the white hilltop town of Ostuni (where I lucked out with a cozy last minute mini-apartment rental with a view of the sea from a tiny window seen here on the upper right) and nearby trulli

…was the order of the day, as I finally departed Lecce, continuing my Puglian journeys gradually making my way west then north on the slow side roads through countryside and small towns with no final destination in mind, stopping off in the ceramics center of Grottaglie, the pretty hilltop town of Locorotondo, the trulli village of Alberobello, but especially interested in the shift in landscape to soft rolling hills, rows of vineyards, layers of lovely farm structures into the distance, and finally arriving towards the end of the day in Ostuni, the most enchanting place yet, (which I had first glimpsed from a speeding train to Brindisi ten days ago) where the view from the whitewashed hilltop historic center to the plains and Adriatic has been preserved thanks to the isolation of it’s sprawl to it’s back and south.