About 30 minutes by train from Bari, going southeast along the "heel" of Italy, is Polignano a Mare.

We decided it would make a good day trip. The train ride (EUR 5 per person return) is very pretty, passing fields thick with wild flowers, vines under plastic coverings, and the blue, blue sea.

Having fallen so utterly in love with Bari, I guess we were a bit sniffy about Polignano at first. It's smaller, and the concentration of tourists therefore feels much greater.

But there was hardly anyone where we sat to eat our sandwiches, on the top of the cliff, looking out over the sea. And the busier bits are undeniably pretty...


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I suppose this is as good a place as any to have the "tourist" discussion. I guess most tourists don't want to be "tourists". If they've thought about it at all, they've probably given themselves another label. But the fact remains that whatever we call ourselves, we can be a bit of a scourge...

Without Airbnb, we wouldn't have been able to afford the Europe bit of our trip. Yet Airbnb also distorts housing markets, and puts pressures on local residents. Even surface travel causes environmental damage.

We have to face squarely the accusations that we too -- untimely born -- have joined those "millennials" who are "[a]imlessly gallivanting across the globe with backpacks, often for long stretches and at the cost of a steady job". We too need to consider the "growing chasm" between the widely distributed narrative of travel as liberator and "the reality of what 'mass tourism', which is what most of us really partake in, entails".

Ouch...

We are trying our best... By travelling more slowly, we hope to make less impact. We're also quiet people (to date, infinitely the quietest in the neighbourhoods where we've stayed...). The desire and necessity to travel economically often leads us away from the tourist press (to cliff-tops to eat sandwiches, for example). And we do try hard not to let our quest for photos get in local people's way.

I'm sure we could be doing it better, though... (And I'm open to suggestions.)

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Anyway, back to Polignano's prettiness:















Polignano is also the birthplace of Domenico Modugno. Never heard of him? Well, I bet you've heard of his most famous song. The real name is "Nel blu dipinto di blu" ("in the blue painted blue"), but most of us would know it as "Volare" ("to fly").

Volare, oh oh... Cantare, oh oh oh oh....

To fly. To sing.

Oh oh oh.

It's actually a rather touching song, about a dream of flying ("as the world slowly, slowly disappeared... a sweet music played only for me") that has to end ("all dreams vanish because when the moon sets it takes them along with it"), but that gives place to something much more solid and beautiful -- love ("in your blue eyes, I'm happy to be down here").

Awww...

This was the Italian entry for the Eurovision song contest in 1958 (when there were only 10 contenders...). It came third. But I'd bet a reasonable amount that this lovely Italian song is much more recognizable, all these 61 years later, than the first- and second-place finalists.


Another thing to not miss out on in Polignano is the "special coffee" from Il Super Mago del Gelo Mario Campanella. This is made with "whipped cream, coffee, lemon peel, and sweet almond Super Mago liqueur". It's really nice...


We trundled home on the train, picked up a really nice bottle of local Puglia wine for EUR 3, and drank it with what was left over from the lunchtime sandwich-making operation.


Tomorrow spells goodbye to Italy, which I'm genuinely sad about. It's been a really, really great week. Masses of contrast, and lots of pleasure.

But we'll enjoy the last moments, and then look forward to Greece...