Today started off the same as Tuesday: get up, have breakfast, get sorted, go to train station, catch 10:02 train to Lecce. But this time we didn't ride to the end of the line; instead we got off at Ostuni, which is midway between Bari and Lecce. Ostuni is often called 'the white city', as many of the walls in the old city are painted with lime (coincidentally I was reading about lime the other day at the Molecule of the Month page). Once off the train, a waiting taxi took us up to the centre of the old city, and before we had time to catch our breath, a brash young man offered to take us on a tour of Ostuni with a "tuk-tuk".
Once the breathtaking tour had finished, we decided to have a cup of tea in a nearby cafe. As we did, storm clouds came into view: it started raining again, but this time the rain developed into a complete downpour for about half an hour that left us and all the other patrons of the cafe stranded until the rain eased. Strangely enough, as soon as the rain started, the umbrella sellers appeared; this time we succumbed and bought a big umbrella for 10€ - it's a seller's market. We used the time that we were stranded in order to eat a pizza - big enough for both of us and costing only 7€ (i.e. 3.5€ each), when a cup of tea costs 3€ and there's a cover charge of 3€.
Eventually the rain eased off and we could leave our shelter, aiming for a side street holding various shops. We bought a few items in a shop selling agricultural produce - mainly olive oil and various wines - as well as some ceramics in another shop. On and off the rain was still falling and my throat began itching a little.
When we had finished shopping, we returned to the main square (Liberty Square) where we bumped into our guide from before. We asked him to phone the taxi driver who drove us in the morning (he helpfully gave us his card after the ride in order that he might take us back) as there were no other taxi drivers there. I think that most of the visitors in the old city arrived there by bus from the small train station, or they came in their own cars. The driver appeared after a few minutes and took us back to the station. Fortunately we had to wait only a few minutes for the train that would take us back to Bari.
Once in Bari, we bought some ceramic unicorns for our grand-daughters, that I had seen the day before when wandering around. Then we went home for some sorely needed tea. Then it was up and out again: I wanted to buy - or at least look for - 'the best chocolate in the world'. The mini-market in which I had bought food barely had chocolate at all, so I was looking for other places. Google maps showed me a supermarket not far away and a shop called Caputo Dolciumi that also was not far away. The supermarket didn't seem to have chocolate (and there was a big queue there), but the other shop - that turned out to be at the opposite end of our block, i.e. two minute's walk away - sold only chocolate. My eyes fell on some promising chocolate; at first I picked up several bars of similar chocolate, but then I considered that it might be more prudent to buy one bar of each candidate chocolate and taste it at home. Just as well as none of the chocolates was what I was looking for. I went back there and showed them a photo of the chocolate that I was looking for; they didn't have it but they did have some other mint chocolate that I have yet to taste.
When I was wandering around looking for the supermarket, one of the lenses of my reading glasses fell out. Fortunately I found it and put it in my pocket. When I came back to the flat, my wife put it in place but we didn't have a screwdriver with which to tighten the screw that holds the lens in place. So I had to go out again, looking for an optimist optician. I was sure that I had seen one but I couldn't remember exactly where - it turned out to be just after the supermarket. There they kindly fixed my glasses - without which I wouldn't have been able to write all this (or rather, see what I had written).
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