Lecce 1

Every year about this time we meet up with our good friends Paul and Angela for a city break somewhere, usually in Europe. Paul and Angela live just outside Nice, in the South of France so it’s a nice way for us to get together

In previous years we have met in Lisbon, Porto, Marrakech and Seville.

This year we are off to Lecce in Southern Italy. I’ve never been to this part of Italy before so I’m really looking forward to it

We fly to Brindisi and then need to get a train or bus. There aren’t that many direct flights to Brindisi so we booked to go to Milan and change there, both flights with Ryan Air. However we had to change our plans when Ryan Air changed the flight times so that the flight to Milan landed after the flight from Milan to Brindisi had taken off. Instead we are going via Dublin with Aer Lingus. Paul and Angela are flying in from Nice, via Rome.

Since we have an hour or two at Manchester AirPort, and should have some time at Dublin AirPort, Denis decided he needed to do a comparison test of Guinness in Manchester AirPort versus Guinness in Dublin AirPort

We actually had quite a quick turnaround at Dublin but Denis managed to try the Guinness …

We arrived safely at Brindisi and then had to find our way to Lecce. It is 32 miles and we could do bus or train. Bus is more direct but less frequent so we went for the train. Rather like British trains the Italian trains were running late but that worked in our favour for once as we managed to get an earlier delayed train and were in Lecce by 21.30

First impressions- much warmer than UK; public transport much cheaper; information desk assistants very helpful.

We met Paul and Angela at the Airbnb. They had arrived earlier than us and stocked up on beer and pizza. So we had a good natter and a relatively early night.

Tomorrow we start exploring….