Day 116 - Rainy Wanders Through Bari’s Old Town

We all woke up to a pretty rainy day in Bari. It had been raining most of the night and everything outside was wet and grey. You could still hear the rain tapping on the windows in the morning, which made it feel like one of those slow start kind of days.

We needed to grab some groceries for breakfast, so we were all milling around the apartment waiting for 8 o’clock when the local supermarket opened. The kids were half awake, Kia and I were slowly getting ourselves organised with coffees, and we were watching the rain fall outside while deciding what the day might look like.

Once the clock ticked over to eight we pulled on our jackets and headed out into the rain. It was not freezing, but it was definitely wet enough that you could not ignore it. We ducked into the supermarket and grabbed some basics for the day including breakfast supplies, something for lunch, and a few things we could cook for dinner later.

Back at the apartment we cooked up a simple breakfast. I made some eggs and coffee while the kids tucked into bananas, corn thins and whatever else we had picked up from the shop. Nothing fancy, but a nice relaxed breakfast to start the day.

After that I had some work come through that I wanted to knock over. One job was a small task for the office and another had come through from a friend of mine. It was actually really nice to be able to rip into them and get them sorted while travelling. I worked away for the rest of the morning and wrapped things up around lunchtime.

Once I was done I jumped back into the kitchen and cooked up some sausages for lunch for everyone. After we had eaten we decided to head out and explore a bit of Bari.

Bari has a beautiful medieval old town known as Bari Vecchia. It sits on a small peninsula between the old harbour and the Adriatic Sea. The area is a maze of narrow stone alleyways, small squares, arches and churches that have been standing for centuries.

We wandered into a large open square area just off one of the main streets and came across something really interesting. Parts of the original medieval stone roads are still preserved there and you can clearly see the old cart tracks worn deep into the rock. Over hundreds of years wagons travelled the same paths again and again, carving grooves into the limestone. Standing there looking at it, you could almost picture carts rattling through the streets long before modern roads existed.

One of the main reasons we headed into the old town was to find the famous pasta street where local grandmothers known as the nonnas traditionally sit outside their homes making fresh pasta by hand. Bari is famous for a pasta called orecchiette which literally means little ears. The locals roll and shape it right there in the street and visitors can watch them work.

Unfortunately when we arrived it was early afternoon which is Italy’s traditional rest period. The streets were much quieter than usual and the pasta making had finished for the day. We still had a good wander around though, weaving through the narrow alleyways and exploring the old stone streets.

At one point we walked past the large stone walls of the Norman Swabian Castle, a huge medieval fortress that has stood guard over the city since the twelfth century. Even just walking around the outside of it you could feel how old the place was.

After that we found a small souvenir shop and picked up a magnet to remember our time in Italy. Emmett also spotted a slingshot and was very keen to give it a go, so that became his souvenir for Bari.

We headed down to the waterfront where he could safely fire a few rocks out into the ocean. The kids always seem to enjoy the simple stuff like that.

Not far from there we found a park, so the kids played on the swings for a while while Kia and I sat nearby chatting about the trip and where things might go next.

We are not constantly changing our minds but we are definitely thinking through a lot of different possibilities. At the moment we are sorted until the end of April with Italy, but after that nothing is locked in yet. A lot of our conversations lately have been about where we want to go next, what makes sense for the family and how we want the next stage of the trip to look.

Eventually we headed back to the accommodation to cook dinner and settle in for the evening. It had been a pretty rainy day overall and we had actually walked quite a long way exploring the old town.

The rain probably dampened the experience a little but Bari still felt like a really cool place. The medieval quarter has a lot of old charm and character and being right on the water gives the whole place a really nice feel.

It would have been great to see it in dry weather and explore a bit more, but that is travel sometimes.