The Puglia Mistake We See Most Often

People plan Puglia the way they'd plan Tuscany: pick one town, day trip from there. Puglia doesn't really work that way.

The region is long and flat by Italian standards, which makes driving times look deceptively short on paper and feel genuinely tedious in practice if every day loops back to the same base. Bari to Lecce is an hour and a half each way. Add day trips to Ostuni, Alberobello, and Polignano a Mare from one hotel, and most of a week quietly disappears into the car.

The fix isn't complicated. Two bases instead of one: something near the coast for a few nights, something inland in the Valle d'Itria for a few more. It costs one extra hotel change. It saves hours of driving and turns "seeing Puglia" into actually being in it.