Twilight Flight

Twilight over Lecce

What is that song about the birds? When the swallows come back to Capistrano. We have discovered the same thing here in Lecce I think. The courtyard is home to at least three kinds of birds. There are the ever-present pigeons. One is nesting across from our kitchen window, and the females are constantly being hassled by the males – they just do not get that “No means NO!” message. Then there are some pretty little black white and red songbirds that hide in the flowering plants cascading down the buildings around the courtyard. Then there are the swallows.

The first warm day when we could sit out on the terrace with a glass of wine before dinner we noticed them filling the skies overhead. They perform an intricate aerial performance every night, trying their best to eat all the flying insects in the area. I am assuming that the twists, sharp turns, and dives are not for my benefit but are using their amazing flying ability to catch insects. Good thing, because there are lots of little insects here and they do not use screens on the windows, so I cheer those swallows on every night. I found it so interesting to watch the swallows perform their aerial ballet every evening.

Sparrows Over the Terrace

One pleasant evening, we were sitting out on the terrace with another glass of Italian wine, and Regis started to get concerned about the swallows swooping closer and closer to her as she sat. I suggested that since we all knew she was a perfect insect magnet that the sparrows were just taking advantage of this fact, but I also noticed that they were indeed coming closer and closer to us, seated on the terrace. Often two or three would sweep down and around the courtyard and then back up into the gathering  twilight.

Suddenly I noticed that one of the swallows swooped down but then disappeared into the wall opposite us. I began watching closer and caught another arc down and then disappear into the space above one of the windows of the apartment across the courtyard. I realized that some of these insect eating birds were roosting for the evening right in the courtyard. The windows all have large stone headers above them and there is a little gap of about an inch above the header. As I watched at least two swallows zoomed down and crawled into these tiny spaces over each window. Then one of them flew low over our heads and into the space above the window used as the door into the apartment from the terrace. Those swallows were not using Regis as a bug attractor, they were upset about us being so close to their nightly roosting spot, and were nervous about trying to get in with us so close. We elected to give them a few minutes of peace and went inside for a while.

The Sparrow's Home

After a while we returned to the terrace for a quiet evening glass of wine and discovered that the aerial display was not over. Now another insect predator had taken over and two bats flicking around the courtyard were snatching up any insects left alive by the swallows.

Lecce after Dark

From Our "Roof" Terrace

Our apartment is nice and quiet, and our terrace looks out on the pleasant vine covered courtyard, so it hardly looks like we are in the middle of the city. It is quiet and other than the owner's daughter who's vocalizations seem to travel everywhere, or the ever present church bells we do not hear much, and who can complain about church bells and children?

Once you open the small door in the two big green courtyard doors, you enter another world. You emerge into the middle of a busy city with crowds of people. During the day it is busy, but go out after dark and it is even worse. You open the door and often have to wait for a break in the crowd to step out.

The Square at Night

Out on the Town

Lecce is a vibrant city at night. When you walk the streets at night you see a whole other world. There are shops, bars, restaurants, and special events you never knew were there. As with many World Heritage Sites, buildings must retain their historical structure and look, so if you want to open a store selling Lecce's Arts and Crafts, a trendy wine bar, or a popular restaurant, you must design it into the ancient original buildings. As a result, signs, displays and windows are often inside once your shutters are closed, and there is no visual evidence your establishment even exists. Many of these shops just do not open during the day, because they realize way more people are out in the evening, no one is around between 2:00 & 4:00, so they wait until 5:00 to open for the day and make their livings after dark.

We found numerous one-time art shows, odd second hand shops, jewelry shops where the owners were making the jewelry right there, pottery shops where the paints and finishes were in jars in a corner, funky restaurants, and hidden wine bars. There was always something new to discover as we wandered the narrow streets  after dark in the yellow glow of ancient street lamps.

