Puglia Travel Guide: Beaches, Burrata and Our Summer Trips

Puglia is one of our favorite places for a summer escape. In this episode, we’re sharing why. We’ve explored this beautiful region twice, staying everywhere from Torre San Giovanni’s sandy beaches to Polignano a Mare’s dramatic cliffs.

In this episode, we’ll take you through some of Puglia’s best spots, including:
 Torre San Giovanni
 Locorotondo (sleeping in a trullo!)
 A burrata tasting you won’t forget
 The iconic Lama Monachile beach
 Grotta Palazzese (yes — that cliffside cave restaurant)
Gallipoli’s old town
Ostuni’s whitewashed streets
Alberobello’s UNESCO trulli
Bari Vecchia
An escape room surprise in Polignano

Whether you’re planning your first trip or returning for more, this is your guide to a perfect Puglia summer.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome back. I'm Lisa. And I'm Aaron. And this is the Getaways Podcast. How many ways do you think I can say getaways podcast? Well, I can emphasize all sorts of different syllables in it.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

The getaways. I'm gonna keep this in there. Oh anyway. So summer has come to the Netherlands for three days only, but I don't like it.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Kind of two and a half because we only had one half day on Thursday of heat.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

I laugh at us now because coming from Italy in the summer and from California, uh it's 80 and I'm I'm dying. I think it's way too hot.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Well, the thing about the Netherlands, which is different than Italy, is that it's so abnormal and it's so humid.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

It's yeah, you just walk around glistening with just a layer of sweat on you all the time. It's bad. It's bad. It's bad in the house because you don't really need air conditioning in the Netherlands, so there's not a lot. We don't have air conditioning. Right. It's only a problem, what maybe five days a year. Yeah, but I don't glisten.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

I just look like I just stepped out of the shower and it's not cute. And it's not cute at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

But it's 80 degrees. That's uh 28 to my fellow Europeans. I'm not a European, but to everybody but American, it's 28 degrees. To my fellow Americans, it's 80, and and I'm dying.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Yeah. All right, so let's talk about somewhere that is really hot.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

This is our last summer beach podcast for the season.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

I'm kind of sad for the season, but I'm sure we will have more to come next season. Um, all right, head to Puglia today. Puglia is the heel of the boot of Italy. On one side you've got the Adriatic Sea, and on the other side you've got the Ionian Ionian Sea. It is a special place. Like there's nowhere we've been in Puglia where we would like, yeah, no, I don't think I'll go, I wouldn't want to go back there.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

No. So we'll talk about all the places we've been. We are leaving in a month to go back to Puglia for the summer, and we're going to the furth the furthest south you can go on the heel. So we didn't do that before.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Which is what's been recommended to us by Italians. Isn't that where Claudia told us?

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Claudia goes, we're not going quite as far as she does, but we're going to Toronto to start, which is really it's down down at the very, very bottom.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

But we'll save that for next season.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Yes. We're gonna have a lot of part twos.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Um, all right. So let's dive in. So we've been there twice so far.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

And the first time we were based in Torre San Giovanni, which I loved that town.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

I loved the Solento, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Celinto. Um, but we it's a great, it's a tiny little town. Tiny town, but it has a great place where it just looks out on the water and there's tons of restaurants. We had great dinners there.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Yeah, they have like in the summer, because it's a beach town, they have like a little fair set up all summer long for the kids. We had a favorite pizza place. Yeah, and oh, I loved it. I know I got bored there for a minute.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Yeah, well, so okay, so where our Airbnb was was kind of in between where the town was and the beach. And but we could walk to the beach and less than five minutes, yeah. And the beach is huge, like the sand is really wide, and it is shallow forever.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

And lots of places for public people to lay out their towels, but also lots of serviced beaches because it was long, it was really long and wide and shallow for a long time. And it was probably the first time we really experienced like the turquoise aquamarine, like clear water because it was our first. I mean, we went to the Amalfi Coast, but it's different. Yeah, the beaches are very different because they're sand in Puglia and we're sand people, I think. Well, you're not.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

I well, I'll I just like the water, yeah. But you can walk out so far and you'll be like knee deep.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

And I think we've talked about this before, but a lot of people just do that and then play games or chalk to their friends and whatever. But if you go past there, you basically have the seat of yourself, but you have to go far.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Yeah, no, it's beautiful. So let's talk about our Airbnb because it's still you can still rent it. So I it is so it's like um little almost townhouses, wouldn't you say? Stacked townhouses or duplexes because we were on the bottom floor and then somebody was above us and it was like stacked that way all the way across.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Yeah, so and I think it's pretty standard that you can get like a you know, a townhousey kind of place that where you have a little bit of everything where you've got a little bit of a yard, we had a washer, you know, outdoor shower and super close to the beach for not a lot.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

