Italy 2022: Lecce

Today's activity had us leaving Bari by train and travelling to the southern town of Lecce, that has often been described as the 'Florence of the south'. I think that this term is misleading: it's more like the 'Siena of the south', as the buildings remind me (at least) of those in Siena. After arriving in Lecce following a boring train ride of 100 minutes, we took a taxi to the old city. The first thing that we saw was the staggering Roman amphitheatre, almost completely intact.

After walking around this, we began an investigation into the alleys of the old city; we didn't have a map so we simply followed intuition (and other tourists, to see where they went). To some extent, our path was defined by the amount of shadow, as it was very hot. 

After wandering around the lanes and admiring the architecture, we had a late lunch at the Volo restaurant; when we arrived, there were people sitting outside but we elected to sit inside (and were the only people to do so). Apart from the quality of the food, the decor is very interesting, and it can be seen that a great deal of effort has been placed into making this restaurant a fine place to eat. The restaurant could seat maybe 100 people (there's a second floor) although I don't know when so many people would come all at the same time. As it was hot outside, I didn't have much of an appetite and so chose to have a typical Salento-region soup; there were various vegetables mixed in this but the only one that I identified was probably spinach (two nights in a row!). As can be seen, I drank water, whereas my wife splurged on a glass of red wine (primitivo - I don't think this means 'primitive'!) and a fillet of sea bass. 

After leaving the restaurant, we began to make our way back to the amphitheatre where the taxis are supposed to be, but this time via a different route than the one that we took in the morning. It helps having an inertial navigation device in my head.

Walking down one lane as chosen by the hand of serendipity, I saw the 'statue' that is pictured on the left. The sign behind it says Claudio Riso which made me stop and think for a minute. Riso means rice, but that's not the reason; then it clicked: for a few days before our departure, I had been watching videos* on YouTube about Bari and Puglia, and one of these (which of course I can't find now) had a segment inside the workshop of a craftsman who makes statuettes out of papier mâché (I vaguely remember doing something similar in primary school, although of course on a much lower level). Once having stumbled upon this treasure, we had to go down into the workshop, or rather into the display section of the workshop (the 'work' part is off-limits), enthusing and admiring the various statuettes. No prices were displayed, which is a bit off-putting. After a few minutes, Claudio (presumably) came out to talk to us (the video showed three old men, and Claudio is younger than I am). 

After gushing about the quality of his work, we asked about prices. The cheapest was about 60€ and the most expensive around 250€ - these were of Christian figures and so not interesting to us. Some of the statuettes had 'props', like a guitar or accordion; these extras made those statuettes very expensive. As my wife had arbitrarily set a price ceiling of 100€ - and this was before we knew how much the figurines cost - we didn't have too much choice in what to buy (there was no doubt that we would buy something). In the end we picked a figurine of an Italian dancer (shown below) dancing the pizzica, not the tarantella as I had assumed (this dance was shown in one of the YouTube videos, probably the same one mentioned above, and was also the rhythm chosen by the 'street artist' outside the fort two days ago). This was packed very securely and I hope that the lo-cost air flight will not damage it.

Then back to the amphitheatre, a taxi to the train station then 'home' after another boring train ride.

* I finally found the video that I watched before we went to Italy. The segment with Claudio Riso starts at 4:57 mins within the video and lasts for 3 minutes.