5 things for friday, the puglia edition
travel is imperfect, and our body image issues follow us wherever we go, but at least there are cats!
or more precisely, a little town where the median age is approximately 75 and we are the youngest and most americanized people by a mile. after spending a quick 36ish hours in rome last weekend, we boarded a tiny ryanair flight to brindisi, a small city on the adriatic sea, then drove southwest to alezio, a sleepy spot that feels a little bit like going back in time. the streets, for the most part, are narrow—so narrow that our giant tank of a rental car (do not get me started, i asked for the smallest car possible and was given a positively giant peugeot) does not fit down them. they are hilly and maze-like; i’ve run them twice and driven them multiple times each day and i imagine by the time we depart on saturday morning i’ll just have gotten the hang of the place. much of the day, the town is quiet, save for the chatter that rings out from the cafe across the street, where elderly men post up with tiny cups of espresso at 9am and sit ‘til dusk. the building we’re staying in rents its bottom floor to a social club—a series of elderly men who cluster at tables and play cards (and presumably shoot the shit, though i couldn’t tell you for sure, being that i can’t speak a word of italian).
it’s the type of place where few people speak english, and those who do tend not to speak it all that well. the type of place where people are born and grow old, living their entire lives within the same few kilometers. tonight, we had a pasta lesson, and noted to our instructor that we’d seen very few young people in the town. all of our towns are like this, she said, gesticulating wildly. only old people, all the young people leave to university—to milan, to rome, to florence. it tracks, then, that each time we walk by the cafe, or by the social club, the men turn and gawk. who are we? what on earth are we doing here?
i’ll be honest: there have been a handful of moments where i asked myself the same thing. the thing about doing a house swap is that you’re quite literally in someone’s home (or second home). you’re in their small town, in the middle of nowhere, on a quieter street in a quieter place than you’d envisioned. the pillows are lumpy and the produce at the one grocer in town looks wilted and sad in comparison to what you see at your local trader joe’s. it’s hard to know when you visit a place for the first time what to expect, and i’ll admit: not everything here has been what i expected.
but that’s what travel is, right? that’s why travel is so magical. because it stretches you, forces you to expand and contract in a million tiny ways. you don’t like the feel of that pillow? what else can you stuff inside the pillowcase you brought from home? the produce looks wilted? perhaps its because you’re used to the machine of big agriculture, where—just like the humans—pretty is paramount. the rental car is too big? well, perhaps you should have clarified before you went out to the lot. as with any trip, there are so many things i’d do differently were i to do this trip again. a different itinerary, a smaller car, a different packing list and different expectations.
but you can only ever visit a place for the first time once. there is no recreating what it feels like to experience that feeling of discomfort, nor that little tingle of magic when you see a beautiful thing or witness a beautiful moment. hindsight is 20/20, molly and i have said multiple times over the past few days. if only we’d known. but we didn’t know. we can’t know. that’s the beauty of it.
{left to right, top to bottom: an abandoned house we went sliightly offroad to explore that was sadly unreachable by foot, alezio—our town!—in the morning light, perfect rigatoni in rome, an excellent cappucino made by the cafe owners across the street, a homemade salad lunch, il ciolo—i swam in that!}
puglia is imperfect, my travel skills are imperfect, my italian is embarrassingly nil. and yet, we are making the most of it. we have seen many a cat, and a bevy of beautiful beaches. today, i peered down at a glittering cove, then walked down a hundred or so steps to swim in its rocky waters. tonight, we mixed water into semolina flour, then kneaded it; learned how to make orecchiette with our own two hands. imperfect, yes. but we made the most of it. and it was delicious.
so! in lieu of today’s usual friday roundup, i hope you’ll allow me to share a little photo diary. normal recs—podcasts, books (i’ve read a bunch on this trip!), recipes and the like—will resume next week.
