Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Palese

This is the suburban area of Bari Municipality. Palese is along the southeast coastline of the Italian peninsula. It's primarily a residential area.This place comes alive during the summer. Full of apartments for rents (please don't compare to Monaco, she a poorer cousin mate). It's a favorite with the locals and europeans, primarily because its economical to holidays in the south of Italy.


Summer is really hot, temperatures can raise up to 45 Deg C. Lots of eateries consisting of stand up cafes, pizza parlours and some good restaurants. People holiday here for the sun and beach (which is not much). The coastline is primarily made up of rocks, beaches are closer to Bari. There's not much of scenic places unless you travel Lecce which 200kms away. Rome is about 350kms and Milan about 1000kms.


The scenic coastlines along Palese. Its a small community on the outskits of Bari city which is about 20kms away. Pretty good roads to the city. There's a train station in Palese which is within walking distance. Sunday/Festival days travel by rail, please confirm as services are few & sometimes non existent.


Most roads are narrow, so be careful when u drive & don't drive the italian way, please, not good for your health.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

An Italian Life


From June 2007 to May 2008, i had the pleasure of residing & working in Italy. I walked on the land of the great Roman Empire, where Ceaser's Chariots roared like the Lion, the Gladiators thrilled the Collaseau and Nero's violin burned the Empire.It is a beautiful but contradicting country. There's the North & then there's the South, sounds like US back in the civil war.

This story is about the landscape of the places i have been & the people whom i made friends. Italians prefer to be recognized from which region they are from. There are the Roman decendants(Northern Provinces) and the Southerners whose forefathers came from Albania, Greek, and modern day Eastern Europe) and not forgetting the Gypsies (known as Roma(Romanians).

I worked & resided in the region of Puglia, which is south east of Italy, facing the Adriatic sea. You could almost see Greece during the summer from the coastline @ Bari. Bari is largest municipality in the region of Puglia. Best time to visit the south of Italy is late spring to early summer (the crowds are less and still you can get a tan). The tourist start to come in end May/early July for the summer holidays.

I will show places on the south Italy rarely seen in tourist brochures. In my next blog, i will take you to places i have been. They stopped using the Lira as the official currency, it's the Euro now.