This morning we sailed across the Ionian Sea, flat as a pancake, and skirted around the Gulf of Taranto between the toe and the heel of Italy. Our destination is Brindisi where we were due at 11am. This was the point where our tour lines up with that of Phileas Fogg although we are a few days behind his schedule. He arrived in Brindisi on day 4 of his journey, since he reached this point by taking trains from Paris to Turin, and on to Brindisi to catch the P&O passenger steamer "Mongolia" to what was then Bombay. In the meantime we have arrived in Brindisi on day 8 of our journey, by which day Fogg had already arrived at Suez.
Fogg was not alone in choosing this route. Brindisi had been a jumping off point for access to the East for centuries, even milennia. Via Appia, the main Roman highway through Italia had actually terminated in the south at Brindisi. From there it had been the main Roman gateway to Egypt and Syria. It had been used by Caesar and Agrippa, and earler Spartacus had sought passage from there to the far ends of the earth from the vengeful Romans, but had been betrayed by the pirates. In the Middle Ages it had been the point at which the crusaders sought to obtain ships to conduct their holy murderous campaigns in the Holy Land. After the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the British virtually took over Brindisi as a transit port for shipping civilian passengers and mail by rail to Brindisi and then on a packet boat to Bombay, which is exactly what Phileas Fogg had done.
I still had a problem with my watch. My plan was that at 11am I would quickly slip away to find a jewellery shop in Brindisi where I could have a new battery fitted for my watch. Then I would slip back so that I could have lunch with Albina at 12 on the ship, after which by 1pm we would join in the tour to Alberobello. The plan was perfect, but Albina was sceptical, and even angry, as she was certain that I wouldn't make it on time and leave her high and dry. Oh ye, of little faith. Of course it worked. Borealis docked at 10.30 opposite the striking white Alfonsino Fortress, constrcuted by Philip II in 1558 on an outlying island to protect the city from raiding Turks and Venetians. At 11am I caught the first shuttlebus out of the port to Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, in the tourist heart of Brindisi. Then a brief walk along the beautiful avenue Corso Garibaldi, lined with palm trees, brought me to a quaint little watchmaker's shop. I was in and out of the shop in 10 minutes and I was immediately followed by a couple of other Borealis travellers wanting new batteries for their watches.
Then, I made a brief return to the Piazza, took a photo of the Roman column perched on Virgil's steps across the water, caught a still empty shuttle bus and was back on the boat having lunch with a flaggerbasted Albina at 12 noon. Mind you, it was a climb through 9 storeys of the boat to get from the vessel's gangway to the View buffet restaurant, so I arrived quite out of breath. I am still keeping to my decision by the way to use the stairs between each deck, and leave travelling by lift only to those instances when I am with Albina. A number of travellers still coming off the boat had greeted me as I returned to the Borealis. "Have you forgotten something?" one of them asked. "Yes, just my wife," I replied.
Alberobello was quite an experience. It was an hour's drive into the Apulian countryside, across the flat plains with their vineyards, olive groves and fields of artichoke. Apparently, there were whole planted forests of olive trees, enough to supply to the whole of Italy, and some of the trees were reputedly more than 2000 years old. They may have experienced Hannibal and Spartacus. England has its handful of thousand year old oaks dotted around the west country, but nothing as spectacular as this.
Alberobello is situated in much hiller country. It consists of hundreds of these extraordinary dry wall structures which were historically meant to provide shelter to peasant workers forced to work for their titled landlords in the forest away from their traditional homes. They built these temprary shelters to protect them and their livestock, using white stones from the local caves and quarries. Because they faced heavy taxation for setting up villages with these shelters, they deliberately constructed their temporaty dwellings without any mortar in between the stones, so that during visits by tax enforcers they could quickly dismantle the buildings, removing the walls and puling down the hidden walls inside these structures with ropes pulled from the outside. The iconic conical roofs would then collapse automatically. Once the inspectors left the old homes could be rebuilt within a day. Apparently they kept up this tax avoidance system for several centuries, right up to the late 1790s.
In time these buildings, called Trulli, became more permanent even though they still resembled the earlier temporary structures. Hence there were no windows, while the outer dry walls devoid of any mortar or cement were supported by similar inner walls, ensuting each building warmth and security. Spring water was directed through the villages with roof level and floor level gulleys. Whole generations lived in these houses with their livestock. In order to prevent long term contamination from the animal droppings inside these houses, the households did an annual clean up with lime and whitewash, as a result of hich the buildings have a permanent white walls inside and out. Our guide, Vanessa, described all this with great relish. In fact the overall impression on visiting this town was something resembling a cute human size smurf village with winding hilly streets. These hills were covered with genuine dwellings, often grouped together around a small common courtyard, and with medieval looking shops selling very attractive local ceramics, clothes, leatherware, hand made chocolates and other items produced by local artisans. Albina and I bought some of the local sweets and two alpaca cardigans, which kept us warm against the cold wind blowing unexpectedly over the hilly countryside. After the warmth of Brindisi we had to remind ourselves that this was early March after all.
We got back to the ship just in time for the 6 o'clock deadline. By 6.30pm the Borealis had departed, sailing into the night, along a route leading past the smaller Greek islands and Crete towards Suez.
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