No, I'm gonna put it on the website, but I like maybe$120 a night.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Yeah. Um, so very affordable. And like I said, you could walk to the town from there where there was a great fish market where we used to go and get all of our mussels and clams and calamari for seafood pasta, and you know, and then like I said, the whole area for where restaurants was sort of on this big like platform. And then down below there, they had those all those pools, remember? Yeah, like when the tide would come in, there were like these little natural pools, and it was like having your own little jacuzzi, basically. And like we sat in there one night, it was really, really nice.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

I will say that we booked it for 10 nights, I believe. We spent three nights away because we spent one night in Naples. And then we decided, and thank goodness, we decided to take a side trip on the way back to Puglia from Naples, and we stopped at Matera, which we're gonna get into on a whole nother episode, but that's why we were gone for three days. So we really only spent probably seven days at this. This before we learned about taking four and five week vacations.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Well, and it was also before we realized that the whole point is to not be busy every second.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

You know, that we can do stuff and walk around without and like then take a nap.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

But yeah, no, I loved that area.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

We didn't venture far from that area when we were there. We did go to, I don't know how where the stressor goes, but we went to Gallopy. Gallop Gallopy, which was a really cute town. Yep. And Dylan got those um fish slides.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Those creepy fish slides.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

It looks like a it looks like he stuck his foot in a fish and his toes came out the mouth.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Yeah, and they squeaked every time he took a step. It was great, really weird. But there's tons of little towns like all around that whole area, and all have great food, all have great beaches.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

What I will say, because if you know me, you know grocery stores are important to me. This was the first time we really went to a beach other than the Amalfi coast, and uh I encountered what like small beach town grocery stores were, which I love.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

I did not like it. Yeah. Before we go any further, I'm just gonna make a general comment on dogs in the south of Europe. And that is if you bring your dog anywhere on the southern beaches, in whether it's in France or in Italy, I'm sure Greece is the same and Croat. Did I do a program in Croatia? I don't think I did. But anyway, Lachmania is a sand flea and it is deadly to dogs, and it's a very slow and brutal killer. So if you take your dog, make sure that you are you can get a shot for it, but vets don't always agree whether or not that's efficient. But um, Cash did the shot. Rex wears um next guard spectra internally, and then he has to wear a flea collar in addition in the summer when we're at the beach, just to completely safeguard him. Words of the wise, you definitely want to be aware of that if you are traveling with your dog. All right, back to the fun stuff.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Okay, so that's basically that was basically our first experience in Puglia.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Lots of well, I got the pizza with burata all the time there because burata is from Puglia. And we'll talk about that more in a minute. But anytime you're anywhere in Puglia, eat the burata.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

All right, so we went on our second time. We went to Puglia in 2021.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

And we stayed on Airbnb in Puglia Nano Amare, and it is just a really beautiful town on the sea, obviously, and it's got probably one of the most famous beaches in Puglia. It does, which is it's called Lame Manchiele, and that's the beach that it's a tiny little beach, but it's surrounded by cliffs, and the water is you can see pictures on the internet of sort of up and above, so that you can see it from the sea level.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Because the town is on one side of it, on top of the cliff.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Uh-huh. And there's like a little walkway that you can on one side where you can kind of get a bird's eye view of it, and it's just stunning. And then there's a little like restaurant and service area off to the side, but most people just go and put their towels down. So completely beautiful. We didn't spend a ton of time there because it is crowded, but we definitely, when we did go, we went and sort of out past so that um we were a little past the crowds. Certainly something to see. And then the best part was the cliff jumping.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Yeah, Dylan loves jumping off the cliffs there. He wasn't the strongest swimmer at that point, so he's wearing a little floaty ring around him the whole time.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

There was like the tiniest floaty ring, and he crammed himself in it to so he could jump.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

And he was the youngest kid up there, but all the people were so kind to him and they let him go. But he loved it, he had the best time.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Yeah. But my favorite thing about that stop was the food.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Oh, the food was good. The food was good.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Two of my favorite things are there. One is the octopus sandwich from Pescaria. Pascaria, which is right kind of in the like main square of the city. And then the other is the coffee.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

At Bar Turismo was the bar, and it's called what is Cafe Special. Is that what it's called?

