The wind is in our face all morning along the coast - Nancy actually found it more challenging than the previous day, but I didn't think it was too bad. My seat is sore, but otherwise I think it's decently doable.
The coast is pretty quiet, one beach was pretty crowded at Torre dell'Orso - land of the bear - but we keep going to about the halfway point in the day and had lunch in San Foca. We found a little coffee shop and finally were able to try a rosticceria - this has been recommended in many towns, but we never made it in time. Basically it's just a place with rotisseries going and you can buy a half or whole rotisserie chicken to eat. Many people get them for picnics, but we just ate ours there.
We also bought some pizza rolled up with different fillings. Nancy bought one that she thought was a Hawaiian pizza with pineapples and bacon, but the pineapples ended up being soggy French fries - not quite the taste creation she was looking for.
The town was pretty dead, so we kept going,
moving away from the coast after that. We took an unpacked road into the nature preserve - it was hot and steamy with eucalyptus plants and it felt like we were in a rain forest. We stopped to climb a watch tower so we could see out over the preserve and take in the scenery.
We went through a tiny fortified town called Acaya with a castle and one little coffee shop open - I had some ice cream and we had our final rest stop of the trip. Most of our fellow travers were also there so we chatted for a bit and then headed into Lecce!! Our hotel is on the outer ring, not in the central old town, so we dropped off our bikes and got ready for the tour we booked for 5:30.
There was only six of us on the tour (including Franz and Iris!) so we got a little orientation on the town, we visited some churches and the Cathedrale and Duomo square. Lecce is famous for its baroque style, which is basically all about grabbing the most attention and being the most ostentatious. There is also a lot of Renaissance decoration with arched doorways and coved ceilings. There is also an amphitheater that they uncovered in the middle of town - like Gladiator style (except she said they never had Gladiator fights there) - it was pretty neat to see how the seat and aisles were set up.
After the tour, we had dinner at Cafe Joyce with the most amazing eggplant parmigiana I've ever had - no breading, just basically a piece of lasagna made of eggplant slices instead of noodles. We polished off 2 bottles of Amativo (Negroamaro/Primitivo blend) and some more cheese and salumi - we ended up not ordering anything else. Then we joined Franz and Iris for a bit and walked home through and now packed streets. We were pretty exhausted and went to bed around 11 - I finally slept through the night!! Jet lag be gone!!
That cheese plate is something from my dreams! Yum!
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