Discovering Lecce

Let's continue with our journey, as I've already told you in my post from Porto Cesareo, we decided to stay and spend the day in Lecce, a city also in the Puglia region and in the Salento area, the southernmost area, the heel of the boot of Italy.

If you're looking for sun, sea and relaxation (lu sule, lu mare, lu ientu as the saying there goes) along with a fun time, this is the perfect place.

Salento pushes out between the Ionion Sea to the west and the Adriatic Sea to the east. On the west side of this region are the towns Porto Cesareo, Gallipoli and Torre Suda, while to the east you will find Torre dell'Orso, Otranto and Castro Marina. All of which find themselves in the province of Lecce.

Lecce is in the Puglia region and is the cultural capital of the Salento peninsula and of baroque art, it is, in fact, known as the Florence of the south.

It has a population of approximately 96, 000. And, interestingly, it is a sister city of Valladolid in northwest Spain, among others.

As for the most stand out places there, of course, I recommend you visit the most famous, the Piazza Duomo. You will love it, especially visiting it at night when it is all lit up.

Furthermore, ocassionally there will be some kind of show put on at the Torre del Parco and the Roman amphitheatre. Little after arriving here, Red Bull organised a freestyle football tournament there, if you have seen the games in Madrid, you'll know what it was like here.

You can sit in on of the bars near the Piazza Duomo for a coffee or to try the famous Pasticciotto leccese (a type of italian pastry filled with cream and cherry jam) and to admire the Piazza in peace.

Lecce is full of churches built in the baroque style of architecture. Some of the most well known are:

• the Basilica di Santa Croce;
• the Church of Sant'Anna;
• the Basilica di San Giovanni Battista al Rosario:

  

For acommodation, this time I'm not goign to tell you the name of where we were rather the name of where we really wanted to stay, as we went back to Porto Cesareo and because a night in Lecce was a rather impromptu decision, and really we couldn't afford to do anything else.

We had really wanted to stay at the "Fortezza del parco", at number 1 on the street Torre del Parco. It's a 15th century medieval fortress according to Booking.com. The rooms are decorated with furniture and fabrics in the style of the era, and King-size beds that look very comfortable indeed. For me, having the opportunity to sleep in a castle must be amazing and it's certainly something different and original to do, you'd definitely feel like a medieval knight or lady staying here. However, it's not missing any of the modern touches, in fact, there's a relaxation area where you can enjoy a calming massage or a beauty treatment.

If you're looking for something to eat, on the main street in Lecce you'll find many restaurants, pizzerias, pubs and, most importantly, some cool places to have an aperitivo.

As you well know, if the custom in Spain is to have vermouth in the morning, in Italy the aperitivo is traditional (or as some people call it: Happy Hour). The aperitivo is often celebrated in the north of the country, but more and more it is being adopted in the south.

Generally, it starts at 19:00 (depending on the area of the country you find yourself in). In practice, if you pay a couple of euros more for the standard cocktail, beer or glass of wine (don't forget to try a Spritz, the customary alcoholic beverage of Italy) you can have a nibble of some food.

A lot of the locals organise buffet style spreads of food so you can help yourself to whatever you want, others will bring you, directly from their own table, a sizeable portion of meat on skewers, cold cuts of meat, pizza, pasta etc. I'll give you the places we went to that we especially enjoyed:

LA CANTINA DELLE STREGHE, on the Piazza Duca d’Atene. The decor is in the style of an old winery with a vintage feel to it. In summer the terrace is open, but we were sat inside.

It's an open space, so you can see how they prepare the food. There's a huge set of shelves where they keep the bottles of wine and other kinds of traditional products from the area, I recommend you have a glass of the famous Salento Negramaro.

As for the aperitivo, I don't remember how much it was but it wasn't much, they served us a salad, some different kind of toast and some salmorejo, yes, salmorejo!

If you want to shop, Lecce has a lot of shops, the main shopping street is Via Trinchese, where you can find all kinds of shops.

If you follow this post on your visit, you'll have already seen the city, now I remember there was a small train that ran through the main streets of the city, that, if you're not a fan of walking, will take you to the Piazza Duomo (you can see it in the second photo in this post).

As I was just saying, you have already seen the city, enjoyed an aperitivo and bought a typical Lecce souvenir (I bought myself a tambourine that is part of the traditional dance: the "pizzica".

And after all this, all that was left for us to do was to get ourselves moving a bit, we did this through the traditional dance, "la pizzica", something I hope you will get to see in situ. Personally, it reminded me a bit of the Spanish dance, the "jota".

This dance is very old, and they will tell you that it was a kind of healing dance for spider bites, it has a frenzied rhythm.

Today, of course, people dance "la pizzica" for pleasure and for fun, but it has become a real passion for some, so much so that people know about it even in Asia. A characteristic of this dance, is the handkerchief, an accessory useful for inviting someone to dance.

Every year, during August the Night of Madness takes place (in the town of Melpignano), the biggest festival for regional music in Europe.

If you have followed the advice in this post there's not much left for you to do here, although there is something missing, it almost goes without saying, you must have take a dip in the amazing Salento sea, I absolutely loved it, I have never seen better beaches than those at Gallipoli, one of its beaches is even known as the "Falklands of Salento".

As we had already been on the beaches at Porto Cesareo, which were also very nice, we didn't get near Gallipoli, but I had been on holiday to Gallipoli the year before, and I'm telling you if you're searching for a great beach, it's perfect place.

You can go to a public or private beach, I've been to both kinds, the private ones don't cost a lot, at least not where I've been, "Samsara Beach", has a young crowd due to its ample bar and great music.

I hope that this post has givena bit of help those who were thinking of going here, and to those of you who weren't, I hope it has encouraged you to visit.

“Lu sule, lu mare, lu iuentu, SALENTU”