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this man must have tired of his fellow social club members, because tonight, i caught him reading the paper just outside. i love that he just dragged out a chair, and chose to sit in the doorway, where he’d be privy to the gossip without having to partake in the conversation. a man after my own heart, choosing to read on his own but be near his people.
it bears repeating that we drove our giant batmobile of a car down a windy coastal road to get here, to il ciolo, where i’m told in peak summer you can catch brave visitors cliff-jumping into the cerulean waters below. because i am not a brave visitor, i walked down the steps and shimmied my way into the water, and it was every bit as magical as i imagine jumping would be. we didn’t make it here ‘til close to 4:30, when the sun had passed over this beautiful spot, but are planning to return a bit earlier tomorrow, after our morning boat tour in the area, and i’m hopeful i’ll get an even better photo (and a better swim!).
the water here is something else. crystal clear, calm enough to swim in (and swim i have!), and bathed in various shades of blue as far as the eye can see. photos do not do it justice. this beach, pescoluce, is known as the maldives of salento. i’ve never been to the maldives, but if the water looks like this, count me in. we’ve been hard at work on our tans, and i’m thrilled to report the work is paying off!
we spent an afternoon/evening in lecce, one of the larger cities here in the boot. lecce is known for its beautiful baroque architecture, and when i tell you i could have stared at those streets for days…i especially loved this door upon which someone had sketched these faces with chalk.
beautiful lecce. the doors! the vintage bugs! the balconies! such a treat for the eyes.
we also spent an afternoon/evening in gallipoli, a small city of 20,000 that boasts a historic center perched on an island off the mainland. we had an aperitivo here and watched the sun set over the ocean before strolling the tiny (and rather touristy) streets of center city.
there are lots of cats here! and i have been trying to make friends with ALL OF THEM. some, like this one, have been relatively successful. others, like the one i tried to pick up at the beach earlier today, not so much. but no matter. after months of missing my penny girl, it has been such a balm to my soul to see so many kitties.
this has been a rough month or so for me, body image wise. i don’t feel great in my clothes, and as a result—whether accurate or not—my mind has been telling me i don’t look great in them, either. thanks to a knee injury i’ve been rehabbing since july, my running routine has suffered. but twice this week i’ve pounded the pavement (or rather, the slippery stones) of alezio in the mornings, and it’s felt so good. i’m slower than i’d like to be in general, and even slower here (thank you, poor travel sleep + jet lag and the like), but i am out there, seeing a brand new, faraway place with my own two eyes and my own two feet, and i do not for a minute take that for granted.
when i die, please bury me in cacio pepe. the pasta here in italy is just as spectacular as i imagined, and i’ve found—multiple times now—that the best dishes are in the unassuming restaurants, the ones no one’s written about or posted about on instagram. that said: the very best meal i’ve had thus far was the one that we helped prepare tonight alongside chef federica, who taught us how to make fresh pasta from scratch, and then made pesto (and a simple but out of this world tomato sauce) to go with it.
rome was dirtier and grittier and more difficult to navigate than i expected. i didn’t plan enough and didn’t pin enough and honestly, i wasn’t even sure i enjoyed our time there. but that’s just a sign that i need to return, and give it a few more days. or perhaps, it’s okay not to love every place you visit. one can only have so many soul cities, you know?
that said, we did get one thing right: we booked a room at soho house rome, out of the tourist-y fray. it was rather far from certain sights and neighborhoods (which meant we took more ubers than expected), but it was quiet, and residential, and felt like the “real” rome—like, my neighborhood in new york vs. times square. if i had to do it over, i’d stay there again.
this feels like a fitting place to end, for now at least. a selfie snapped after swimming in a cove reached by stairwell, straddled by a bridge cut into a cliff. one of those “you’ll only do this once” moments in which it doesn’t matter that the sun is no longer shining on the water and the craggy rocks dig into the soles of your feet. i’ve said it once, twice, three times, and i’ll say it again: this year has thrown me in every sort of way. but i am here, i am healthy, i am blessed with the means to board a giant tin can that jets me up into the sky and sets me down thousands of miles away. and i can be nothing but grateful for that.
❤️ and that, friends, is where i leave you. if you like this post, it would mean the world to me if you’d hit the little heart icon, as well as consider sharing it on stories—so that big feelings can be seen by more people ❤️
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Beautiful pictures! The way you felt about Rome is how I felt about Bangkok — “that sucked. I have to go back and figure it out!”
I want to buried with pasta too!! 🤗