Tuesday 30th September: Monopoli Day Trip
The plan for today was to visit Monopoli but we started the day off with another early morning walk through the old town and along the city walls. I’d mentioned yesterday about how thick the city walls were and I captured a photo this morning to illustrate this dimension. Also, our favourite street for the walk has become the pretty tree line street of Corso Giuseppe Mazzini (all shown below). I also managed to grab some shot of some of the older olive trees with the enormous trunks; these weren’t the largest we saw but ones I could easily photograph when we found a spot to pull over safely.
It was a 40 minute drive back in to Monopoli and we went back to the same area where we had parked previously but, this time, we parked legally as we managed to negotiate the parking meters.
We spent a couple of hours strolling through the historic waterfront old town, checking out key sights such as the baroque Cathedral and remains of the defensive walls of the city known as Il Bastione del Molino Ruins. We used this guide to Monopoli for ideas about the best sights to view. The best part of today, though, was getting back to the waterfront and strolling along the paved harbour front walkway known as the Lungomare Santa Maria. We’d only had two nights residing inland but we were already missing the proximity to the coast.
Monopoli has a beautiful historic centre and we both preferred this area to that of Ostuni as it was easier to negotiate the cobbled lanes due to being primarily flat terrain and as it was so close to the water. The other thing we noticed was that there was a better diversity and quality of shops, boutiques and gift shops in Monopoli Old Town compared to Ostuni. We both felt we could happily return for a stay in Monopoli whereas our short stay in Ostuni has been sufficient.
It was another beautiful but hot day and so we decided to spend the afternoon visiting one of the many private beaches along the Monopoli coast; of which there are plenty. The majority lie to the south of Monopoli and are a mix of free and private beaches. We opted to attend a private beach so that we could access day beds and a beach umbrella for shade.
We found a great blog post (link here) that critiqued the main beaches in Monopoli and I’d highly recommend you refer to this if you’re ever in the area and thinking of visiting the beach. The first private beach we visited was full to capacity and the second one was not a sand beach; it would have involved a scramble over rocks to get to the water, so we headed further down the coast and eventually found that Porto Ghiacciolo beach had vacancy.
It was lovely to relax on the sun bed in the shade of the umbrella and to have a dip in the water but it made us realise how lucky we are in Australia where we have beaches that are free, that have lovely sand and where many have showers so that you can rinse off after a swim. This beach today was advertised as a ‘sand’ beach but I would more accurately describe it as ‘rough gravel’. You really need thongs to get down to the water and, once you’re in the water, the surface changes from gravel to rock!
We had a nice couple of hours relaxing by the water but then it was back home for a quiet night with a home cooked meal enjoyed up on the roof terrace. You would never tire of the spectacular view up here and it’s reason enough to select this lodging if you’re ever staying in Ostuni. We head to Bari tomorrow for a two night stay before picking up the cycle tour part of this adventure.
