Italy | TRAVEL
‘You don’t want to go there in winter, all it does is rain’, ‘The roads are terrible and the drivers are even worse’, ‘You won’t find anywhere to stay, everywhere will be shut’. These same comments kept appearing on Facebook groups and chats with friends whenever we suggested including southern Italy on our winter trip. However, we are not ones to follow the crowd so we took the plunge and spent six weeks there last winter.
We arrived at the port of Vlorë in Albania at the end of November (by coincidence it was their Independence Day so a big street party was taking place), ready for the five-hour ferry crossing to Brindisi in southern Italy. After a smooth but delayed crossing, we arrived into Brindisi very late, but fortunately there is a free sosta not far from the port, which gave us a quiet night.
We had a rough plan to explore the south of the mainland for a couple of weeks, head to Sicily for Christmas and then spend another two weeks heading north before our ferry back to the UK. It was exciting to set off the next morning to explore an area that neither of us had visited before, even if the weather was a bit dull.
We started in the pretty little whitewashed village of Ostuni, which was lovely to wander around in peace and quiet and visit one of the few cafés that were. A short drive took us to Polignano a Mare, famous for Red Bull cliff diving competitions. A little cold at this time of year but still worth a visit. In the summer it must be incredibly busy, but we were able to park overnight on the seafront and have the place to ourselves.
