June 10, 2005: Alberobello & the Trulli

ROAD FOOD: At breakfast this morning I stood at the marble bar with the locals for my cappuccino and the best croissant I've had in years with good chocolate still melted in the center while the Italian MTV was blasting to drown out the noise of the traffic.

PACKING IT UP: It's taking me less and less time to pack up and go now. Only about 10 minutes to get everything on the bike, get my clothes zipped up, helmet on, and then it was just a matter of re-finding the Adriatic Highway (E55) toward Bari, and A14 direction Taranto - with an unintended although pleasant deviation to explore an olive farm.

ROAD CONDITIONS: I was so impressed with Italian highways in the north and the west a few years ago and had assumed that all Italian highways were as good, but they must vary according to the wealth of the province. As soon as I left Venice the roads started showing some neglect. This area is poorer, I know, the farmers live here, and it is not as populated. But it might be more beautiful - hard to say - every area of Italy has its beauty - it is an incredibly diverse country, with mountains and plains and sea on both sides and that upheaval of snow-capped Alps I was so surprised so see the other day. But here there is a quiet, natural beauty and the rhythm of farming, the rhythm of nature and not of business. Fishing, olives, vegetables, grains, livestock, cheesemaking.

EXIT: By noon I exited the highway at Gioia del Colle and felt to be in the heart of the farmland of Italy - fields of grain, more olive trees, some cows and a lot of burros, and the truilli, finally. Trulli is plural for trullo, a round house roofed with limestone slabs in a fishscale pattern (so the rain won't get in) that are thought to have been built by tribes from the Middle East; some of them date from the Megalithic civiliziation. Thy're capped with a decorative pinnacle, most of them in the shape of a sphere. Inside, the doorways are typically arched, and the thick walls (three feet) carved into to make sleeping alcoves, fireplaces, and niches for this and that. The upper part is roofed off into a loft for storage.

The first trullo I passed was in the middle of a field of grain. The second was in a pasture of burros. The third was part of a fabulous villa. More and more truilli popped up as I approached Alberobello until I almost stopped noticing them, trying to follow directions to TrulliHoliday, from whom I had arranged to actually stay in one of these things.

ARRIVAL: The office wasn't easy to find as the streets are curved and narrow and the trulli all look the same so a gang of pre-teenagers with long unkempt hair dressed in black led me there, laughing and chattering among themselves and waving at me to keep coming and trying to maintain their tough exterior. The one who spoke directly to me was a girl, the only one among them and the shortest and most unkempt and toughest and most confident. She looked me in the eye as she spoke, waving me into the middle of the truilli, and I spoke back to her in English. She had a special sparkle. Don't you wonder sometimes how people will turn out - especially young people? I wonder if she'll be quashed by tourism and farming or if she'll make something of herself with that spirit and nerve. If her teachers will recognize it and nuture it, or if they'll fear her.

SETTLING IN: I was glad to have had a guide because I would have never found it. I parked the bike and walked down into a basement of a trullo to meet Donello, one of the owners, and Lontana, who works there. They're both hip, vivacious thirty-somethings who were born in the town and know everything about the region. The TrulliHoliday company (Dontao and also Pasquale) has a number of trulli in town and out of town. The one I'm staying in is in the residential group of Alberobello truilli called the Aia Piccola district, just a five-minute walk to the Monti district, which is tourist group of trulli that's full of shops and restaurants. Lontana recommended I have lunch at Ristoranti Casa Nova.

ROAD FOOD: Walking through the Monti district is an absolutely charming experience for about half an hour, then it becomes a bit too high on the cute meter. I was glad to walk down into Casa Nova, a basement restaurant (like many) cool and decorated elegantly (not in cute trulli style) with a 20€ "tasting menu tipici" (typical) of the region, and I must say they stuffed me silly.

The wait staff was charming and explained every dish - each needed explaining, even to the Italians who were sitting next to me who were from Milan and had not experienced the food of the south.

To begin, there was a plate of coldcuts and cheese. Coldcuts don't sound very elegant in english but there is no other encompassing word to describe a selection of cold meats - a selection of salamis and procuittos served with two kinds of mozzerella, one a firm cheese shaped into a twist, and the other a young fresh bag-shaped mozzerella which was indeed a casing for runny, clotted cream-like cheese inside. I loved this one, it tasted almost sweet. I ate the entire cheese and might have eaten another but my table was becoming laden with more and more plates of tipici dishes: pale little sausages in white wine, broadbean and chickpea pureed with onion (a favorite), tripe in a minestrone vegetable-like sauce (loved the sauce, couldn't deal with the texture).

I thought I was finished with the antipasti but no, a plate of fried and baked things arrived: fried zuccinni flowers, pancakes filled with mozzerella mixed with tomato, puffy little breads, and bread balls of some sort.

I could have stopped there but I had two more courses coming. Next was the pasta course, "little ears" or orchietto, with broccoli flowers sauteed in lots and lots of olive oil from the region. If it hadn't been so heavily salted it would have been stellar.

Between the second and third course the headwaiter decided that I had to try the dish typical of the region invented by the chef of this restaurant, a gnocci made not of potatoes but of bread, olives, and eggs served in a tomato sauce with fresh basil. It was heavy, but wonderful. And now for my meal... a steak coming, perfectly grilled, but who could blame me for not even eating half of it?

Whisking that away, the waiter soon returned with another platter - inside I groaned, it's not possible! But who could resist the delicate little homemade cookies and a bowl of ripe, red cherries slightly chilled? Italians know how to woo the palate to fool the stomach. The cookie I liked best was not the Amaretto or the chocolate but a vanilla that melted on my tongue with an almost invisible cracklature of caramel. It absolutely melted...it was nothing... you see?

Espresso? Yes. And then I waddled up the hill to see the trullo church and shop in the little trulli shops where they sell olive oil and lacy tablecloths and silver pendants with magical trulli symbols.

After? A nap, of course. Do they call it a siesta?

HISTORY: The Middle Eastern peoples who are thought to have built the trulli are thought to be the same peoples who built burial mounds called specchie, the nuragi in Sardinia that I saw a few years ago (see the Italian Lessons dispatches), which are conical structures made of stone near natural limestone crypts that inspired them to make them burial gounds. Other comparisons are to the sesi of Pantelleria, the talaycts of the Balearic Islands, and the neolithic constructions in Crete and Malta.

There are over 1000 trulli in Alberobello's two districts. I slept well in one of them - three-foot thick walls, an ancient story, and all the modern conveniences, including sleek tiled bathrooms with very hot water, a fully equipped kitchen, and very comfortable beds with firm mattresses. I have made a note to return here and stay a few days to tour the surrounding countryside, which is extremely picturesque, full of beautiful small villages, trulli, farms, caves, and roads less traveled.

Donato has told me that it's possible to rent motorcycles in Bari and he's promised to help me get the details once I return home, and I will share them.