Lecce After Dark

Cooking With Aunt Dora

Rolled Veal

What do you give someone who has everything? How about a cooking class in Italy about cooking Italian food? Since our son and his Partner were visiting us in Lecce, we decided to save their birthday gifts until they got to Italy and we gave them Italian cooking lessons (For fun; not because they needed them of course . . .)

The Green Italy Crew

GreenItaly, the tour company we used for a tour of the area with friends, also offered cooking classes. We were so impressed with their service that we decided to go with their offerings; it was close by and seemed like a fun day. The owner offered to pick us up at the Ostuni train station and offered us a quick free tour of the town of Ostuni after dinner.

The Expert Pasta Makers

This was no usual cooking class. We were not in a big fancy “School Kitchen”, we were in Aunt Dora’s farm house. As we pulled up to the obvious working farm, we

Making Pasta

were greeted by the uncle and numerous dogs, who questioned our presence on their territory. The uncle shook everyone hands, but he obviously spoke no English and went about his work on the farm. We were ushered into the house where we met Aunt Dora, her daughter and a friend. Aunt Dora is a retired professional cook from a local B & B, but more than that, she is like our driver’s Mother who we met on the tour, an Italian wife, mother and homemaker, doing all the cooking and preparation of food for the family. Who better to teach us to cook Italian?

We started off preparing veal, which was seasoned, stuffed, and rolled to be gently cooked in homemade tomato sauce from tomatoes grown on the farm. These tomatoes were picked when ripe and left for a week “in a box” to sweeten. Back home I have to add carrot or sugar to my Mexican or Californian tomatoes, but that is not needed with real Italian tomatoes.

Proud Pasta Maker

We then made pasta. Everyone was given a pile of flour and we added water and mixed it to create the pasta dough. Having made pasta myself many times, I know the feel, and Aunt Dora was impressed with my ability – not so much some of the others. Once the dough met Aunt Dora’s exacting standards, it was rolled into long ropes. We then cut it into little pieces and made Orecchiette. This is not easy and takes practice. You use a knife and press and pull it across the piece of dough and onto your finger to create a convex circle of pasta, which is then reversed onto your thumb. It sounds difficult and it is. It took us all a while to get a decent piece of oreccchiette. As we slowly practiced Aunt Dora slickly produced a pile of these little pasta. Fortunately I was working on the same pasta board as she was, so my efforts got mixed with hers and I looked pretty good. Once we had sort of mastered this skill, we were instructed on making Macaroni, which is much easier. You simply cut a small piece of pasta and slide your knife over it, rolling a little cylinder of pasta.

Finally Finished . . .

While Aunt Dora and her helpers finished the veal and cooked the pasta we sat down for an amazing selection of Antipasto dishes, all made with local ingredients by Aunt Dora. Fried zucchini, breaded eggplant, fava bean puree, roasted peppers, artichokes, molded ricotta cheese, salami, and others I do not recall. All were delicious, and I was having serious doubts if I would have room for the actual dish we had worked on, but when it arrived everyone did their best. Of course the meal was lubricated with lots of local wines and someone must have leaked the fact about the birthdays, because desert was a delicious Nutello/chocolate cheesecake.

The Results of our Work

In addition we were served Tangerines from the orchard and we left with a branch of fresh lemons to take with us.

We left for a walking tour of Ostuni, full of Italian food and knowledge of how to make it. Let me know if you want to know how to make oreccheitte, I think I can do a reasonable imitation of Aunt Dora’s pasta. 

Broken Sewer

At the Museum

Tiles Under the Bench

What do you do when everything goes wrong with your dream of opening a restaurant? That is what happened with the family who owns the Museo Archeologico Faggiano. They bought a nice old building in Lecce that they got for a good price because it needed plumbing work. No problem they were renovating anyway . . .Well it turned out that the problems went right back to the actual sewer pipe going to the city sewer. Only problem was they could not find the pipe, so a major digging project was undertaken in the basement. The search for the elusive sewer pipe ended up excavating the entire basement and WAY more. In the process they also uncovered 1000 years of history buried under their house. Under their “bargain” building was a series of natural caves and tunnels containing pottery and artifacts from all the way back to before there was a city here. As well these caves had been used as burial sites.

