Traveling to Manfredonia!(tm) - It's a Manfred kind of place! (Boots in the Oven)

Another travel day ahead of us, we packed up our bags and a scrummy picnic lunch and caught a midmorning train, heading north to Bari.

The train went through olive orchard after olive orchard. I've never SEEN so many olives, and we live in Tuscany! These were very occasionally interspersed with a field of wispy, fernlike fennel or cabbagey artichokes. But mostly, olives.

The train was a regional service, so it stopped at lots of little dusty stations miles from the actual towns they served. In each, our conductor got off and gave a small package to men waiting at the station. Spies?

When we started to get hungry, we broke out our lunch, all from the nice grocer next to the hotel. A small bunch of the hung, preserved tomatoes, two delicious sandwiches made on two different varieties of a local olive bread called pucce, some pickles, and a bottle of insanely wonderful rosato from the Salentine Peninsula (the heel).

Everything was very tasty, but the sammiches required a bit more attention to detail than we're used to - they were full of teeny olives that still.had.their.pits. OMG. The record for number of pits in one bite was 6, held by Husbear, so this wasn't just a couple of olives here and there.

Our train arrived in Bari, but we weren't going to be staying there for long. We bought bus tickets from a tabaccheria just across from the station and hopped the city bus out to the airport. It turned out to be packed with highschoolers, making out while older women looked on uncomfortably.

Our destination was actually the rental car agencies near the airport, and after signing an entire sheaf of papers and declining some insurance while taking others, we were given the keys to...

A SMART FORTWO!

This was actually perfect for us, as it was just the right size to fit the two of us and our luggage. The rental deal we had through Thrifty, both times we rented cars on this trip, was just for a Smart Car - so we were never sure exactly what we were going to get (two-door? Four-door? Hatchback sedany-thing? Novelty tiny fun-car?) when we showed up at the counter.

So, we shoehorned ourselves into the ForTwo and started making our way up the coast. We wanted to avoid the autostrada and see a little of the countryside, which meant we got lost in the small towns of Palese, Santo Spirito, Giovinazzo, and Molfetta - but whatever, we were on our way! With fading light!

We eventually did find a larger road and took it up to the one town we knew we wanted to stop in - Trani, home to a portside cathedral billed as beautiful.

Arriving in town, we rapidly ran out of signs directing us to the cathedral, and when we saw a large building on the waterfront we pointed the car towards it.

WRONG.

We took some pictures of the pretty monastery/church anyway, and then left in the direction of the port we could now see in the distance.

Trani's cathedral is dedicated to St. Nicholas the Pilgrim (from whom I learned that pellegrino means pilgrim!), and it certainly does have a striking location right by the edge of the water.

The sun was setting, and the golden light reflected off the marble in that way that will always make me think of Italy.

If you follow the curve of the spit of land around, it comes to yet another of the Swabian Frederick the II's 13-th century castles. I was seriously starting to get more than a little bored by these castles - they are everywhere, really everywhere, and to my untrained castle-viewing eye, they all look about the same. This one was used as a prison until not too long ago.

The entrance to the cathedral is around, through a side door, past a portal with what appeared to be some extra-old graffiti.

When you go in the side door, you descend a bunch of steps into a crypt area underneath the curch.

We wandered for a little while, unable to find the door into the actual church (kind of a day of being lost, either in the car or on foot. I think I'm finally learning to take it in stride), but we eventually found a small door in a corner that led us up into the massively gray structure.

The whole floor used to be a mosaic, but it's just about gone other than some fragments up by the altar. Otherwise, it's just spare and huge. One of the biggest we've been in down here. It was certainly quite different from the baroque in Lecce - but I actually think I prefer the flights of fancy shown by those churches. Of course, the one in Trani is quite a bit older - this one was started in 1097 and completed sometime in the 13th century.

Back to the car, we resolved to drive straight through to Manfredonia, our stop for the night.

Yes. Manfredonia. It's named after one of Frederick the II's kids, and is perhaps the funniest town name I've seen in Italy. It sounds to me like a theme park based on the life of a man with enormous mustaches. And it's in desperate need of a town theme song - I think if this were the States, it would have the tagline "It's a Manfred kind of place!" on the "Welcome to Manfredonia!" signs. But, it certainly needs at the very least an exclamation point and trademark symbol, which I will happily give it through the end of this post.

I was really excited to go to Manfredonia!™ , because with a name like that, it's got to be great, right?

Right?

We checked into what seems to be one of the only hotels in town - on the outskirts, called Hotel Sipontum. For 45 euros a night, we could forgive the paper-thin walls.

After unloading the bitty car, we drove the little remaining way into Manfredonia!™ and found a parking place near the town's one real major tourist attraction.

A castle left by Frederick II. See what I mean? Everywhere. Husbear was at least happy to have something to photograph, but I was seriously underwhelmed by the continuing stream of castles and churches.

Oh, then we found a pretty church with a mosaic.

Our picnic lunch having been hours before, we started the search for a place to eat. We had two guidebook recommendations - 1. closed and 2. $$$, so we went looking for a place we were told about by the hotel. Closed.

Hrm.

Now, we started looking for anywhere that was open where we could perhaps get a pizza. There were many little snack table places open, full of smiling kids eating dripping fried panzerotti, but I was really wanting a place where we could sit down. We approached any number of places that looked like restaurants from afar, only to turn out to be baby clothing stores or machinery shops, and all the actual restaurants seemed to be closed up tight.

By now, it was getting on towards 8:30, so places that weren't open weren't going to open.

This is how we ended up at Brasserie Barcaiolo, breaking Husbear's rule of never trusting a place that is both Ristorante and Pizzeria. (Osteria and pizzeria? Fine. Trattoria pizzeria? Perfect. But not Ristorante Pizzeria. They're shooting for both ends of the price spectrum and are not to be trusted.)

We were the only people there. Again. We ordered judiciously, skipping the antipasti in favor of just getting two pizzas, a side salad, and some fries - again being craved by Husbear.

When the pizzas were placed on our table, we dug in to find a gloppy, runny, rapidly congealing mess.

Husbear's face clouded. "I know this. This is low-moisture mozz!"

It's what extra-cheap pizzerias use, but rarely in Italy, because it keeps forever and melts very runnily and easily. Unfortunately, it also congeals into a big goop of a mess. Remember high school cafeteria pizzas, where you could take all the cheese off in one easy sheet and form it into an oily ball? Low moisture mozz.

I ate about half of my pizza, without cheese, because I was very hungry. And sad. Then I was full and sadder.

Leaving the restaurant after having paid almost 30 euros for the honor, we found everything else closed. So we went back to the hotel to get some sleep before a very busy day.

Sorry, Manfredonia!™. I really wanted to like you, just on the strengths of your name (Manfredonia!™), but at least in January - you suck.

Plus, Husbear parked the car like this and I dreamt all night that the car was falling sideways into the abyss.

The end.

Tomorrow we hit the Gargano Peninsula and eat a local specialty - communion wafers stuffed with candied almonds. They're called Stuffed Hosts. No, really.