questo weekend scorso (this past weekend)

So I wrote this post late last week and it deleted itself. Cute. This weekend wasn't too exciting - the G8 was here so everything was closed Friday and Saturday. Sunday we went to the beach, which was cool, but that's a story for another time.

So Saturday we visited two nearby towns - Ostuni ("la citta blanca" - The White City) and Alberobello (literally "beautiful forrest"). It was a beautiful ride there - we must have passed a billion olive trees. Olive trees, for those of you who have never seen one, are completely gnarly looking and beautiful - the trunk wraps around itself and it's all twisted and awesome.

Ostuni is sort of how I picture Greece - all hills and stairs and white. Apparently they paint it all white to keep it cool in the summer. I thought that was pretty neat. Our tour guide, Maria, was really nice. The problem was, though, that she spoke super fast. She'd end every sentence with "Okay?" and Stephanie and I would both nod. We later confessed to each other that we were only picking up every 3rd or 5th word she was saying. Whoops.

Ostuni is mostly known for it's churches. There was one with a really old (I thought she said 24 thousand years but I'm not sure) woman in it. I think that one was my favorite. There was also one with a very significant window - I won't go into details but in the center was baby Jesus holding the world in one of his hands.

Here's a picture of us in Ostuni:



Okay so we weren't in Alberobello for too long because it was kind of dull. It's motly known for it's "trulli" which is a sort of stone hut with a cone roof. They were cute and everything, but that was basically everything there was to see. Here's the picture:



Sunday we took a tour of the Eastern coast and stopped at several beaches. I've never seen water quite as beautiful. I swam in the Adriatic Sea and stubbed my toes on some Adriatic rocks. Awesome!


Adriatic: Conquered!