only visitors that day. They actually had to turn the power on for us to see the displays. They were worth it, however, as we got a guided tour (I’m not sure if that’s standard or if the docent was just bored) and we got to see some amazing art.
Starting at our hotel (A), we walked through the main Piazzo and past a few smaller churches until we arrived at the Duomo di Lecce (B). The church is rather impressive, as most old churches tend to be. Like many in the region the church has an incredibly ornate façade and interior based on the Baroque era. Somewhat surprising to me was that much of that detail was actually in paper maché rather than carved from stone. More on that later. Definitely worth a stop inside.
Just across the piazzo is the Museo di Arte Sacra. This is the gallery where we received a private guided tour. The art on display represents several hundred years worth of the collection of the church. Everything from portraits of the local gentry to the Cardinals to a rather impressive collection of the church’s vestments. They also have a few of the figures normally placed up in the chapels in the church out where they can be seen up close. Much like the incredibly detailed façades, these were made of paper maché to keep the weight down which is important since they are also carried through the streets during various processionals throughout the year.
After we wrapped up our visit to the Duomo we made our way to the Museo Teatro Romano di Lecce (C). The art collection here is virtually nil; that isn’t why you’re visiting. They have a nifty diorama showing the city as it existed several hundred years ago and, most significantly, they have the ancient theatre (hence the name). The theatre is actually still in good enough shape that it can be used for events. There is something pretty amazing about sitting on seats that were used a couple thousand years ago for pretty much the same purpose.
Wrapping up the museum circuit in Lecce, we stopped in to one of the newest, the Museo della Cartapesta (D). Also known as the Museum of Paper Maché, the Museo della Cartapesta is housed in the old castle just off the central square. This museum shows much of the history of paper maché in the region – they pretty much mastered it here – and has a number of incredibly ornate works representing many generations of artists who called the area home. From the early masters of the art who consolidated into a school and factory up through modern times, the museum traces the history and also happens to have the displays translated into English. Really quite nice.
From there it is a short walk back into the Piazzo Sant’Oronzo where the Amphitheatre is located. Despite the signs indicating the hours for the space it was not open during our visit. Still, worth looking down into from above and probably worth paying the Euro or two for admission, assuming it is open while you’re there.
Further up the road past the Duomo are several more churches, all incredibly Baroque in their façades. At the edge of the old city is the Gate of Saint Oronzo. He is widely credited with coordinating the city’s response to the Plague during the 17th century. Assuming you’ve got time (and unless you walk REALLY slowly, you still will even after the above circuit), it is worth wandering out that way to see.
Read more of our adventures in and around Lecce, Italy, here.
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Posted by Seth Miller on February 18, 2011 under Dining, Review, Trip Reports |
The art of la dolce vita is alive and well in Lecce, Italy. The small town, nestled in the center of the heel of the country’s boot, provides a great base of operations to access the rest of the Puglia region. But even without leaving town there is enough to see and do to take up a day or two. There is enough to eat to last much longer, if desired.
There are several quite decent restaurants available covering the local cuisine, and, even more enjoyably, many options for breakfast and dessert. Indeed, the town appears to have an over-abundance of gelato and pastry shops, mostly centered around the main piazzo at the heart of the city.
These are the type of shops that I expected would survive based on tourists flocking in during the summer months or through less than legitimate business dealings. After all, how can that many coffee and dessert shops succeed in such a small town?
Apparently I continue to underestimate the consumption rates of coffee, delicious little pastries and gelato. Because even though we were nearly alone as tourists in town during our weekend there, business at the gelaterias was rather bustling.
Each night they were serving up scoop after scoop of gelato as well as a variety of beverages – mostly based on espresso – and pastries.
I focused mostly on the gelato options and I must say that I can understand the success of these shops. Simply delicious.
Oh, and they were also the first stop in the morning for most of town to get started again. A couple espressos or cappuccinos to start the morning up is great if you’re into that sort of thing (by which I mean "Italian" in this case as most of town seemed to be there ever day).
We did most of our pastry and gelato consumption at Il Alvino, right in the center of town. There are other options that I’m sure are also quite good, but that’s where we were and I’d recommend it with no apprehension.
