Walked around a deserted Lecce today, lovely little historic quarter but didn't really get to sample the atmosphere as all of Italy goes into shut down mode around lunch time especially on a Sunday. Made it to Bari and bought our ferry tickets by 6pm which gave us a couple of hours to grab food before boarding. Bari is lovely, we wished we'd had more time here, maybe we were lucky with the time of day but there were so many people out and about and we found a g...

Have come down to the heel of the country to visit Lecce mainly but as we could find no campsites open, we ended up sleeping in a car park last night somewhere near the Adriatic coast. After much searching again this morning, in the light of day, we still couldn't find an open site so we headed west to the other coast to Gallipoli (not the Turkish town obviously) and it has been our saviour. We found a huge site for about 1,000 people but with only 3 of us ther...

Matera is famous for two things: being the most extensive troglodyte community in the Mediterranean and for the fact that Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of Christ' was filmed here. It is a very impressive sight and probably the best view is from out of the city up on the hill overlooking the ravine, thanks to the Lonely Planet for that advice (it is also the place where the crucifixion part of the film was set.) After seeing our fair share of churches and cathedrals...

Tried to head as far north as possible today on our way to Matera but we didn't quite get there so we stopped at Metaponto aka: a ghost town. Campsite was bizarre and couldn't have had more bling at the front gate if it had been owned by Ali G himself. What a nightmare, but it had electricity and showers and in these days of open campsite drought, we really can't be too fussy. There was a beach nearby, not as snazzy as this generic 'Beach' photo, but it did ha...

Waiting for the rain to clear before heading up Mt Etna.