My time in Puglia!

Ciao tutti!

Happy weekend, I hope you are all happy & well.  I am having fun in Rome, catching up with friends, running errands in the city, walking around to all my favorite spots.  It has been excellent!  

I have finally firmed up some plans for the summer!  I had been having some strong moments of indecisiveness during my planning stages...  I have definitely decided to go to Montenegro to teach yoga for the summer.  I will be staying in Herceg Novi, which is a resort town on the beach in the north of the country near the Bay of Kotor, not far from Dubrovik, Croatia.  Sounds cool, right??  My "work" situation will be to teach one yoga class a day in the morning.  I will live with a couple, one is a reiki practitioner & the other is a physiotherapist.  They are starting a wellness center in Herceg Novi to offer services to the tourists & locals.  So, I will also be helping to get organized & promote our business.  Apparently the place is full of english speaking tourists in the summertime & there is currently no good option for yoga.  I will fill this niche!  Herceg Novi is sort of a health resort type of town so, we think that yoga classes will be hugely appealing.   Wish us luck!  English & Montenegran are spoken there so I'm sure I will have fun picking up a new language.  I will be sad to not be able to use Italian, hopefully I'll find someone to do a language convo exchange with so I won't lose my skills!

I won't get to Monte until the 22nd, between now & then I will make a return to the amazingness of Puglia!  I will meet up with my friend Erica, that I met in Sicilia, at a farm she is staying on down there & we plan to tour around some beaches for a day or two.  Then, I have found another farm for me to stay on to do a bit of WWOOFING until I leave.  I can't say enough about WWOOFING, my friends.  It is such a cool way to see the country and meet new people!  Highly recommended.  If you want to find out how to do it, it's easy! 

http://www.wwoof.it/en/  check it out.

This time around in Rome I am feeling so much different than while I was living here, it's like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders!  I was always so stressed about that crappy work situation I wasn't really able to enjoy my life.  What a shame!  Again, I am feeling fortunate to have turned my attitude around.  I can now look at operation Italy as a smashing success.  Yay!

Here are the photos of my time in Puglia.  I was staying at that olive farm in the country & then travelled to Lecce with my Japanese pal.  We made a bunch of friends there & had a killer time!

this is where I stayed.  notice the fabulous multi-level rooftop for doing yoga & watching the sunset.  this type of old house in the country is called a masseria.

when my hosts bought this place it was abandoned, they did an amazing job of restoring the place.   

my lovely friends, the olive & almond trees...  

i miss you guys :)

fuzzy almonds.  everything looks so pretty in evening light.

they run the masseria as an agritourismo  with a restaurant &  four rooms to rent.  oh, we had such good food...

red bougainvilla

last of the season's carciofi

figs are everywhere in south italy.  they are one of my favorites, sadly they will not be ripe for a couple months.

This is what it looks like all over Puglia.  Olive trees everywhere.  also, the whole Salentine peninsula is pretty much flat.

I peeled about a million of these bitter oranges to make a marmelata.

Ah, my friend the ZAPPA.  When I first started my farming work the zappa & I were enemies but as time went on we became friends.

We had a good time experimenting with falafel.  For some reason my hosts assumed that I was a falafel expert because I told them I make it often.  Meaning I add water to a mix.  Making it from scratch is pretty easy, using fresh, uncooked ceci.

Mariko & I had fun picking chamomile & the flowers are adorable. 

getting a bit arty

we ventured into the small town of Carovigno where there is not much to do .  

We rode some old & heavy bikes to this beach & nature reserve one day, Torre Guaceto.  It was deserted & beautiful.  Unfortunately, minutes after we lay our towels down on the beach a big storm rolled in.

ciao Carovigno!  we are off to Lecce

Lecce is famous for it's Baroque art & architecture

Yippee!  We found it to be an enchanting city!  This is the duomo (cathedral)

duomo in the evening

it seems like i am wearing this outfit in every photo

porta di napoli

one day we went to the beach near the small town of Gallipoli 

meno male

i like this photo, especially the people fishing

on the old timey train back to Lecce

our friends took us to this sweet spot where you are able to do some jumps into the sea & swim into a cave.  wow!

also to this gorgeous spot, Torre del Orso.

