We could not conclude the reportage of our trip to Salento without a food-related post.
Otranto, Lecce, Gallipoli. Alberobello and the Trulli. The Ionic Coast, the Adriatic coast… There is little to say, in one week we have visited the Salento high and low, far and wide. 
To the fishermen who saw them from the sea, the stalactites at the entrance of the cave looked as rags, zinzuli in local dialect - thus the name of the cave: Grotta Zinzulusa (Ragamuffin Cave)…
The Castle of Otranto, the massive fortress raised in defence of the city. Imposing and gloomy, the natural inspiration of what is considered the first gothic novel in literature, The Caste of Otranto precisely, by Horace Walpole.
As for the Christmas tree in December, there is always something almost magic in the excitement of a kid that discovers for the first time something new…
It has been a while, and precisely from the end of our Baby Moon, that we haven’t spent a week in a row all together, 24/7, only the three of us, tight tight... 
She caught the Katy, and left me the mule to ride…
Indeed a pity, Marieclaire and Fabio, that you could not join us… 
Today we were caught in a heavy rain.
I have been waiting this moment since my excursion to the Gran Sasso last August, and today, finally, I could fulfill my little dream: I could finally slip Leonardo in my backpack, and carry him around.
In the XVIII and XIX centuries the trulli became legalized, and the farmers started using the mortar to build them, and the know-how of building them ‘a secco’ (dry-stone) progressively got lost. A peasant of Alberobello, the capital of Trulliland, told us that the last person who knew how to build a trullo died in 1975, and with him the art of building trulli has been lost forever.
Today, because buying and restoring a trullo has become extremely fashionable, many young architects ventured themselves in trying to understand the secret of the conical roofs.
But the results are not quite the same…
The story of the trulli is a very Italian story.
Italy is, regretfully, worldwide known, beside for its history, art and culture, for its tax evasion. The story of the trulli is a story of tax evasion.
They say that in the middle age the farmers of the area, in order not to pay the taxes on property (the equivalent of the ICI, or, now, IMU) created these dry-stone constructions, so that they could immediately dismantle them in a pile of stones when the king’s tax inspectors were visiting the area, proving that they did not own houses.
According to the legend, the roofs were built in a conical shape so that they can be rapidly dismantled by removing one single stone.
Brilliant, isn’t it?
