Sweetly & Smoothly & Shockingly Different - this is Salento

And here it is - the post I promised you about my trip in Salento. First of all I thought it would be useful to show the places I went on the (google) map, so you can have a better idea. Salento is the south-eastern extremity of the Apulia region of Italy (wiki)... continue reading!
South and North Italy are almost the opposite and as I have never been more in South than Gaeta, I prepared myself to discover something very different. Very Different. Smoothly Shockingly Different.

These are the main towns we went, there are a few more + the beaches but Google map didn't gave them. The red spot is where our villa was- Marina di Pescoluse. (Salve was a miserable town nearby where the supermarket was.)

Once we arrived we were like: "Ahh. This is it. Ahaah. Ooo-kay.".
It was deserted, "the nothing" seemed to rule over acres of plain rocky red land and olive trees like a steady King... "No long classy riviera lifestyling or fancy shmancy show-offing to do here!", I caught myself thinking.. Okay, well that wasn't exactly what I was thinking as it was really all about relaxing with my family (and anyways, my party-vacation is yet to come!) but I'm trying to make my point here. Now back to the illustrated story: the only thing I could catch from the wind's whispers was an eco of endless emptyness making me feel inside .. a.. do you know the uncomfortable feeling only a spoiled city person feels when arrives in the middle of pure untouched wild nature? That. Embarresing, but true. Okay. And guess how long it went before it all vanished? Exactly the same amount of time necessessary to sit down in the first restaurant and being served (fish!!!). How primitive!

D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S.

The food in general, was something which convinced us right away, from meat to wine, from fruit to vegetables: the freshest and the juiciest I've ever eaten, honestly.

I guess it was normal to feel some confusion in the beginning as it was all different and yet we were in the SAME country. It's the diversity in such small distance that impresses, not the diversity itself. So.. after a few glasses of good white wine, we finally felt like we could ambient ourselves pretty good there. We were arrived in Pescoluse, our vacation spot and "this is it-oh god.." had became in "I have a small feeling there may be no way to return from falling for this place". Unfortunatelly, that feeling was damn right.

So after pranzo (lunch) at the lido Venere (on the beach just 80m from our villa) we stayed at our place for the whole day.. it was so relaxing there and I even started sketching on our terrazzo. The second day we went on the beach and later on we discovered Gallipoli and basically so on... Almost every day a different beach, every late afternoon a different town, or the otherway around. About a week later we were tired and so we took a day off from playing tourists, it is pretty exhausting you know? Here are the pictures of the first evening. We went to discover the beaches near us.. there is a lido called le Maldive and this place is famous all around Italy for it's crystal blue water.

Patience, I may say, is fundamental in discovering the beauty of Salento, a province of almost abandoned yet still alive suburbs. All impressingly autentic and historically precious, generously ready to shine for those who know how to look.