Lecce has one thing going for it: it has comfortable seats. That’s what a day of exploring the city has taught us.
We started with pizza at IL PIZZICOTTO. It’s a pizza-by-the-kilo joint that makes incredibly good pizza with a variety of toppings. The pizzas we chose were all fresh, tasty, and crispy. All the things you want in a pizza without anything you don’t. A quick coffee at a random coffee shop nearby, and we're off to see the sights.
Anfiteatro Romano di Lecce, discovered by accident during the construction of a Banca d'Italia building. Dating back to the second century, this Roman Amphitheatre is currently undergoing emergency structural repairs. Most of it was visible, but we couldn't see behind it.
Giardini Pubblici Giuseppe Garibaldi was a colossal waste of time. Although it was open, the only thing I can say about the garden is that the trees provide shade. Probably a good place to bring kids to let them run around, but it’s a couple of trees in concrete boxes and a lot of compacted dirt. Its feature on the map should be brown, not green.
Next to the garden is the Castello Carlo V. Currently under repair, we thought we could climb one of the towers, but even with a single person in front of us at the ticket office, we gave up after waiting and never moving. The ticket office is also the tourist information office. The grounds can be visited for free and explored in about 2 minutes.
After these two glorious minutes in a castle, we kept pushing and went to the Teatro Romano. A smaller version of the amphitheatre. It’s not undergoing renovation, but if you want to visit, you'll need to arrange a tour via WhatsApp. We’ve learned this thanks to the very informative banner on the gate. We took a couple of pictures through the fence and moved on.
Last stop on our fantastic tour of iconic places in Lecce: Villa Reale. Based on Google Maps reviews, it seems like a beautiful garden. It is walled all around, and all its gates were firmly closed. No opening hours, no information for visitors. It has the distinction of being the only walled garden we’ve ever walked around and never entered. May it be the last.
It hasn’t been two hours since we set out to discover the town’s sights and failed at visiting every single one of them. We had no other choice but to turn to day drinking. First stop: Liberrima All'Ombra del Barocco (the library in the Barroque’s Shadow?). Small restaurant with a lovely terrace in the old town. We enjoyed a couple of Aperol Spritz and a small bite to eat. The food and drinks aren't anything special, but the location is fantastic, and the chairs are very comfortable. We take our time, since we have many hours to waste before dinner.
Second stop: Pasticceria Natale, named by the Routard as the best pastry and gelato joint in town. When we travel in Italy, our tradition is to go for a five O’clock gelato. It was pretty close to 17:00, so we went for their gelato. It wasn’t the best we had but well executed nonetheless, and they had a good selection of flavours.
Next stop: Doppiozero, another Apéro joint we’ve spotted. They have a good selection of wines, and we decide to go with a couple of glasses of Rosé. We’re again, comfortably seated and trying to pace ourselves before dinner. We slowly drink and extend our stay as long as we can. At the point where we either have to order more drinks and some food to absorb that alcohol a little, we instead make the Herculean effort of getting out of our chair and going to buy food for breakfast and our provisions for our hike tomorrow. It would have been very easy to stay parked there, ordering food and wine until we could no longer bear it.
Our bad luck in Lecce keeps giving. After dropping off the food at home, we head out for dinner. We decide to go for meat and head to a Routard-recommended restaurant, only to find it closed, probably permanently. The second destination is across the city. The fifteen-minute walk gets us nowhere. We arrive 15 minutes before its posted opening hours. We keep on walking around and come back at opening time only to be told it’s full for the evening.
At this point, we’re hungry and willing to settle. We find a couple of restaurants that offer same-day reservations and call them directly. Our route leads us past Doppiozero. Since they had a good selection of wines and a relatively small menu, we tried our luck, and they had room. I must admit I had low expectations of a restaurant with burgers and fish and chips on the menu, but we stuck to the simple Italian dishes, and they were very well executed. The wine was delicious, and we enjoyed ourselves.
In the end, we learned that Lecce is a great place to sit down, drink and eat. Other than having a hard time with dinner reservations (we’ve already booked our next meals), finding a comfortable place to sit and chill is easy. We could do the same in Florence, but in Lecce, we discovered they took the sit-down part to heart and made sure the seats were comfortable.