View of Pescichi
It’s April 2023 and I recently found this blog post from 2019 that I never posted! I think I drafted it and then was planning to match it up with photos once at my home desktop … and then never did. Better late than never, I say, and we really do recommend Gargano as a place to visit. We really fell in love with Puglia and Sicily!
We’ve often been inspired by articles in the New York Times to guide our travels. In fact, this was one of our inspiration’s for last year’s trip (2018) to Puglia (we also visited Sicily, Matera and Ravello) and we loved Puglia so much and the rest of our trip, that we decided to return to Italy again this year for our holidays.
View from Gli Orti di Malva, a great, great B&B
And even though the Gargano peninsula seemed a little out of the way, the NYT article we read made it seem so charming, we wanted to fit it into our itinerary (which this year focused on Umbria and Abruzzo). By breaking up the travel and staying in Abruzzo on the way there and back (which we’d highly recommend for its natural beauty), it was manageable to visit Gargano (or you could pop up from the south of Puglia, if you’re there already).
Our timing was a little off though. As soon as October hits, it seems like most places are deserted, and the agriturismo accommodation that we like so much, closes down for the winter. We didn’t mind it being quiet, but it did seem a little eerie sometimes, like a zombie apocalypse had hit, particularly if we visited a town during siesta time (which could be as long as from noon to 6pm!).
Everything about our meal at Porta di Basso was … perfect.
In the end, we would recommend a visit here, but in September rather than October (or the start of the tourist season) and as a somewhat luxury holiday: staying at gorgeous, not-cheap accommodation, and treating yourself to high-end gourmet meals: because these really were stunning.
The thing is, the view of Pescichi, driving in, took my breath away. And then the room in Gli Orti di Malva where we stayed in took my breath away further. It was the type of room that I would have been happy not to leave, just to sit atop these views of the ocean, high up on a cliff. It was magical. Then, I wasn’t even paying attention that the accommodation is connected to one of the best places to eat in the Gargano, Porta di Basso. Aside from ridiculously gourmet breakfasts, we treated ourselves to a dinner at this Michelin-starred restaurant and it was WONDERFUL.
I love that we got a photo of us with the chef!
We couldn’t get into the agriturismo place mentioned in the NYT article, but imagine it would be like the amazing meal we had outside of Spello when we stayed at Il Bastione: a lavish, home-cooked meal of local specialties.
Finally, we managed to get into the last place mentioned in the article, Li Jalantuùmene, and it was incredible. We couldn’t book into the accommodation (it was full, I think) but I’d recommend that as the perfect end (or start) the gourmet Gargano experience. I thought Mont Sant’Angelo was a very charming old town, and the meal deserved a Michelin star: the chef was so warm and personal, it actually made it the most memorable (and tasty) meal of our entire trip (Actually, I wrote about it at the time. Here’s the blog post).
So, there you go. I’d recommend three nights in Gargano, two in Pescichi and one in Mont Sant’Angelo, staying at the same places that you’ll be dining, and treating yourself three nights in a row to stunning meals. Perhaps you’ll want, as I will, to do a post-trip diet!
Mont Sant’Angelo was overcast when we visited, but I liked the vibe a lot.
My favourite thing to do in Paris is to ride around on a Vélib, the almost free biking system. I wondered how much it had changed in seven years, as I’d heard a lot had changed. New operators. Competition from other bike schemes, more chaotically organised where people leave the bikes in random places. Electric scooters too, which I’m too afraid to try. And e-bikes. The current Vélib system has e-bikes.
a ‘découverte’ card. It was only EUR 5 and required photos to stick to the card. Why hadn’t I brought those extra photos I kept for just such an occasion? There are actually photo booths all over Paris, and the train stations, so I made some photos for EUR 10, went and bought the proper card from the fellow (who sort of indicated, ‘oh, that’s what you wanted’) and then discovered that you really don’t need the photos on the card, and the photo doesn’t fit in any case. I cut it down to size and stuck in on anyways.
But sorry for all these details. The experience on the bikes was as good as ever. There are more bike paths than I remember, many of them wide, and busy with cyclists (and some scooters). What surprised me was that with so many Vélibs in use at all times, the biggest problem was not finding a Vélib but finding an empty spot to put the Vélibs back at the stations. Even though they seem to have a new system where you can put a Vélib back in a station when it’s full, by locking itself to something else, the one time I needed to try it, I couldn’t figure it out.
It was exhilarating and terrifying as you are often in busy traffic and super close to the cars. But the thing is, Parisian drivers seem to be use to all this chaos, and there are so many other bikes on the road. So, you just try your best, and cars move around you, and you around cars. The only time I saw people raise their voices was to prevent accidents, when a pedestrian or car or bike were really too close and about to collide.
took me five days before a young colleague told me she’d had the same problem and you have to press ‘3’ on the dashboard to give it some juice, otherwise it stays in ‘1’. I only got to try a proper ebike once after that. Strangely, it was on a bike that someone had left at a station unlocked and still running (on their account), but they’d already set it on ‘3’ and what a difference it made. It was fast and quite fun.
