Puglia - Brindisi in November - Lecce

Trains are less frequent on Sundays but enough to get us to our destination for the day - Lecce. We feel pretty relaxed about visiting Lecce because we were there perhaps 15 years ago during a car and camping trip to the Salento area. We think we remember it pretty well so I don't bother with my usual research. We walk towards the historical centre from the train station and then make a mistake. We turn right. This takes us to the least interesting part of the historical centre of Lecce, a lot of graffiti, a little run down, we starting to wonder how come we had been so impressed years ago. Obviously we keep walking and this time we go in the right direction arriving at the beautiful square where there is the Cathedral and bell tower of Santa Maria Assunta. The Cathedral is placed side on to the square so a second ornate facade had been added on that side too. 

The cathedral is a fine example of Lecce Baroque and indeed the whole city is full of palaces and buildings in the Baroque style, also because the local Lecce Stone is soft to work and particularly suitable for this type of sculpture.

We continue our stroll, this time in the delightful area of the historical centre and reach the striking square where there is the Roman amphitheatre and San Oronzo column and the tourist information office. Here I'm a little shocked because they want me to pay for a street map, something which is usually free for tourists in most towns and cities we've visited. I decide to manage without and we continue our walk towards the castle, past some of the usual shops one can find in most European cities. Behind the castle is a market which keeps us busy for a while but fortunately we don't make any purchases.

Lunchtime is approaching and we had a shortlist of two or three options based on TripAdvisor reviews for places which are open according to Trip itself and Google maps. Well, TripAdvisor and Google are sometimes a complete waste of time....all are closed, either permanently (one) or for Sunday (two). Having spent a while actually finding the places lunch is now becoming an emergency. Lecce is famous for its Puccia and in the end we stop at a Pucceria in a very touristy street near the cathedral because we are hungry, there are at least prices clearly obvious, and because Lecce seems more geared to offering a big Sunday lunch than an easily digested un-sleep- provoking snack.

La prelibatezza dal 1941 Pucceria e birra artigianale has a menu shorter than its name - mostly Puccia....

The friendly owners explain the 'history' of the typical puccia leccese, the ingredients of this sort of sandwich taken into the fields by farmers, so the typical puccia contains mortadella, different cooked vegetables in different 'sections' of the puccia, anchovies and special 'ricotta forte'. If you don't like any of the ingredients you can leave it out as they prepare it fresh for you when you arrive. The puccia is eaten slightly warmed/toasted, and costs 5 euros. We add a local craft beer and are satisfied, well, actually we've eaten a sandwich, but it was local, typical and good. More strolling afterwards, it's Sunday afternoon and the historical centre is really really quiet, very few people outside the main throughways, mostly pedestrian, one feels like tiptoeing around the streets warm with sun and houses in the typical similarly warm-coloured limestone. We're in the middle of a city with nearly 100000 inhabitants and on this sleepy November afternoon it's as quiet as our village in the mountains.  We end up near Porta Napoli where we stop for coffee at a sunny table and look through the local papers. No Pasticciotto at the bar though.... and we are in Lecce after all, supposedly home to the pasticciotto. More consultation on the Internet ensues and we discover, to our great joy, that the famous Martinucci Pasticceria of Bari has a cake shop also in Lecce. It is also ideally situated near the Park, Giardini pubblici Giuseppe Garibaldi, which is lucky because Martinucci in Lecce, unlike the one in Bari, is just a cake shop so there's nowhere inside to sit and eat. Fortunately, the gardens are close by so we retreat there to eat the excellent as always pasticciotto, rest and watch the world go by.

After, we have a last wander around and then head back to the station and Brindisi. In the end Lecce was as nice as we remembered it.

Back in Brindisi in the evening we go to the evening mass in the cathedral followed by Vespri. The Cathedral which we had already seen on Friday is dimly lit for the evening service with a quiet intimate atmosphere and the soft melodious male voice of the organist singing the hymns, it's a tremendously peaceful moment that I will always remember and the sensation persists through the softly lit white and now damp streets of the centre as we walk home in the dark.