Borgo Egnazia- Resort life Day 1

Breakfast at B&B Oz was lovely. Anything we could have wanted was readily available. After filling our bellies and drinking the Keurig coffee, we were more than ready for a real Italian cappuccino. We found a lovely bar just down the street. (Not like bars in the US, bars in Italy serve coffee, pastries and later in the day- adult beverages. They are called bars because you typically stand at the bar, order, drink your drink and you are off.) This bar was hopping with locals getting their caffeine fix and like any Italian establishment, the coffee is heaven. They take it quite seriously and you'll find fancy espresso machines everywhere, even in gas stations! Typically Italians drink cappuccino or cafe (espresso). If you don't want a good strong hit of espresso, it's best to order an Americano and they'll water it down for you.

Our private driver soon arrived to pick us up and escort us to the resort. Huge disclaimer here- we are not typically fancy resort and private driver types of travelers. We are more economy, local experience, minimalist type travelers but since work was paying for us to be fancy, we did our best to assimilate. Borgo was insane. Handsome young men who spoke perfect English greeted us at our car to make sure we didn't have to burden ourselves with our luggage. We were shown to a lovely meeting room where we were greeted with our itinerary and a brand new pair of All Birds shoes. I am certainly not complaining about free shoes but this brought my shoe total to 7 pair that I would be lugging around - so much for minimalist! We were shown through a maze of old looking buildings and up some stairs to our room. The room was enormous all decorated in white on white farmhouse style. We had a lovely view of the sea and the resort from our room. We had one of the smaller rooms. Some guests had entire villas (houses) with their own swimming pools and private entrances!

Lunch was at one of the resort restaurants. We sat outside (covered) and when it cooled off a bit and started to rain, our waitress brought me a blanket to wrap up in so I wouldn't get cold. I asked the waitress about the history of the place since it looked very old. It looked to me like it might have been a monastery or an old village. But much to my disappointment, it was built from the ground up only 10 years ago. Seems a bit silly in a country full of ancient history and old buildings, to build a brand new building and make it look old.

After lunch we hopped on the resort bikes and rode to the small beach side town of Savelletri. Since it was cool and rainy the town was mostly deserted. We did find a gelato shop and enjoyed an afternoon treat.

Evening brought us to our first of 3 nights of parties. First we met at one of the large Villas for a pre-party to the Beach party. It was nice to meet some of Scott's coworkers but I found myself enjoying chatting with the bar tenders the most. (Americans from Silicon Valley are not nearly as interesting as the Apulian people.)

After the pre-party the plan was to shuttle us to the beach for a beach party. However, the weather was cool and constantly threatening rain so the festivities were moved to another area of the resort. Stations of food and drink surrounded long tables. Delicious Italian food all freshly made and grown on the resort awaited us- including this guy making mozzarella!

In addition to a full open bar, local wine was served in bottomless glasses. An amazing DJ from San Francisco was flown in to entertain us and get the crowd dancing. Such a fabulous day at Borgo Egnazia!