Best Of

I don't travel for the food, and try to limit my intake. That said, I found the food to be excellent -- though after 3 weeks in Italy, I won't need any more cured meat at breakfast for a long time!

Our first morning in Lecce was completely free. Many of the group, including me, chose to do a walking tour of the former Jewish District, beginning and ending with a visit to the Jewish Museum. One of my “missions” during my travels is to find weddings, and I was rewarded with seeing a bride and groom emerge from the cathedral next to the Jewish Museum. I saw them each release a white dove from a cardboard box. ( I’m glad that I was not expected to do that when I got married!).

After a walking tour of the city that afternoon (which I cut short because of the heat), we departed the city for a tour of a masseria, a former farmhouse in which the owners and workers lived together. It was set up as a museum, showing how the people lived and worked. We were entertained by musicians and dancers in the courtyard, and several of our group (not I) joined in the dancing. The entertainment was followed by dinner at the masseria. I very much enjoyed that evening.

I could have done without the visits the following day to Galantina and Otranto, but undoubtedly my perception was affected by the heat. The main reason for visiting those towns was to see churches. Galantina’s Basilica of Santa Caterina d’Allessandria is full of Gothic frescoes, which were quite colorful, but, to me, not worth the trip. We were there on Sunday morning, and could not enter the church when we first got to the town because Mass was going on. We had a short walking tour of the town, which was locked up tight. Thankfully, we were able to take advantage of a cafe that was open while we waited for Mass to be over.

Otranto was a nice, hilly, seaside town. The main attraction in Otranto was a cathedral, this one with a medieval mosaic covering almost the the entire floor of the nave. The mosaic includes a representation of the Tree of Life and Biblical stories. Although there were some pews covering part of the mosaic (so worshippers must have been able to tread on it), tourists had to walk up the side aisles, so I was not able to get what I considered a satisfactory view of it. Otranto is also known for “the martyrs of Otranto,” 813 Christians who were put to death for refusing to renounce their faith after the city was conquered by the Ottomans in 1480. They were canonized by Pope Francis in 2013. Their bones are enshrined in the cathedral. Otranto was the first place that we were able to view the Adriatic. The water looked so appealing! I wish that we could have taken a swim.

The following day was one of my favorites of the tour. We went to Alberobello, and took a walking tour among the trulli houses. Tauck has arranged for their guests to enter one of the houses, where the wife was folding blankets and the husband was shelling fava beans. They have been living in that house for over 40 years. Each conical roof tops one room of a home or other building. The house that we visited included a living/dining room, good-sized bedroom and kitchen. (Their wedding photos were on display in the living room.) They also had a garden next to their home. Some of the trullis, though not the one we visited, contained garages. The central area of the town, where the buildings were also whitewashed, but not with conical roofs, was full of shops and restaurants. We went to a balsamic vinegar tasting in one of the shops.

Tauck saved the best hotel for last — but it was not the hotel that is featured in Tauck’s 2025 brochure. Instead of the Masseria il Melograno, We stayed at Masseria Torre Maizza, which is a Rocco Forte hotel. The individual rooms were sort of like separate cabins that were connected, but not in such a way that we realized that we were connected to any other room. Each had its own entrance from the garden, and we even had a back door off the bathroom that led to a private patio with table and chairs, an umbrella and lounge chairs. The hotel also had a resident goose, sort of a mascot, that was stationed outside our front door when my daughter and I were trying to leave for the farewell dinner…so we “escaped” through the back door off the bathroom. I wish we could have spent more days at that hotel.

We had an unscheduled treat on our final day, during which we went to beautiful Polignano a Mare. Thomas, our TD, used the last of his discretionary fund to book a boat trip so we could view the town from the sea. We had great views of the cliffs and caves on which the town rests. The boat trip was followed by Tuk Tuk rides to town for a walking tour there, with time for lunch and shopping on our own.

My daughter and I were not scheduled to leave for the airport until the afternoon of our get-away day. We were not able to get a late check-out (there was a wedding scheduled at the hotel that evening, which might have been the reason), but while my daughter had a massage, I sat by the pool and read. We then had lunch poolside before we had to leave.

This was a good tour, especially our first and last stops, that was marred by the heat. The tour is listed as an activity level of 3, but it could have been a 4. There were a lot of stairs in Matera and hills everywhere except the city of Lecce. In Lecce, our bus could not enter the town center, and it was about a 10 minute walk to and from the hotel to the pick-up point. I think that this would be a difficult trip for anyone who had problems walking. As I recommended in my review of the Northern Italy tour that immediately preceded this one, I would recommend going earlier in the year or the fall. People kept saying that it was “unseasonably warm,” but I would not take the chance that it would be cooler in the coming years