Day 1, Dec. 2, 2008 - Arriving in Puglia

Today I arrived in Puglia (aka Apulia). I have been invited on a FAM trip, which is a 'familiarization' trip for people in the Travel Industry. The goal of a FAM is to get professionals familiarized with a specific place in order provide us with the knowledge and know how to promote and sell it, thus increasing tourism. I have never been to this region before, the most south I've been is to the island of Sicily and I'm looking forward to experiencing all new types of sights, sounds and smells of the south. Oh and of course .... FOOD is a high priority!


To be more concise, I arrived in Bari, actually. I had to take 3 flights to get here – Newark to Frankfurt, Germany, Frankfurt to Milan and Milan to Bari. My first experience with connecting flights. I was apprehensive to even go on this trip when I saw the flight schedule because I’m used to flying direct into Rome or Florence, or Athens if you will. However, beggars can’t be choosers and this was a free trip. I decided that I was focusing on the small things and not the great experience I would have in this region that I would have never thought of visiting. So I sucked it up and decided to go.

Right now I am at our first hotel – the Tentua Cocevola in Andria.

I arrived in the dark but the property looks quite expansive and I will be sure to walk around the grounds tomorrow. I ended up getting here late. I had to wait for 5 other peoples’ planes to land for us all to be transferred to the hotel. So I sat on the bus for like 2 hours. Thank God I had my mp3 player!

I am quite exhausted! I didn’t sleep on the planes any. I was actually a little excited to by flying into Germany, though. I mean, I knew I wouldn’t have any time to go explore the city, but something about Frankfurt raised a magnetic pull inside of me. Plus, I was excited to try some German food in the airport! Once we arrived at the airport, it was a little uneventful, I spent some time wandering around and finding my gate. I was searching for somebody to take my work AMEX card so I could get something to eat, but only one place I went to accepted it and I ended up getting a chocolate croissant and a cappuccino for breakfast. So much for German cuisine.

The cool thing about the airport is they have Camel Smoking Booths throughout all the gates, so you can light up inside, if you feel the desire, without having to exit the airport and go back through the long, meandering security lines. That is totally awesome! God forbid you see something like that in America! Plus each gate has free coffee, tea, water and newspapers; another plus in my book.

So now that I am here, sitting in my room, I am feeling the jet lag/exhaustion/lack of sleep. It is 6pm, Italian time, which is 6 hours ahead of Eastern Standard American time, and we are supposed to have dinner at 8. I hope I can stay up!

The hotel is really nice, and huge. It’s like a villa. My room has 1 double bed and a twin bed. Pretty cool.


I’m so happy we don’t have to share rooms! My only gripe about the hotel is … there is no bar soap! I couldn’t wait to wash the airplane off of my face and I was super excited to see what types of toiletries I had in the bathroom, but to my disappointment – only shampoo/body wash. What the hell? I have to wash my face with body wash?! Screw it, I did it anyway. I’ll probably end up having a breakout. But everything could have been worse- some people ended up having FOUR flights - and they still aren’t here yet.

I want to sleep so badly but I know I have to stay up for dinner and to meet everybody.

First impressions of Bari – well, it’s hard to get an impression of anywhere from the airport because they are always so far away from the city center, but it seems very untouched and untainted by tourism, which is a good thing. The rolling, seemingly limitless green of nature that I saw on our ride to the hotel combined with the umbrella palm trees lining the highways were just lovely. We passed a lot of marble quarries along the way here.


And, as usual, the Italian sky is just marvelous! It is one of the things I miss most when I am not here. The sky in NY/NJ is just so pathetic and lackluster in comparison. It’s all grey and the clouds are mere shadows. In the Italian sky, they play around, dance with each other and take on wonderful shapes. They remind me of big puffy marshmallows that you could jump up and down on, and the sky is so blue! Ah, breathe in, I’m in Italy! And at the heel of the boot! Hello, Adriatic Sea!