BY SERENA·6:41 AM

Alberobello & boat ride

I woke up early alone this morning for about an hour. I made coffee and drank it and ate a chocolate pastry out on the huge porch alone. The patio has trees and plants all around and the breeze was nice. Once the rest of the crew was up and moving, I cooked at the airbnb eggs, mortadella and pastry (didn't cook this) for breakfast. Then, we drove to Alberobello. There are olive trees everywhere and a surprising amount of farm land. When you get away from the cities, it reminds me of northern New York but with Red roof houses and italian structure. Even here motorcyclists and moped drivers are crazy!! They whip in and out of cars on blind turns and lane split (which is illegal...but I guess no one stops them). We wandered in to Alberobello and saw the Trulli houses. The story goes that the King was taxing them on their houses so they found a loophole - build a house with a roof that doesn't have anything holding it together besides gravity (no mortar) so that if someone came by to check they could just remove one stone and the roof would gently fall and tada no "house" to e taxed on cause a house has a roof. Then they would reassemble the stone roof after the tax collector left. My favorite part was some of the shops had free panoramic views of the tops of the roofs or the city views! We shopped a little, saw two people dancing on the streets then went into a church Parrocchia Santuario Basilica S.S. Cosma E Damiano. Once we explored we went back to the car and drove on to Polignano A Mare for lunch at Da Luciano where I got a Mortadella Pistachio Pizza that was delish! After lunch, we drove to the port and boarded our boat ride. The boat took us to see up close and personal the blue caves. We got to see a good bit of the coast from the boat. After seeing some caves, cliff side restaurants (that we dont know how they haven't fallen in the ocean yet), they stopped for a few to let us swim in the ocean. I was excited but then had that weird fear remembering the boat in the Florida keys. I told myself to just jump then swim right back to the ladder no biggie. Once I was in the ocean, I remembered again that I could swim all my life lol HOWEVER Monica and I (only ones who got in) didn't stay long cause it was FREEZING! We came back to land and drove to our airbnb then my crew and kevin went to dinner at Vista Mare. I think it was a very authentic restaurant as the English menu was still partially in Italian. I got the Cavetelli seafood which had shrimp, octopus (not my fav) and mussels (surprisingly good). Then we headed back after what was probably a 3 hour dinner cause there was ONE waiter serving the whole place.

Serena

6:41 AM