Bari is more of a foodie place than our previous stop, Lecce. It also feels like much more of a party town. The impression could be linked to the timing of our visit (arriving Saturday and leaving Tuesday). We could not help noticing how everyone was dressed to go to a bar and attract a mate. Observing the local mating dance might be what anthropologists do for fun. They might be able to answer why the women of Bari seem to like cowboy boots so much?
Bars are more visible in Bari, Iām sure, to the pleasure of young people. However, day drinking establishments are harder to find, to our dismay. Restaurants that offer reservations and have high ratings are, however, plentiful in the city, unlike in Lecce or Matera, where reservations were hard to secure. You win some, you lose some.
The measure of a city isnāt just the availability of good food and day drinking; we also consider its beauty and pedestrian friendliness in our criteria. Walking and orienting yourself in Bari is easy. Being a port city with its old town on a peninsula, you can't get lost in the city if you know where the sea is. The old town is more torturous, making the path to where youāre going feel more random if you're navigating on instinct. The rest of the city is arranged in a grid pattern.
Walking through the city, we had to appreciate how clean it is. Despite garbage bins being harder to find than Waldo in the old city, thereās hardly any garbage on the ground. Dog poop seems more abundant, leaving me to believe that, as much as Lecce was a cat town, Barri is a dog city. The decor itself is typical of southern Italy. Nothing very unique. It has a castle and a 1000-year-old church (built in 1002). The old and young ladies making oricchete by the side in the narrow alleys of the old city were new. We havenāt run into open-air pasta making anywhere else on this trip. It feels like a gimmick. I would have loved to see a guy doing it too, but seeing younger generations making and selling homemade pasta was a step in the right direction, I suppose.
Shopping in the city is a breeze. Thereās an entire shopping district right next to the sights. A wine coop had a store not too far from our hotel, so we restocked and had aperitivo on our hotelās balcony again.
Dinner was at Peppo, the seafood restaurant, not to be confused with Pepo the pizzeria. Those two restaurants with almost identical names both baffled me and show how easygoing Italians can be. I can confirm, however, that Peppo is not casual about seafood and offers excellent food.
