Puglia Tour - The Perfect Combination Of Lifestyle, Culture,

Guide

Our tour leaders are Italian specialists. This is the country that we know best. For you, this means you won’t have a tour leader who works in multiple countries, as is often the case. We limit our tours to selected regions where we have the depth of knowledge to share with you. Throughout your time with us your tour leader is on call for anything that may come up – perhaps you need help getting something from a pharmacy/drug store, or even may need to visit a doctor. In this way we provide a safety net, we can help with any of these more difficult aspects that can happen at any time.

Meals

We have also planned tour meals in restaurants designed to showcase the region’s cuisine, with the specific venues all carefully selected by us, in order to provide a variety of food styles over the week. On each full day of the tour we include breakfast and a main meal (either lunch or dinner). Each main meal consists of multiple courses with wine included. These meals feature carefully selected menus that allow you to try all the best food specific to the region that we’re in. This is because we believe that the cuisine says so much about the place you’re in, as much as any town you can visit – history, culture, geography, it’s all wrapped up in the cuisine. On the topic of food, we often have people who have dietary requirements so we’re used to making sure this is all sorted out in advance. Our approach is that you never need to skip a course – for example if you’re vegetarian we’ll organise an alternative to a meat course.

Transport

Our professional drivers get you to wherever you need to be in air conditioned comfort – no need to negotiate the notoriously unruly Italian traffic, or spend time finding a carpark when you arrive. We look after this for you, meaning you can focus on why you are really here – to experience what makes your destination unique and interesting.

Accommodation

In Puglia we stay in the town of Polignano A Mare. In Polignano A Mare we base our tours at either of two hotels: Hotel Covo dei Saraceni, www.covodeisaraceni.com Giovi Relais, www.giovirelais.com. Both are 4 star hotels situated in the centre of Polignano A Mare. All of our accommodation options for this tour are located in the historic centre of town, where you can explore evocative lanes amongst the whitewashed buildings, and piazzas lined with elegant old buildings,with the traditional ‘passeggiata’ in full swing each evening. Polignano A Mare has a small swimming beaches located alongside the town center, and both offer many opportunities for eating out, wandering through the back streets and finding stunning sea views.

Optional

Our tours are a balance between being informative (historical details, examples of the culture and lifestyle) as well as having everything that makes for an enjoyable trip (long lunches in good restaurants, a relaxed pace). As well as the organised excursions and visits, we leave some free time each day for you to explore at your own pace. Our tours are designed in the way that you would plan travel yourself, or with a group of friends. This is a very different experience to a coach tour – for example, we take you to small restaurants that larger groups can’t access, we stop and show you features that aren’t on the ‘highlights circuit’ that large buses focus on. And finally, we are a hands-on company. Family run. A small team. This means that we are genuinely interested in the success and enjoyment of your tour, and your time here in Italy. When you are in a country or region only for a week or two you want to maximise your time. On our tours we give you the local insights, the understanding of what you are seeing. Without this you might recognise that a particular feature or building seems interesting, but not ever know the full story behind it. Guidebooks will detail the main monuments or museums but tend to be quite limited when you start to see the smaller (and often more interesting) sights. Our tours are not physically demanding, we’ve had many people travel with us who are not as spritely as they used to be! Generally when we’re doing a walking tour of a town we have a local guide as well as our tour leader, so with this dual lead approach one is able to drop back or find an alternative for people who do need a break. Although in reality our pace is relaxed enough that most people are fine. We have a maximum of 14 in our tour groups, and this is a very important feature. We’ve trialled a range of group sizes over the years, and even with a group of 16-18 people you start to lose that personal touch. We find anything up to 14 works well and gives you an excellent tour – we know that not exceeding that maximum number is key to this.