Day 20 - 24 July Bari

 We woke up today in Bari, on the heel of Italy. We were here on the cruise we did in 2009 and on that occasion we took an excursion to a Trulli village of small houses with conical stone roofs. At that time we got the impression that Bari was un unattractive industrial town.

I'm not sure whether that impression is entirely fair. It it certainly a decent sized town with a busy commercial port; it also seems to have some areas of historic interest.But it contributed to us taking another esxcursion outside the city.

Our first stop was Polignano a Mare, a small way south east along the coast. We had to disembark the bus a short way from the centre and then walk, which takes a while with a group of thirty or so people of various ages in varying levels of health. This robbed it of some pleasure as it was again u nbearably hot today and by the time we reached the walls of the old town we were feeling pretty poor. We were set free to walk, and it was yet another charming old town of pale stone walls, cobblestones and cafes. The buildings are in mixed levels of repair and we wondered how wealthy the people living in the apartments must be. The main distinguishing feature of this town was that it runs right up to the small cliffs overlooking the sea.

But it was really to hot to appreciate much of this, and you can only walk so many streets when you have no intention of buying anything. So we mostly sat in what shade and breeze we could find until the march back to the bus.

Our second stop for the day was at the Castellana Grotte, limestone caves in what appeared to be otherwise a fairly industrial area. Once we got past the queues for tickets and entry, these had the advantage of being at a stable 16 degrees. I'm not sure they were the nicest caves we've seen, but I'm pretty sure they were the biggest - some areas were truly cavernous with high vaulted ceilings dropping away to some distance below the walkways. We were led on a looping walk of about a kilometer before taking a lift back to the surface.

And that was pretty much it. We were wiped out by the time we got back to the ship at around 2pm. The heat often leaves us with headaches. So we had a quick lunch and retired to recover, read and sleep until dinner time. Wew left port around 6pm and travelled along the southern Italian coast while we ate in the Italian restaurant.