What a good time!  Can't wait to get back down there.

I am reading a good book, Last Night in Twisted River, by John Irving.  He has always been one of my favorite authors, ever since reading the book A Prayer for Owen Meany in high school.   My Rome friends & I are having a little dinner party tonight, should be fun!  I found some black beans at a specialty shop yesterday & plan to make some cuban style with coconut milk,  I haven't eaten black beans in about 10 months!  Simple pleasures, it seems my news today is not too exciting...  I hope you enjoyed the photos, take care :)
xoxo

Lovely travels through south Italy!

 Ciao amici!

I'm back on the blog!  Mi sono riuscita!!  I'm back in Roma & have succeeded in my uploading my photos despite losing that damn camera cord!  I was worried that I'd have to buy a new cam because mine is an older model & it was seeming virtually impossible to get just the USB cord.  But...  I was able to get this amazing little device called a card reader, fantastic!  Me being pretty low tech, didn't even realize such a thing existed.  At any rate, I am happy!

I had a really amazing couple of months of travel, meeting new people, speaking Italian, eating & making a lot of really good food, relaxing and going to some sweet beaches!  All seems well back in Rome, the weather has improved & it feels awesome to have shed all those heavy clothes of winter.  This is a great time of year here because it is not too hot & the heavy tourist season hasn't hit yet.  So, I'm staying with a pal in Trastevere (my hood!), walking around town & catching up with friends.  It is hard not to do too much shopping & money spending in this city, not a good idea while I am currently a "professional volunteer".  :)

To overview my trip, I left around March 30, spent over a month in glorious Sicilia then passed through Calabria & Basilicata visiting Tropea & Matera, then was in Puglia for about three weeks spending about 17 days on a "farm" "working", then to Lecce & the Salentine peninsula for a few days.  Overall, complete and total awesomeness!  Here we have some nice photos from Tropea & Matera.  Enjoy!

here was my chill spot in Tropea, a nice spot to do the crossword overlooking the sea.  

My eyes lit up when my friend Erica showed me this lemon luna bar she had brought from the states so she was kind enough to gift it to me.  Grazie!!  A little nostalgia for the motherland...

my view of the beach!

see Stromboli (volcano island in the background)?  remember that I climbed that sucker early on in my trip? 

Tropea is said to be home of the "amethyst sunset".  not bad!

good old strombo.

took myself out for, what else, pizza!  here I am displaying the overly extensive pizza menu.  so many options!

as usual ho scelto bene.  HOT chili peppers are a Calabrian favorite.

look at that water!  asolutamente belissima!

Then I had some heinously long transportation to Matera, during which I sustained that odd leg injury I mentioned.  Which, is nearly 100%, I am still having some trouble performing "heel walk" but that seems not to affect life much.  Matera is in Basilicata, a region known for it's extreme poverty in the past.  Matera is one of the oldest cities in the world!  In the distant past people used to live in caves carved into the tufa stone.  Matera is pretty touristy & more recently famous for being the site where that crazy Mel Gibson filmed the Passion of the Christ.  (which I've never seen because of gruesomeness).  The weather was really cold & windy in Matera & I had to sport all my layers.  The ancient city is built around a gorgeous canyon & the old homes are built right into the hill & called "sassi".

pretty!

looking across the ravine you see these really old caves, once homes.

this was when I was experiencing extreme foot slap walking because of that injury, making hiking around the caves a bit strange.

Matera at night, it's magical!

still enjoying the ceramic tiles

as well as churches

and general oldness

including the oldest mailbox I have ever seen!

continuing with oldness, I do love colorful old doors

some places were very derelict (like in zoolander, derelict.. :)  

oh, i was trying to get the perfect shot of this laundry in some of my favorite colors.  i didn't manage to get a better one, those colors really popped! (Elysia, I really do write this blog to you sometimes)

So, that's that!  I hope you liked the photos!!  Next time a posting on Puglia!  I'm going to take the trenino over to check out the beach near Roma today.  I hear it is crowded & polluted, I am hoping for otherwise!  I am still trying to hash out my grand summer plan, there are still a few uncertainties but it looks like I will head to Montenegro around the 20th.  I wish you all a happy week!

xoxo!