Addio Lecce

Our week long Italian studies in Lecce have finished. Maria Rossini, our teacher, was good at ascertaining our weak areas, so the lessons were tailored well to our needs. We were a class of three...Virginia & me, and a Swiss girl, Larissa. Another class had several students who we got to know during the “pausa”, the 20 minute break in our 4 hour per day classes. It was a good group...students from Spain, France, Germany, U.K., and Belgium.
Our class with our teacher, Maria, and Larissa

Left to Right—front: Samir, Jean-François, Maria (Italian teacher)

Second row: Rachel, Larissa, Virginia, David, Juan, Margarita (Italian teacher), Angela

Enjoying caffè Leccese during the pausa

For the last two days we’ve been on the road in our rental car...a hybrid Toyota. So far so good; however I discovered that the car does not have a spare tire, we’ll try to get one tomorrow in Taranto, where we are staying for 2 nights. After we left Lecce, we visited Otranto, a city that straddles the Adriatic Sea and the Ionian Sea, only about 30 km from Lecce. As the other cities on the Salento Peninsula, Otranto was a part of Magna Grecia, that is, Greater Greece. It was a colony of Sparta...then a Roman City, and later under Byzantine rule, then Norman, etc., etc. there are some nice beaches with aqua-blue water,  and a harbor with both fishing and pleasure boats. On the top of a hill stands a castle built by Emperor Frederick II, later rebuilt by Alphonso II of Naples in 1485-98.

Otranto...the bay & the Castello Argonese

Our destination on Saturday, August 24 (yesterday) was Gallipoli. We arrived in the afternoon, checked into the Hotel, and we had a few hours of beach time. The old town of  Gallipoli is an island, with a very nice beach right along the center of town. It’s a very touristic town...the streets were crowded in the evening, with dozens of restaurants and shops open till past midnight. Fortunately we had a good tip on a restaurant, Osteria del Vico (suggested by Rocco, the fidanzato of Maria; he works at the farmacia around the corner from the restaurant). The menu was almost all seafood; we shared a primi, linguine alle vongole, and for the secondi, I had orata fish, and Virginia enjoyed spada, swordfish.

The beach at Gallipoli, and a few street scenes of Gallipoli