| Erin's Lecce Journal 4-27-02 to 4-28-02 Saturday we boarded an early train for Lecce, a 5 1/2 hour ride by Eurostar train (these are more expensive, express trains - on the cheaper regional train, it would've taken almost 10 hours). I read my book and Glenn wrote journals for most of the journey, and it went by quickly. We had the foresight to buy lunch sandwiches at the station before leaving Rome, so we didn't even starve, as we usually do! We arrived in Lecce in the early afternoon, and walked all through town looking for a good place to stay. As it turned out, the first place we went to, near the train station, was where we ended up staying, as there were only about 5 hotels in the whole town and 2 looked closed down! The Grand Hotel purported itself to be a 3 star accomodation, but seemed similar to some of the 1 stars we've stayed at in its bathroom setup! We had to walk way down the hall to get there, and there was only one bathroom with a shower in it! We didn't care much, as we just wanted to rest after the exhaustion of Rome. We spent most of that afternoon in the hotel room, sleeping. We had a reasonably good dinner at the hotel's restaurant that night, and went back up to bed early. Sunday we walked around town to see the sights, but there wasn't much to see. The place was absolutely dead! There were so few people around, that it surprised us how much trash we saw on the streets. I've written in other journals about how impressive the street cleaners in most Italian cities are, considering the number of people around. But Lecce fell down on the job! And that Sunday, almost no shops were open either, so there was not much to see or do. We wandered to the city center, where there is an ancient Roman amphitheater, and sat in the sun reading for a few hours, watching some territorial stray dogs protect their spots in the square. By late afternoon, the square area began to have more people around, and we guessed that this was a local hangout for the young 20-somethings. We got tired of the clouds of smoke blowing over us though, and wandered off to find dinner and check out train schedules to Brindisi, the port we'd go to Greece from. We found a good place for dinner somewhat by accident, and enjoyed a really good appetizer bar with our meal. Then we headed back to rest up again. |