Charming as Polignano was, we were happy to leave the overstuffed town for a place slightly larger, slightly less tourist-dense. What better place to base ourselves than Lecce, dubbed the 'Florence of the South'? With more churches and piazzas per capita than people, Lecce's location just slightly off the coast also makes it an ideal place for day trips down the heel of the boot.
To get there, we hopped on the train from Polignano and headed towards Brindisi, the second biggest city in the region. Hopping trains to a more regional branch, we arrived in Lecce roughly 1.5 hours after we'd started. A 15-minute, sweat-soaked walk in the heat later, we arrived at our B&B with hideous balcony views of one of the town's many churches.
This would be home for the next several days. On our first day, we wandered the town and on ensuing days we hopped on local coaches to Puglia's beaches for the day. Daytime wanderings did not disappoint, although we seemed to be the only idiots out at midday.
The great thing about Lecce is that the old was mixed with the new. Design shops, shoe shops, museums, bars and cafes all mingled together. Italian tourists abounded but it seems like the English speaking world had yet to find this gem. Check out the Lecce Wikitravel page and compare it to the Florence page if you want to see evidence of this. This all seems poised to change--magazines, travel blogs are now all touting Puglia as the 'place to be.'
Evenings involved doing as the Italians do; we wandered the piazzas dressed to the nines until the wee hours of the morning. Dinner, gelato and granitas were always most definitely involved. The city was large enough to keep on finding new ways to get lost; our favourite getting lost was finding a new city wall entrance/exit to the city.
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