Boy, were we wrong about Bari!

As mentioned earlier, we are on a bit of pilgrimage to visit San Giovanni Rotondo, the home of Padre Pio, a saint we have been learning about. To get there, you pretty much have to go through Bari, in the Puglia region. As we all learned in grade school, Italy is shaped like a boot. Puglia is the heel of said boot.

Most of what we had heard about Bari was negative. Some said it was a dingy port city of little interest. Others said it was crime ridden and poor. But, after doing some research, we learned there were some interesting churches and other sites, so we decided to spend a day there en route to San Giovanni Rotundo. We weren’t expecting much.

Turns out, Bari, today, is a beautiful city with lovely pedestrian avenuesmagnificent fountainsall of the usual very high end stores found in the expensive sections of Rome and other cities, excellent restaurants, beautiful architecturenice hotels, and a stunning waterfrontwith an excellent public beach.What’s not to love?

The day we arrived we had a great lunch at a seafood restaurant. It featured octopusso we had that first and then inspected the fresh fish they were offering.We chose sea breamand it was excellent. As usual, there wasn’t much left after Leslie Ruth was finished!

That evening we explored old town, the original section of the city. Unlike the newer sections, old town consists of narrow winding streets.We had a great time wondering around, soaking it all in.

The next day, we walked several kilometers along the waterfront, stopping at a museumwith a great collection of paintings, and featuring the works of an artist we had not heard of, Guido di Renzo. Some of his portraits were, in our opinion, spectacular.There were also many works from the 11th through the 14th century which were just hanging there with no glass or rope barriers. Their accessibility was unusual, and, we thought, very enjoyable.

We also visited the Basilica of St. Nicholas(old St. Nick!) where we saw various relics, including wood from the box his remains were transported in when they were brought to Bari from Myra, Greeceby a group of merchants, whose motivation escapes us.

Like so many places in Italy, Bari has built up in layers over the years. In one place, they have preserved a cut in the modern, paved, roadway, revealing the previous road paved in large stone blocks, still showing grooves cut into the pavers by years and years of carriage traffic, and, under that, an even earlier pavement of smaller stones.It was fascinating.

So, it turns out Bari is a wonderful city, well worth the visit, and we were very happy our plans brought us there.