Our current base, for four full days, is the town of Ruvo di Puglia. We are quite close to the heel of the boot now and near the Adriatic Sea coast. Ruvo is a nice little town in itself and it makes a great base to explore all the Romanesque cathedrals and interesting seaside towns in the area.
We arrived on Wednesday around noon after a very smooth checkout and drive from Lucera. The landscape became noticeably prettier as we got further south, with rolling hills of olive groves and cypress trees. Our hotel is fantastic - a largish, modern hotel with stylish decoration, underground secure parking and a good restaurant. Our room has a lovely view of olive groves and the beautiful pool (too cold for swimming!). Its normal price is out of our range but I got a great deal on Hotels.com.
After checking in we headed out to explore Ruvo and its cathedral. It was siesta time (big in southern Italy, from about noon to 2:30 everyday) so the town was virtually empty and very peaceful. Ruvo is a very lovely little town, with picturesque winding alleys, iron-railed balconies and colorful shutters on white stone houses. The roads are paved with marble slabs and our shoes squeaked the entire time.
I don't know much about Ruvo's cathedral yet except that it was built in the 1100s in the Puglian Romanesque style. It's very lovely and has a good rose window (with some plant life), nice facade sculptures, and a large separate bell tower. Unfortunately it was locked so we didn't see the inside this time.
Back at the hotel, David found a good use for the cold pool - soaking his weary feet! We had a nice time hanging out poolside in the sun for awhile.
Yesterday went rather less well, but wasn't a bad day overall. We woke up to pouring rain, which continued the entire day. This came as a bit of a shock, since we'd already started to take the warm and sunny weather down here for granted! Nearly all the attractions here are outside and we can't take pictures in the pouring rain (wet cameras are unhappy cameras). So very disappointing.
Fortunately, we're here long enough that we can still fit everything into subsequent days, so we settled in for another day of getting caught up on various tasks and relaxing in our lovely hotel room. But then we discovered that the wireless internet connection, which had been intermittent the night before, had gone out completely. The front desk assured us that someone was coming to work on it, but it didn't come back all day.
I was still able to get quite a bit of work done but it sure sucked not being able to blog, check e-mail, manage my website, or make hotel bookings. Being far from home and making our living online, internet access has become absolutely crucial! But overall, it was a good and productive day and we enjoyed another nice dinner in the hotel restaurant.
This morning we turned on the laptop and discovered the internet was back! Hooray! But it was still pouring down rain. Boo! So I've spent the morning getting caught up on online stuff such as this blog and we will probably go visit a nearby cathedral later this afternoon despite the weather. The weekend is forecasted to be mostly sunny, thankfully - that will be a busy couple of days for us!