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Slow Life

Alex James

Wednesday, 17th September 2008

Viaggio in Italia

Are you the driver?’ I asked. ‘No, I’m the owner,’ he replied, and I liked him immediately. It’s a lovely hotel, The Torre Maizza in Puglia, a walled Italian farm converted into a five-star gastro-spa, growing its own food and inhabiting its own time-zone. ‘Vitorrio,’ he said, shaking my hand and asking if I wanted to have dinner with him, and I liked him even more. There were so many things that I’d planned to do, that had nothing to do with being in Italy. I’d bought lots of stuff I had to catch up with, a guitar, coloured pencils, everything. I had plans. I always fail to foresee that going away, there’s always suddenly all this other new stuff to think about.

We zoomed along, the two of us in Vittorio’s tiny car to the ancient walled city of Ostuni, a lime-washed wedding cake, all lit up on top of a hill in the distance. ‘This is where Italian people come on holiday,’ he said, gesticulating. The whole citadel, a perfectly preserved work of art, is beautiful to look at, with endless Escher stairs and secret alleyways, Medieval tiled streets with passages crossing at second story level, churches apparently made of lace, enough detail to drown in, almost Greek, partly Moorish, very Italian. Corners held endless surprises and the views were spectacular, even at night.

We went for an aperitif at Riccardo’s, a primordial cave in the hillside, whitewashed, lit up and decked out like a spaceship, all neon and Yves Klein blue sofas spilling out onto the street. A dozen kinds of antipasti arrived with our drinks, and kept arriving: little smoky sausage rolls; weird wild mushrooms; tiny parcels of fresh cheese wrapped in cured beef; dainty savoury walnut whips. They wouldn’t let us pay for anything and by now, Vittorio was my hero.

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