Olive Groves, Fig Trees and Bug Bites!

A week away at a villa spent lounging under clear blue skies and burning hot sunshine next to a pool never seems to be enough. Ten days would have been ideal! This is how I felt on our last day in our uniquely Puglian trulli located on the outskirts of Alberobello.

In this part of Italy, the countryside is awash with olive groves, as was the grounds of our villa. Here, fig trees grow like weeds and the standard of Italian driving is even more questionable than in the much larger and more northern cities of Milan and Rome.

As has been mentioned in numerous earlier blogs, you are never far from pests, even on holiday. All four of us received numerous bug bites throughout the day and never figured out the cause. Thankfully, we did not have problems with mosquitoes (we were prepared with sprays and plug-in devices), though my husband claims to have squashed two in our bathroom during the early hours of one morning. All the windows had a fine mesh on the outside to deter flying insects and we kept the doors closed throughout the day to keep our trulli cool and to keep out the bugs.

There were lots of ants though on the lovely paving surrounding the pool, benefiting from all the crumbs we dropped on the floor during our snacks. The ants looked distinctively different in Italy, they seemed to have a longer body. On the other hand, some of the flies were really quite tiny.

Yellow jackets were a problem every time we had food or drinks outdoors. Most lunch times we ate outside under a large canopy overlooking our pool. The one wasp, which was the cause of much frustration seemed to be attracted to salami more than anything else, and in particular to the fat on the prosciutto.

Puglia was as beautiful as I had expected. Thankfully this part of Italy is not overflowing with tourists and retains its traditional charm and it means I didn’t have to complain about tourists getting in the way of my photographs.

If you are interested in diving, the town of Polignano a Mare, where we stopped for lunch on our first day, is right on the Adriatic coast, and hosts the Cliff Diving Championships- where crazy people dive of sheer rock faces into the crystal clear turquoise colour of the Adriatic. Its well worth a visit!