there were two people who met, fell in love and got married. Instead of presents, they asked for help honeymooning in Italy. This is our site all about our families adventure. We hope it will inspire you to love Italy just as much we do!

On to Bari

We took the train down to Bari. Pina found us this beautiful apartment in Santeramo in Colle. A working class community that is surrounded by active farms in the center of Puglia. Here is a picture of the apartment building, in the background. The second photo is the view from the top floor of the building.









The Flower Shop.

What a great little town with a nice personality. Here is a little story that illustrates how the personality of Italy pours into every little corner. Marybeth and I (Eric) had been overwhelmed with the generosity of the host family whose home we were staying in. So we decided to buy them flowers. We found this beautiful little flower shop on the corner in town. The inside of this shop looks like it belongs in a designer magazine with vases and flowers everywhere. The women behind the counter reminded me of some one you might see in the meat market at my local grocery chain in Ohio.

I found myself wishing again that I had not left the camera back at the house. Such an aged, worn and unhappy face transposed the flowers and marble floors nicely.

We go inside and pickup four different flowers. We are Americas and we think, “All you have to do now is wrap them up.”

No, she took the four flower's piles and she deftly begun to build a fantastic flower arrangement. She uses not one ribbon color, but three different colored ribbons and four different types of greens. She had taken a small bundle of flowers, some ribbons and a few greens of various sizes and shapes and created a master piece. We were stunned. How could we be offered such a fantastic piece of work? Maybe we have mis-communicated. We think perhaps this is going to cost us twenty euros? She says no. We think thirty euros? She says no. She takes six euros and hands us the most spectacular flower bouquet that I have ever seen.

Trulli roofs of Alberobello.

A trullo (plural, trulli) is a traditional Apulian stone dwelling with a conical roof. The style of construction is specific to the Murge area of the Italian region of Apulia (in Italian: Puglia). They may be found in the towns of Alberobello, Locorotondo, Fasano, Cisternino, Martina Franca and Ceglie Messapica.

We got to see some Trulli construction later on that day. The buildings you are looking at are traditionally built without any cement or mortar. This style of construction is also prevalent in the surrounding countryside where most of the fields are separated by dry-stone walls. When you look at the garden page you will see many examples of those walls.

Construction.

The roofs are constructed in two layers: an inner layer of limestone boulders, capped by a keystone, and an outer layer of limestone slabs ensuring that the structure is watertight. Originally, the conical structure would have been built directly on the ground, but most of the surviving structures are based on perimeter walls.

The walls are very thick, providing a cool environment in hot weather and insulating against the cold in the winter. The vast majority of trulli have one room under each conical roof: a multiroomed trullo house has many cones representing a room each. Children sleep in alcoves made in the wall with curtains hung in front.

The story of why they build that way.

When we were there, I read that a local duke had wanted to avoid being taxed by his king so he made all his serfs build their roofs with drywall stone construction. So that when the tax evaluation was made once every ten years the peasants could drastically reduce the number of roofed and useful buildings while the land was being evaluated by deconstructing the roofs.