It's Amore

A little rain from Mesagne to Lecce and mostly again on back roads. Paved roads then dirt then nothing. We turned around and back tracked several kilometres to the main highway. Very busy, not fun! But once in Lecce fantastico! Our B&B Suite di Martini and host Luigi were fabulous, as was the town. A fantastic stay in a very romantic apartment. Alot to see on Lecce.

La Suite di Martina, Lecce

The churches...... hummmmm..........hundreds and hundreds......... We've always figured the church has been storing skeletons in their closets.  Now here's the proof.

On to Otranto on the coast again. Much of the ride through a nature park. We found a pleasent B&B and restaurant down the street that served a great veal dinner in a seaside town. Why veal on the Italian Coast? We live on the water in Washington State with more than abundant shellfish on our shores. Hard to beat that.

But the best ride so far has been between Otranto and Leuca, which is the southern most part of Italy. What goes up must go down. Many times up and down hills. Grottos, trees and vistas spectacular! Archiological sites dating back to the the beginning of man. With very few cars, we had the road to ourselves, riding side by side. Truly wonderful.

We did speak too soon about flat tires. We each had one the same day. With all the broken glass and litter on the roadside it is abit impossible to avoid a flat. Inspecting the tires we found many tiny pieces of glass imbedded in the rubber. We're much more on the lookout for glass in the streets now, however the garbage hasn't been nearly so bad the last few days.

Because we're still in the winter season we've found that many places are not open yet. So heading from Leuca to Gallipoli left us feeling a little bit like we were in twilight zone. Zero cars, zero people, thousands of homes and shops all closed up, nada, zippo, zilch.  Resort towns waiting for the heat of summer. We can only imagine what it's looks like in summer. Glad we're here now!

A walk through the castle in Gallipoli got the imagination going. If only the walls could talk! A fun romantic historical city.

All the videos have been taken by Mr. Jim (that's what they call him here) while he holds his smart phone in one hand and steers his bike with the other. So far so good.......

It's been difficult to publish this blog as the internet has been very slow for uploading video and pictures. So to say the least, it's been painfully slow.I hope you enjoy our blog. Make sure to view the "It's Amore" video. It tells our story so far. 

Stay tuned.