3. Bari

Posted on by Mary

Bari: Wed Aug 31 – Fri Sept 2


Accommodation link.

Wednesday 31st August.

 

It may well be the last day of summer in this part of the world but the daily temperatures don’t seem to register that fact. It was another glorious sunny day with not a cloud in the sky and the temperature was forecast to be up near the 30s. Our day started with another walk along the city wall and a coffee stop. I’ve come to realise that iced coffees are not a thing in this part of the world. Mark has become quite adept at using various forms of sign language to help the local baristas to mock up a version of a skim ice latte for me. They are generally very keen to please and often come out to check with me if they’ve done the right thing.

 

Our next stop on this trip was a two night stay in Bari and we set off for the hour long journey after our 10 am Ostuni check out. The first stop was out at the airport to drop off the car and we then got a taxi to our apartment. What a surprise we were in for. I had no idea that Bari was such a lovely sophisticated area, I don’t know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn’t this.

 

Our apartment building was located on the edge of the Old Town and right in the thick of a high-end retail area, complete with a lovely wide pedestrian mall, and was bit reminiscent of Rome. Our accommodation was a huge, two bedroom and two bathroom apartment located on the 4th floor of an historic building that had obviously undergone a recent and significant renovation. Our apartment was modern and comfortable for our two night stay.

 
Our first outing was to find a grocery store and that’s when we discovered we were in the middle of the high-end retail section but found a great little grocery store, just around the corner, that would rival the David Jones Food Hall.

 

We headed out again in the mid afternoon to walk up to the train station, to check out where the pick up point was for our upcoming A’qto cycle tour, and then headed back down to explore the Old Town.

 

There is a beautiful wide pedestrian mall that extends from the train station down to the Old Town and this is lined with high-end fashion boutiques and retail shops. There were also loads of stylishly dressed young people walking the streets which all made for a very nice ambience.

 

We spent a couple of hours exploring the Old Town and stopped off for a rest and an afternoon aperitif but we were both exhausted from the heat and walking so headed back to the apartment for a quiet night dining in. The plan for our one full day in Bari tomorrow was to take a 2 hour walking tour and then spend some afternoon time checking out the shops.

 

Thursday 1st September

It was another glorious Puglia morning so we set out for a walk before our 10.30 am walking tour. We headed down to the harbour area, a different section from yesterday, and oh what a treat that was. The harbour-front area of Bari, just south of the Old Town, is stunningly beautiful with a most picturesque 16km promenade, the Lungomare Imperatore Augusto. It brought thoughts of Bondi back to us as we encountered plenty of people jogging and a large exercise group, along with their yoga mats, going through their moves. The whole area was just so pretty that we ended up spending more time taking photos and videos than we did walking!

Our walking tour started down at the Port of Bari and we spent the next two hours with our guide, Francesco, and about 8 other tourists, walking through the labyrinth of little lanes that make up Bari Vecchio (Old Town).

 

Francesco explained to us that, unlike Ostuni Old Town which only has a couple of hundred local inhabitants, Bari Old Town has a population of about 6,000, very proud inhabitants who happily welcome the parade of tourists. Tourism is relatively new to this region and has only been prevalent since about 2010. Prior to 2000, the Vecchio was a high crime area and unsafe to visit. Francesco also explained that the Queen of Poland was once the Queen of Bari (around 1500s I think) and that is why the Bari flag and the Polish flag are one and the same.

 

The walking tour finished up at around 12.30 along the Lungomare and we then went back into the Old Town for lunch and then on to the Archeological Museum. The Museum was free to enter and is located within the site of an old Benedictine Monastery that had existed from the 12th to the 17th century. There was a vast array of artefacts spread across two levels and information was noted in both Italian and English making it relatively easy for us to negotiate. It’s well worth a visit.

 

We were both pretty tired after a day of walking and so went back to the apartment for a bit of a rest. It had started to drizzle rain during our lunch and this made walking the Vecchio very challenging; the lanes are paved with the most beautiful white limestone but this becomes dangerously slippery in the wet. So step home slowly we did! The plan for the evening was to go out to have an aperitif at a craft brewery that Mark had found and then to come back home for another night of dining in. Our cycle tour begins tomorrow and we have a pick up at 12 noon from the train station.
We loved our short stay in Bari and, with hindsight, I would have planned to have an extra day. It’s a a great city for touring  as it’s relatively flat and compact so it’s easy to get around on foot to all the key sights. The local population clearly take a great deal of pride and joy in their city as the buildings, streets and parks are well maintained and there is an abundance of little bars, cafes and restaurants, brimming with activity, spread throughout both the new and old town. Bari is definitely a city to add to you to do list if ever in the region.
Just FYI: the fonts and spacing within my posts change in random fashion and no amount of editing seems to render uniformity:-(