Castellana Cave and Putignano

 60 kms driving and 13,000 steps with most of them underground

Today we did a tour of the Castellana Cave, about a 30 minute drive and for about 25 km for us (30 minutes if you don't hit a walk-a-thon, or have trouble finding parking, arhhh. The cave extends 1.5 km, and a maximum depth of 122m below street level. You are allowed to take pictures only in the first cave, surprise Andre has a few more. The caves were discovered in 1938. Cold in the first cave, but then got very hot and humid. The tour was about 2 hours long. We were both quite disappointed with the actual tour, but really like the caves. There were way too many people on the tour, over 50 I think. Our guide spoke extremely fast, she was hard to understand. If you weren't up front you weren't getting anything. Plus she decided to make it a bilingual tour, so she even spoke faster. It was supposed to be an English tour, but there were quite a few French with us so she did it in both languages. It actually worked out OK for us because it was easier to understand her French than it was her English.

After our cave tour we explored the small town of Putignano. This town is famous for its carnival in the summer. We have discovered that we really like visiting these small towns, you really see the Italian life, and beautiful Old Towns. We now just look at google maps, see if there is an old town, then head there. Usually it is at the highest point in town. Had an amazing lunch of Tapas. There were so few things open we were happy when we hit the main square and saw people outside eating. Our waiter was fantastic, he just moved back to Italy last year after travelling the world opening 17 restaurants for a company. He opened restaurants in Toronto and Vancouver and many cities in Asia and middle est.

Forecast is for rain and wind this afernoon so a little change in plans and instead of going for a walk we headed back to our Trulli. It didn't rain as much as the forecast, but we were still happy for a little break.

The first cave after going down 256 steps. Today the Castellana Caves were the scene of an important exercise by the National Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps - Regional Service of Apulia.

A day of training and collaboration, a precious opportunity to test the emergency procedures on the field on the tourist route and strengthen the coordination between the parties, in order to always ensure the highest standards of safety for visitors and workers.

The man who found the cave and explore them

Now in Putognano

This church has a unique tower

Not many tourist or locals on the street, make it easy to take pictures

Lots more flowers here

6 or 7 churches in Old Town but none were open

Part 1 of our tapas 

part 2

Not many places open not sure if it is because of Sunday, off season or just between 2 and 4 or all of the above mentions

This place is famous for its carnival

Covered with net as the plaster was falling off this nice old building

no cars in old town and lots of small alleys

and arches and tunnels

A bookstore that also had old LPs

The main gate to old town

Wendy trying to figure the doors. Most doors are less than 6 feet high as you can see between Wendy

Trulli across the street where we are staying with stone fence on both side of the street