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Especiale. Is that what it's called? Yeah. But it's it's espresso and amaretto. Uh-huh. And that's it. And cream. And cream, I think, yeah. But you guys, it's life-changing coffee. Like we would want to get them like five times a day. And I'm only a morning coffee drinker, but I would think about it all day long. It was so unbelievably delicious.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

We will for sure be stopping there on our way down.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yeah. We went on a boat trip with Katie too, didn't we? Yeah, we've done two boat trips out of there, which are lovely.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

They take us into some caves. You get to drive by the there's a famous restaurant. I don't know what it's called.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Grotta Pellas et C. Which is funny because it's all over Instagram. And when we saw it, it's as stunning as the pictures, if not more. But we we got a word to the wise that that's not the best place to eat.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

No, apparently the food's not great, and they charge you an arm and a leg.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Yeah. So we haven't been there, so we can't say firsthand, but that's the rumor. But the other thing about that area, it well, I guess all of Puglia, but they have really, really, really great markets. And you can get, you know, there's just people out on the street selling food, and then there's goods too. You got sunglasses there.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

I got the best sunglasses.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

And then they have the um taraleli. Oh, yeah. The the ring crackers.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

They're like thick and round. Yeah. You can stick your little tiny finger in them.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

And they are and crispy. They're very cracker consistency. And they're everywhere, and they come in all different flavors. Like you could have garlic or onion or you know, like whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

You need something to drink with them though, because they they stick to the roof of your mouth.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Well, and I would say a cheese with them.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

You know, probably like a hard cheese. But they're they're really good and really worth checking out.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Um, all right. So other areas that we've been, we gotta talk about the tr the trulies, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:02

So yeah, um, well, we went to two towns that had trulies.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Um, we stayed in a truli in Loco Retondo, I believe is what it's called. And um, that town is super cute. Really small. But remember there was a wedding going on when we were there. And it's it's a Stoonie is called the White City, but Loco Rotondo is a white city too.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

I think even more maybe.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

I mean, everything is white. It was so cool. It was just so and it's small, but we found a great pizza place upstairs.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Pizza place where you had to like, it felt like you were walking into somebody's house and then you went upstairs and there was a big patio, and there was like laundry hanging behind you. And but I mean it was really, really good food and felt very authentic and cool.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

All of these restaurants and experiences will be up on the website, so don't fear. Um, but yeah, there was a wedding going on, and so we were like, and the streets are narrow, so we were kind of like maneuvering cars and wedding. Yeah, no cars.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

No cars. It's all walking, which is how it stays white, I guess. Um, but and also just like pristine.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Yeah, so clean. And no tourists. I didn't feel like there are any tourists. So they're that is one of the the towns that right outside is a like a village of trulys. And I'll let you explain what a true a truela.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

A truela is okay. So truula would be the individual and true lee would be like multiple, but they were originally built. I don't even remember where we learned this, but they were originally built, they're built built out of bricks, which is kind of unusual, but they were done out of bricks so that they could be taken apart and moved when they needed to. And they have they're usually round, at least most of it. And then they have sort of a peaked roof on top of the round.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

It's like a cone.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Yeah, yeah. So they really architecturally they're really interesting. And the roof just pops right off. Yeah, the roof, they you know, it's all it's all movable.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Because if you don't have a roof on it, you don't get charged taxes, right? So they would just take off their roof.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

Oh, I don't remember that part.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

I I'll I'll figure out the story and put it on there because I think she just made that up.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

I might have. I like it. Um, but I thought it was it was originally farmers that were moving with the crops.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Oh, see, I thought it was taxes.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Okay, well, it's probably I'm probably right, but we can confirm.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

We'll put it on the website and it will say who's right.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Um but they're really, really cool and interesting, and they're um they tend, you know, they're kind of out of the city a little bit. Um, but there's little bunches of them.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

There are, and because they're circular, the there's it's not like there's tons of windows, they stay very cool on the inside. It's almost like sleeping in a cave.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Well, and again, all white.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Yeah. And um, so we stayed in a village, like a whole community of trulies, and we had a pool.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

The pool was for the whole thing, but nobody was ever there.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

No.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Um, we stayed just one night, I think.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Two nights, maybe two nights, I think. I loved it. Yeah, no, it was really nice. And it was great for the dog, too, because there's plenty of where places to walk. There's, I mean, the property was big and farmy, so you know it's it's nice.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

So I would say if you were wanting to go and not spend on the upper side for a truly, go to Loco Retondo because it's less touristy, less known. But the main, the big tourist, uh famous place is called Alborello, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:16

And that's like UNESCO, like that's the place that everyone thinks of when they think of Trullies.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

And there's Trullies, it's a great town, it's a lot bigger.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

