My first Lecce post I mentioned stairs. Let’s revisit that point. Upon walking into the apartment, these steps greeted you.
You turned the corner and found these steps.
You were then in the living space, with more stairs leading up to the bedrooms.
Walking through the archway, led to these steps.
And we weren’t done yet. These were the final 3 steps to our bedroom. The thing we chuckled about, you had to step down to get into our bedroom. Yep, another step!
Enough about stairs. I have one more church to talk about before leaving Lecce. Truth be told, we visited several more churches in this town, but you’ll have to visit on your own to see those. 🙂
The Basilica of Santa Croce Lecce was built where a monastery stood in the 14th century. In 1549, a new church was begun, using, among others, houses from Jews who had been ousted from Lecce in 1510. The construction dragged on for two centuries; by 1582, the lower façade had been finished but work continued on other pieces of the basilica before finally being finished.
Loved the dragon. There was symbolism everywhere, really too much. The animals under the balustrade would symbolize the Christian powers which participated in a battle: the dragon was the symbol of the Boncompagni, family of Pope Gregory XIII: the griffon the Republic of Genoa, Hercules the grand Duke of Tuscany. I only captured the dragon.
But I may have found the griffon and Hercules in the photo below (to the left of the dragon). I was sorting through which photos to include and maybe, just maybe I got lucky?
So when we walked to the church one morning, individuals were blocking the doorways and we couldn’t get in. Why? A wedding was being held. We seem to keep running into weddings. We think this was the 3rd one we encountered during our Europe trips. Got a quick shot of the bride after the ceremony. I didn’t know why the bundle of greenery was brought along. It came from inside the church and was going with the wedding party. Checked the internet and found this explanation: Italian weddings often emphasize natural beauty. Hanging vines and greenery branches enhance the romantic ambience for vows and photography. Now I know. (I think?)
Inside the church, the ceiling was striking.
The church has seventeen altars: the main one has a decorated portal with the coat of arms of the Adorni family, whose tombs were inside the basilica. I believe the photo below is the alter described.
A lot of gold and red really drew your attention.
This was one of the last altars before exiting.
Here’s a closeup view of one of the cherubs seen above.
Okay, that was the last church I’m going to talk about (in Lecce).
Eric had been visiting this bar – Quanto Basta – half a block from our apartment. One afternoon Adrienne went with him and raved about a grapefruit drink. I was curious enough to visit with them.
Why the carrot in the above photo? They were part of the munchies brought with your drinks: popcorn and carrot sticks. Not typical bar food that I was used to, but it worked.
Going back to the grapefruit drink…….it was pretty tasty. I agreed with Adrienne, it went down v.e.r.y smoothly.
We wanted our last evening in Lecce to be a special meal and that happened by going back to La Spore.
No surprise, Eric had been making friends. Somehow (?) they heard about him being a FOH F&B manager and possibly the bartenders at the bar next door…………….saw him on U-Tube? Maybe? I don’t know how that ‘randomly’ happened. Ha! We could be seated with no reservations at La Spore as long as we vacated our table by 9:30 pm – it was 6:30pm when we walked over. No problem.
Like normal, we shared a number of appetizers. The hummus dip was still one of my favorites.
Menu selections were pasta and eggplant.
Eric meant to order these meat balls, but there was a communication miss. He said he was very happy with the eggplant, but guess what arrived shortly? Yep, the meatballs. I tasted them. I guess that’s one of the benefits with being short-term friends with the locals. They were good.
We wanted to finish the meal with dessert so we chose these two.
The owner continued to check in with us throughout the evening and agreed to a photo to commemorate our experience.
It was a very nice evening with (new) good friends and good food. I was even convinced to order wine for our meal.
While Adrienne and I headed back to the apartment, Eric stopped back in the corner bar for a last evening with his new friends. I really liked Lecce.
Darden Travels 