Lecce - big city living in Puglia!

Life just keeps getting better and better. We are reporting from the Centro Storico of Lecce, the 3rd biggest city in Puglia. A delightful city of an agreeable size with a wide array of exceptional pasticcieria's, baroque architecture, and a lively bar scene that only starts to get going past 23:00!

Yesterday we left Santa Maria de Leuca along the spectacular coastal route. As always a few directional issues - nothing in Italy is straight forward. If you are clever enough to figure out the route on your own you shall be rewarded at the end. Minimal traffic, many ups and downs, yet our legs were almost begging for a few hills to test them. We are feeling strong and resilient; che peccato (how unfortunate) that we must return to reality in 10 days time!

We opted to skip a leisurely lunch to ensure we made it to Lecce before nightfall. All was going as planned until 15 km to our destination when an unbearable wind confronted us. My father was rather rational about the whole thing but I on the other hand was not. I completed a triathlon in June in Kent and the wind was incredible for the whole 40km bike portion. I have since had a vehement hatred of wind which clearly isn't useful for the last kilometres into town. We then faced thunder, lightening (and in the words of Chi Coltrane) " I tell you it's frightening!" A freak hailstorm and a few strops later we arrived at our hotel a few kilometres out of town after 105.66km of cycling in one day! A new record.

We ended up spending an extra day in Lecce today, as it is a great little city . We could have cycled on but will leave some mileage to get back to Bari for the next couple days. Again we have found exceptional accommodation at a great price which allowed us to explore the city and get some admin done. It is never easy booking trains in Italy, locating a laundromat, finding sugar free yogurt, but here we are at the end of the day enjoying a fabulous local merlot from a 3L plastic container purchased from an enoteca with all in order. We were stuck in Zara earlier today whilst a hurricane dumped down on the city for a hour. Purchases made and a sight to be seen - 40 Lecce citizens barricading the door to avoid the downpour!

Tomorrow we head towards Ostuni, before making our way back to Bari for Tuesday. Still over a week before we head back to reality or perhaps the disillusion we live in !?!