The dream of a popular Italian restaurant was forgotten and the house became a major archeological site. The family turned their building into a museum open to the public. Many of the major finds such as Greek urns and pottery went to the Provincial museum in Lecce (We went their first actually), and the house was converted so that visitors could explore the various levels of the caves and dig sites.

Going Down . .

This is a private museum, so you do not have wide stairways and fancy displays. Here you climb down rickety stairs to tiny underground caves. The spaces under the house go over two stories down, so you climb way down underground to see the caves used as burial sites 1000 years ago. As you climb down you see how the caves were buried and houses built on top. Underground caves had been turned into cisterns for water storage, but I doubt they even knew that under there were buried long dead Greeks and Romans.

Climbing Up

Then once you came back to the surface you could climb up to the rooftop and tower to look out over the current city of Lecce, and explore the original house with antique furnishings and original building structure. All through the house were pieces of pottery embedded in the plaster and walls, but I suspect this was more for effect than actual historical accurate building methods.

Some Historical Bottles?

As we entered the museum we were met by a little old lady who took our money and directed us to the numbered displays and gave us a pretty good English guide paper. Although she spoke no English she managed to reassure us that we could walk on the glass floor panels revealing the subterranean caves and excavations, and she insured we were following the correct order of displays. Me, who tends to wander on my own as I see things that interest me, was herded back on track a couple of times. Unlike the attendant at the “Provincial” museum where I felt under constant watch, here Grama was only being helpful.

Oh, by the way, the washroom worked fine, so I guess they did finally sort of that plumbing and sewer issue.

Going to Church

View from the roof terrace

I am not a religious person, but for some reason as I travel the world I seem to end up finding churches and cathedrals. My time in Lecce is no exception. For someone who never actually attends church, I spend a lot of my travel finding and visiting them.

I can however justify this seemingly odd inconsistency. I appreciate the artistry and beauty of these buildings. Although they hold no religious significance to me I enjoy seeing the amazing architecture and art work in them.

There are lots of churches here in Lecce and all of them are quite beautiful. They are scattered all over the inner city, and it seems there is one around every corner. As you wander around narrow streets here you will suddenly come across another church. I was told that there are 300 churches in the whole of Lecce, but just in the old walled inner city where I am located I count 20 little crosses on the map indicating a church. Some of them are within a block of each other. I have no idea how a city this size can support 20 churches, yet they all seem to be well maintained, and like so many old churches in Europe many are being restored, hidden behind scaffolding.

As I sit on the terrace outside, I can see the tallest structure in Lecce, the bell tower of the Cattedrale di Lecce on one side and the bell tower of Chiese (church) di Sant’Irene. We haven’t quite figured when and where the bells in these towers ring, but they seem to go quite often. However they seems slightly off, ringing at 18 past or 21 minutes to, but then on one walking trip where I forgot my watch the first four clocks we found had completely different times, none close to correct.

On a walking tour of the old city, we visited at least four major churches, and another was recommended as a worthwhile visit. Just waking straight out to the city gate on the road outside the apartment we pass four churches on the 5 minute walk.

 

All these churches are similar in design, with solid stone structures rather than the tall spires and intricate ornate design of the lofty cathedrals we saw in many of the European cities on our River Cruise. I was told that the Churches in Lecce are excellent examples of baroque architecture. The facade of these churches all feature beautiful carved stone work, but turn the corner to walk down beside them and you see simple stone walls, and at times you will find yourself walking beside a tall unadorned wall and wonder what it is only to turn the corner to find another church. Inside the carved stone work is even more beautiful, but the lack of marble in the area cause many interiors to be painted to look like marble rather than actual marble.

The other day while out on my photo walk for the door knockers, I came across a church built on a corner and the façade was curved to match the street, and created a unique design, and since the door was open I went in to find one of the most beautiful churches in the city.

Well, as Regis says, “Father Art” is off to find another church . . . . .