October 3, 2023
Day 27: Trinitapoli to Bari
my heart is riding on your wings
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Continuing the "this feels like the U.S." theme, our hotel is located behind a gas station, and the hotel's bar attracts a lot of truckers. From a bike tourist's perspective, nothing could be finer! What we do meshes well with the transient nature of the trucker lifestyle.
I want to include a couple of bonus photos from last night. I think they show how we can make lemonade from lemons. The lemons being that we weren't really walking distance to the city.
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As you may know by now, I don't usually mention where we stay by name, unless it was really good or really bad. Hotel L'incontro was really good! Nice room, very quiet, very affordable. Bikes kept safe and sound. Super kind owner. He even comped our breakfast, which included the best cornettos we've had all tour!
Another perfect morning for riding. Those first few kilometers always fly by, especially once we're out of town and on the open road. Speaking of which, a lot of Trinitapoli looks very nice. I'd like to visit again when we have more time. Sorry we didn’t take any photos.
We passed the last few scraps of the sea salt works, then it was off to Barietta. Before we even got into town, there was a lot of hubbub involving barricades and carbinieri and tents and PA systems. It was the world rowing coastal championships! Woo hoo! We arrived much to early in the day to witness anything, but it sounds like a fun time.
We were more thrilled by the boulevard that had been half-pedestrianized. We had this wide space all to ourselves!
This coincided with our first break, aka second breakfast. We found an iperCOOP with a coffee bar, and righteously plunked ourselves down in the outdoor seating area. A security guard questioned us, but my dear wife somehow managed to tell him off with her very limited Italian vocabulary. He slunk away as I beamed with pride at her remarkable ability to say just the right thing at just the right time.
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It was another of those days in which we made some decisions as to whether to stay on the main road or to take Komoot's side road suggestions. We didn't balk at gravel so much this time, but if the shoulder was good on the highway, we'd usually just stick with it to avoid a little hassle and uncertainty.
Speaking of weird routing, when we got to Trani, it was doglegs all through the old city. Cobblestones, narrow streets, traffic, and construction detours had us pulling our hair out. When we found a small piazza, we wanted to take a breather, but then I spotted a line of trees indicating a nicer park just beyond.
It turned out to be a real oasis. There were these birds squawking like crazy in the trees, so I opened the BirdNet app. Analysis: monk parakeets! Sure enough, once we knew what to look for, we'd catch glimpses of them everywhere. They blend in with most of the foliage around here. We heard their squawks in almost every tall tree we passed for the rest of the ride to Bari. For being a non-native species, these feral colonies have a pretty wide range. As long as they're not causing harm, they seem like a welcome addition to the landscape.
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The other coastal towns between Trani and Bari were more manageable. We were always thrilled to get on a bike path. They weren't in short supply, but they never lasted very long.
Our last break was at a seaside bar in Molfetta. Fifteen minutes' rest was exactly what we needed for that last push into Bari.
Bari is a bigger city than either of us thought. We ended up riding frontage roads for our old pal SS16, which by this time had grown into a limited-access highway. At one point the frontage road narrowed and became a one-way street, and I thought, well, this is what Komoot says to do, and we're still pretty sure it's legal for bikes to ride against one-way traffic, so what are we waiting for? A big-ass bus, that's what! The driver shook his head at us, but didn't honk his horn. We gingerly passed, and there were no further incidents.
We faced one last challenge today. It seems like there's always something that throws us for a loop during those last few kilometers. This time it was a canal crossing that turned into a construction zone. The orange fencing was up, with no indication that others had tampered with it to sneak through. We weren't about to be the first.
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Plan B was to follow the canal up to the railway, where it turned out to be dry. Not only that, but there was a "desperation path" carved out by others who must've met a similar fate trying to cross this strangely-uncrossable barely-a-barrier.
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Soon we were in Bari proper, where a bike path helped us make most of the journey to our apartment for the next couple of days.
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We fit the bikes into the lobby and into the apartment without trouble. Luckily it's all on the ground floor. What luck!
We decided to eat in tonight, so other than a trip to the market, we haven't seen much. We like the density of this area. Our building is only two floors, but many are 4, 6, or 8 stories tall.
Tomorrow is our tourist tourist day, although we might hop on our bikes for a local ride if we're feeling up to it. We're not super fresh, but we're not in need of a true zero day, either.
That reminds me: in previous journals, I divided each longer tour into stages. I would celebrate the completion of each with a big exclamation of victory. I feel like I should do that here (...hurray we made it to Bari...), but there still exists the possibility that we'll continue south from here rather than heading to Matera and hopping on EV5. The deadline to make that decision is fast approaching. Any thoughts from more experienced travelers? (Update: the decision has been made -- we're heading to Matera)
Today's ride: 82 km (51 miles)
Total: 1,576 km (979 miles)
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