It's very touristy, but there's a reason for that, and that's because it's incredibly charming and it's a really good place for pictures, for shopping, and for eating.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Yeah, I agree. Then um, another place you have to go is Ostoony. That's the white city.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

That's considered the white city, yeah. And it is very, very steep, but again, really cool city, a lot bigger.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

It's a lot bigger, yeah. But not big, but it's a lot bigger than the other places we've been talking about.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Yeah, because we thought we had seen it all, and then I walked down this little hill, and like there was a whole huge big shopping area, food area.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Yeah, it's great, it's great. And and down the hill, probably a 20-minute drive from a stoony, because a stoonie's on a uh mountain almost, is at the beach for a stoonie, which is beautiful. It's a great beach. Yeah, it's a fantastic beach. So I would definitely suggest that as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Yeah. You definitely need a car in these areas. 100%.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

I don't even think trains go into Puglia, do they?

SPEAKER_01 15:20

I don't well, I'm sure something knows like in the Bari. But um, but yeah, no, you you definitely need a car here. And like even that, even you know, the beach is right down the hill from Astuni, but there's there's no way without a car.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Now, just because we've taken a lot of trips and I can't remember everyone, did we do any wine tastings in Puglia? I don't think so. We're gonna have to do that this summer.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

But you know what we did do? It wasn't a wine tasting.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

No, well, you guys did more than I did, but yes, it was tasting indeed.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

A lot of tasting. Uh, it was a barrada cheese farm. So it was like the cows were there, and then the cheese factory factory, like factory, it's not a factory, it's a big giant room, but it was it was so good. Like we did the whole tour of the farm, and then Dylan, Katie, and I went in. We had Rex with us, so Lisa just stayed outside and tried to find shade because it was balls hot. And we went in and we got to see how they made birata, we got to taste the birata inside, and then the best part of the whole tour was they called it a tasting, but it was not just a tasting, it was a meal for seven days.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

They brought us trays and trays and trays and trays of food, and mostly cheese, a lot of charcuteries, but but yeah, there was also some meats and breads and the crackers and wine and wine. And I had they had to roll me out. Um I got so sick, I ate so much cheese. I mean, it was and but but don't think of that as a bad thing because she enjoyed every second of it. It was just hard to stop because it was so good and so fresh, and it was up, it was like 50 euro a percent.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

It was nothing. I'll put that on the site because that I recommend to everybody.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Which I mean, that seems like a lot, but the experience and the amount of food and the freshness of the food and the amount of wine.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

It was it was it's it's definitely like it's a core memory. Yeah, it was so good.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Yeah, so that is that was definitely a highlight, and I didn't even get to do the whole thing. Um they also have ostriches there.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Yeah, I don't like ostriches, they scare me. Um and then we did an escape room when we were there, not at the the tasting, but while we were in that part of Puglia.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Yeah, which is uh unlike anything else we've done.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

We'd like to like uh always have something. I mean, Dylan likes to go to the beach, but especially now he's almost 18 and he's exclusively fine going to the beach. But when he was younger, we like to also provide activities that he enjoyed, like you know, escape rooms, bounce places. So we went to this escape room and it was it was in a mobile home trailer. Trailer.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Yeah, it was like a like a hitch trailer, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 18:08

Oh, yeah, because he could take it. It was fun, it was really smart.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Yeah. Aaron said that it's for Dylan, but we all like doing different stuff and breaking up the day. Yeah, you know, so but yeah, no, that was fun. That was fun. Okay, so then Bari, do you should we save Bari for our next season?

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Yeah, we'll save Bari. I will just say that Bari has great food and it's a cool bigger town in Puglia. So it's a definitely must go, but I don't have enough to talk about yet. So we'll we'll we'll come back to that next season.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

So takeaways from Puglia have a car, eat birata. Eat birata. If you have a dog, make sure you're protected against lachemania.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Drink a lot of lemon cello. Drink is just lemoncello from there? No, it's from the Amalfi Coast, but lemon cello is good everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Well, that's true. Um, also drink coffee.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

And Puglian wine is good.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Yeah. No, it's very good. And just enjoy the beach because it's so incredibly beautiful and relaxing.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

And I would say Puglia is a very it's a slow vacation place, destination.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Well, and in a weird way, I kind of think of it as the most uh Italian authentic place because it is like where families go and just like chill on the beach. Yeah. All right. I think that's our Did we miss anything in takeaways? No, I think that's it. All right, go to Puglia. That's what we're saying.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

All right, well, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Uh, check out the website at www.thegetawayswithaze.com. I'll make sure to list all the restaurants or where we stayed and all the experiences that we did. And we'll see you next time. Thanks. Bye. Bye.