As we rolled off the overnight ferry, we were temporarily unsure what country we'd got to now.  One look at the customs official, though - his designer shades, his artfully designer-crumpled shirt, and his lack of interest in messing either of them up by checking through the chaos in the back of the car - and we remembered: at last we'd got to Italy.

We'd been looking forward to this from a culinary perspective - who doesn't like Italian food? - but pretty soon came to realise that our broad concepts of what Italian food really consists of were at best simplistic, and more often than not, just wrong.  Our first meal brought this home to us, as we discovered the Puglian cucina povera classic ciceri e tria in Lecce.  It's pasta, but not as you know it: with chickpeas adding an Arabic touch, and fried pasta strips seeming almost Chinese.  A good start ...

There's a lot of interesting things about staying at Spannocchia, but one of the most interesting (for us, at least) was meeting the pigs.  They have a herd of rare breed Cinta Senese pigs, which they use to make their extremely tasty cured sausages and meats.  The pigs themselves have a happy life, rooting around in the woods and fields, and eating pretty much whatever they can find with great gusto.

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