Read more of our adventures in and around Lecce, Italy, here.
Posted by Seth Miller on February 17, 2011 under Dining, Review, Trip Reports |
To say that we had essentially no idea what to expect when we arrived in Lecce, Italy would be giving us more credit than we deserved. And yet we managed to find fantastic dining options around town (as well as a miss or two).
The most delicious meals we had were also the most simple. Many restaurants these days seem to be making recipes more complicated, with ingredient lists that are longer and longer. But not in Lecce. In Lecce the dishes were simple preparations of fresh ingredients. It was wonderful.
Our first meal in town was at Trattoria Nonna Tetti. Starting with a cheese plate is a good way to make sure that you’re getting just the most simple of preparations of ingredients. And the variety of local cheeses available was quite broad.
After that we chose a couple pastas for our first course. One was a gnocchi with pancetta and eggplant, tossed in a light tomato sauce.
The second pasta was a pesto with sautéed shrimp. The sauce was top-notch and the shrimp were incredibly fresh.
For our secondi we chose to split the octopus. This was probably the best dish we had during our trip. The pulpo was simply phenomenal.
Our second meal was at Trattoria Le Zie – Cucina Casareccia. Given that we dine at a restaurant of a similar name in New York City on a very regular basis and that this one is played up as one of the best dining options in Lecce, we couldn’t resist. Faced with the premise of difficulty in getting a reservation for dinner we chose to go for lunch instead. Same menu but more casual and easier to get a table.
The food was mixed in quality. The anti pasta was quite good. Grilled eggplant, salads and a potato/mushroom thing of which I can say that the potatoes were quite nice.
Rather than pastas as our primi courses we ended up with potato casseroles. The pastas just didn’t sound very good and the potato options did. In retrospect we probably should’ve had one of each, but such is life.
One had artichoke mixed in while the other had mussels. I’ll never quite understand the service of mussels still in their shell unless in a bowl of broth. In broth it makes a bit of sense as the mussels are the only bits that you are eating. But when on a pizza or in a casserole it is a bit more strange.
Yet there they were. Mussels on the half shell, baked in with sliced potatoes, mini-zucchini and parmesan cheese that is toasted on top. I may not understand the mussels still in the shell but I definitely enjoyed the flavor of the dish.
For the secondi we skipped one of their more famous dishes – horse meat in a spicy tomato sauce – in favor of the stewed octopus in a red wine sauce. It was pretty good, though overly salty.
I think it is safe to say that whatever reputation Le Zie (Lecce) has these days doesn’t really show up in the food. Yeah, it got its start as serving up the food of the lower classes, prepared for folks who like to go out to dinner. Today, however, it seems to be just basic dishes that are hit or miss and not particularly special. Not worth the hype, I’d say, but still a decent enough meal. And it isn’t really all that expensive such that it is worth avoiding.
Our second night’s dinner was at La Vecchia Lecce, a restaurant that was listed as having a chef who trained at Trattoria Nonna Tetti, our previous night’s dinner locale. It turns out that was either a mistranslation or that "trained at" means "serves the exact same menu as" in Italy. I’m guessing the former.
Somehow it has a higher rating on TripAdvisor than Nonna which I can only attribute to it being larger and therefore easier to get in to. Otherwise the atmosphere was a step down and generally not worth the extra walk from the Piazzo. It was still a pretty good meal, though it did decrease our dining variety a bit in town. That said, the mozzarella was awesome.
Our final dinner in town was at the Joyce Enoteca. The restaurant is apparently known for its meat and cheese plates. Standing behind a counter by the entrance a gentleman stood patiently slicing up various pieces of pig that have been cured, smoked or otherwise made delicious. They are plated on large wooden trays, mixed with a variety of local cheeses if you want to go that way. Of course, we didn’t really figure that out until after we watched nearly every other table order that and we didn’t. Still, our meal was pretty damn good.
We limited our cheese intake to just one choice (the gorgonzola) rather than a tasting plate. Still damn good. We then moved on to the main courses. We had a pesto similar to that of the first night – though without the shrimp and not as good – as well as porcetta. The pork was pretty good, though the skin wasn’t quite as crispy as we generally prefer. Still, a quite good meal to wrap up our stay in Lecce.
