Beautiful Bari

Our stately progress from the south of Italy toward Rome brought us to Bari on Thursday, July 6, for a three-day stay. Bari is a port city that I gather had a bad reputation in the past for crime and related port-city problems, and we did see a cafe along the water that calls itself the Titti Twister.

Other than that, I haven't seen any evidence of bad behavior. There's not even much litter.

In fact, Bari is pretty gorgeous. We're staying in the medieval quarter, and it is delightful in a pre-tourist sort of way.

























There are a few stores selling crummy souvenirs, but mostly this is a place where people live, Italian people.

The streets in the old section of town are closed to traffic except for bikes and scooters, and everyone does business on the street. The fruit vendor sets out his wares, cafes serve drinks on the sidewalk, a lady sells french fries out her kitchen door.

Tonight we were wandering around the main square, the Piazza Mercantile, waiting for a restaurant reservation and watching the crowd. The moon was almost full. The port and the sea are just beyond the piazza.

At the other end of the square, two women had set up a deep fryer and were selling squares of fried polenta.

The globs in the second pan are some kind of dough. We didn't try those but we did get a bag of polenta chips, sprinkled with salt. Deliziosi!

The kitchens in a lot of these old houses have a double door out onto the street, protected from flies and the gaze of passersby by a lace curtain. 

During the day you can glimpse people in there cooking, watching TV, or just hanging around. After dark they move out into the street. They sit in folding chairs and yak away for hours. I only took pictures from far away because I didn't want to be rude. 

These were all taken at around ten o'clock at night, including the one below of a group of little boys having their own confab in a stairwell.

Being Italians, and Southerners, Baresi carry on many of these conversations with dramatic gestures and raised voices, even though things always seem to be friendly. It's like being in an Italian neorealist movie--I keep expecting Anna Magnani to come hurtling out of one of those curtained doorways, wearing a slip and emoting at the top of her lungs.