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As pleasant as a sunny afternoon may be in Brindisi, when in Puglia for the first time, one has to explore the surroundings a tad. We had grand ambitions when it came to exploration in this region. No coastal hamlet was too small for us to disregard. Setting an ambitious agenda made a lot of sense as the apartment we’re staying at, despite being centrally located in Brindisi, is rather small and bunker-esque. To add insult to injury, the WiFi ran out after only three days so simply hunkering down watching Netflix was not in the cards.

With our agenda set for at least three destinations; Lecce, Otranto and Gallipolli we started with the first as that would then serve as the jumping-off point for the latter two. Our method was, in addition to wandering around in the rather picturesque Lecce, also lay the transportation groundwork so we knew where the relevant bus stops etc. were on the other days of travel. Suspicions that not all would be going to plan that started when said bus stops stubbornly refused to list the numbers we knew we needed to go on, were confirmed by a moderately arrogant tourist-information-type-person that those buses only ran in the summer and that the only way to explore this beautiful province was by car. Strike one.

While now rather comfortable walking among traffic and even having a few drivers slow down around us, neither of us felt a strong desire drive. Not now since we so skillfully avoided the drive from Reggio Calabria to Brindisi in the first place. Instead, we got a tourist map of Lecce and set out to find a clearly marked, albeit rather far removed from the center, market. Strike two; No such market was in existence and we were forced to trudge back to trinkets and tour buses.

The third strike occurred when some denim and t-shirt clad twenty-something turned us down because we didn’t have a reservation for an essentially empty restaurant. The people that were seated had a certain gangster-vibe about them, so simply leaving seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Despite its less than favorable first impression, Lecce is a both beautiful and historically interesting place. The Wolf-mother mosaic was unfortunately being restored behind closed doors so we weren’t able to see it in the flesh, but we did get a summary of the history of which there is a photo in the gallery below.

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