Well, not quite wrapped up. I forgot about the grappa. We ordered a grappa and a limoncello after dinner. We had to get an extra grappa because it was that good. Just enough of the burn to remind you that it really is a strong alcohol but a smooth enough flavor to really make me want a third glass. Fortunately I was smart enough to resist so that I could actually walk back to the hotel room. But it was quite tempting.
Breakfast and dessert in Lecce are not generally to be had in restaurants. These are taken in the great gelato and pastry shops scattered about town. Il Alvino in the center of town saw us a few times and there are plenty of others as well. All good stuff.
Read more of our adventures in and around Lecce, Italy, here.
Posted by Seth Miller on February 11, 2011 under Flying, Trip Reports |
Yes, I am really so strange as to actually enjoy the time I spend in airplanes, so much so that I want to do more of it. But that’s not what this particular post is about. Having just come off another transatlantic redeye flight from New York City to Milan I am legitimately lamenting just how quickly one can fly from the USA to Europe. I love that the quick flights mean a quick weekend (or even a day trip) is possible, but the morning of arrival is always a bit of a challenge. It is doubly so today because of a relatively long layover in Milan before our next flight to Brindisi. Such is life.
The flight over was actually rather uneventful. Since my last TATL redeye on Continental the dinner service seems to have improved a tiny bit. The ravioli was a decent option and the chicken was surprisingly moist. The salad has improved dramatically from a couple years ago, though the fruit in the morning is about the same.
The flight offered, like always, the opportunity to brush up on my foreign language skills via the in-flight announcements and the AirShow maps. Those are always fun. I can now properly say tailwind in Italian, for example, as vento a favore.
But the flights are to darn short. Only 7 hours en route last night meant that, after climb out, beverage service and dinner we only had about 5.5 hours left before landing. With the breakfast service starting a hour prior that leaves only about 4 hours for sleeping. That’s rough on the body.
On the plus side, we got to see this awesome sunrise over the Italian Alps as well as an Iran Air and El Al plane at adjacent gates on the ground here. Plus, we’re in Italy for what looks to be an awesome weekend. I’ll stop complaining, but it really would be nice to get a bit more sleep on those TATL flights.
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Posted by Seth Miller on October 10, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Like most people I’m not a big fan of the unending surcharges that airlines seem to be tossing around these days. I rarely check a bag so that isn’t my personal beef, but the concept of a surcharge to allow the airline to fuel the plane has always irked me. Yes, I understand the myriad of reasons that the airlines do it, but that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.
It turns out, however, that things are actually much more complicated than they appear on the surface. Rather than an airline simply stating that the fee is some number and it seamlessly processing across the global network of airlines, travel agencies and customers, the system is way more complicated than that, and every now and then it works to the customers’ benefit.
In theory any travel agent can override the validating carrier in their GDS, and a judicious choice will produce an (automatic) pricing that leaves out the surcharges. And they wouldn’t be breaking any rules by doing so. In practice most agencies are afraid of damaging their good will with the airlines, so they are unwilling to do these overrides. Sometimes you can find a carrier whose website will sell tickets completely on other carriers, and get around the surcharges that way.
If you’ve got any real travel geek in you and you want to understand the nuance behind how the surcharges get applied, read the full story here.
So here’s where the “negotiating” comes in to play. No, you cannot just call up a travel agent or booking clearinghouse and ask to not pay the fee. But every now and then some of the major online services screw up their systems. So instead of charging the customer some hundreds of dollars for surcharges that bit gets skipped, and no one is the wiser about the situation. And it just so happens that one major travel site featuring a “negotiator” is known for occasionally forgetting to include the fuel surcharges on international itineraries.
I’ve got a ticket booked to Italy in April/May that was $230 less than it should have been, thanks to these “negotiations.” There’s also a fare to India apparently floating around with a few hundred dollars missing because of this. It is certainly intermittent and not particularly easy to find. But when you find them, knocking 40% off a trip to Europe isn’t so bad. Not as good as a missing digit in a fare, but certainly not so bad. This might just be a situation where the fuel surcharges work in passengers’ favor.
