Italy 2022: pre-flight check

A major impediment to taking a holiday has been removed, now that the Covid-19 travel restrictions have been lifted. Aligned with this is the fact that my wife will be having surgery on her foot soon, so now seems to be the time to reacquaint ourselves with Italy. Somehow the name 'Bari' was floated - I think that it came from the travel agent - but once I looked into it, Bari became not only a possibility but a definite location. On the map below it's approximately where the red circle is. 

As one can see, Bari is in the south of Italy, on the Adriatic coast, and far away from most of the well-known Italian cities. Not very many people here seem to have heard of Bari*, which in a sense is a good thing, as we won't be hearing Hebrew for a week. Also very interesting is the fact that Rick Steves' 2019 guidebook for Italy stops at Naples/Sorrento/Capri, ignoring Puglia province (in which Bari is situated) as well as Sicily.

We are flying with Ryanair, which is going to be an experience in itself and the major source of apprehension. They fly to and fro once a week on Saturdays only. Once we had the flight sorted out, we could begin working on where to stay; as we had only a few days prior to flying, most places were booked out. Fortunately I was able to snag a very good looking flat in the old town from Monday till Saturday; we'll stay in a hotel for the first two nights and transfer on Monday morning.

Due to various pressures on Sunday when we were working on this, I actually booked for the wrong week! Although the penny dropped quite quickly, it seemed at one stage that Booking would not return our payment, but fortunately that was all sorted, and this morning I saw that my credit card had indeed been credited with the double payment (i.e. the money has been returned).

We're going to play this holiday loose and easy, primarily because of my wife's waning walking abilities, about which I have written probably on every holiday. Fortunately it seems that our flat is in a very good location so there won't be that much walking. 

I didn't notice this before but it's almost exactly ten years since we were in Dubrovnik (a little later in June 2012) and if Dubrovnik is the pearl of the Adriatic, then Bari, almost opposite to Dubrovnik on the other side of the sea, is at least a ruby of the Adriatic. Basically all we want is sea, an old city and a chance to relax a little. I'm sure we'll get all that and more. 

[Incidentally, my previous blog about Senecio did get sent to me automatically, so the hypothesis that blogs with pictures don't get sent has just been falsified.]

* Later on, we discover that two of the families living in the next-door building were in the Bari area at the same time as we were, although we didn't meet.