You Don’t Need a Car in Puglia

You Don't Need a Car in Puglia (And I Wish Someone Had Told Me That)

Everything I read while planning my nine-day trip through Puglia told me the same thing: we would need a rental car to get around the smaller towns.

The trip would take us through Monopoli, Ostuni, Lecce and Bari, with day trips to a handful of other towns along the way. We managed the first part of the trip by train, but after leaving Monopoli, we headed to the Brindisi airport to pick up the rental car we'd reserved for the Ostuni portion of the trip.

We quickly wished we hadn't.

The streets in Ostuni were narrow and bumpy, parking spots were hard to come by, and after one stressful, and now very funny, parking fiasco, we decided the car would not be moving again until it was time to return it to the airport.

Unfortunately, that meant abandoning our plans to drive to Locorotondo, Alberobello and Grottaglie. But we loved Ostuni, enjoyed the unexpected extra time there and I realized something: we hadn't needed the rental car in the first place.

Puglia is better connected than you think

Like most of Italy, Puglia is well connected by train. Over the course of the trip, we traveled between Bari, Monopoli, Polignano a Mare, Brindisi, Gallipoli and Lecce using public transportation.

No parking. No navigating. No wondering if you had a little too much wine at dinner.

If I were planning the trip again, I'd simplify it even further. I'd make Monopoli and Lecce my two main bases and use trains and buses to visit the surrounding towns.

Not everywhere in Puglia is equally easy to reach by public transportation, but that doesn’t mean you need a rental car for the entire trip. Many of the smaller towns are included on popular guided tours from Monopoli, and Ostuni has a shuttle connecting the train station with the historic center.

To get to the places that are genuinely harder to reach, like some of the gorgeous masserie in the countryside, more remote beaches, or destinations outside the main train routes, I’d hire a driver or coordinate transportation with my Airbnb host.

For reference, we took an Uber from Monopoli to Cala San Giovanni for about $50 one way, and we hired a driver to take us from our Airbnb in Ostuni to a cooking class outside the city center for $70 round trip.

Yes, traveling by train means carrying your luggage through stations, and sometimes that means stairs. It’s not always the most convenient option. But for me, that tradeoff was still worth it.

If I were planning the trip again, I’d skip the rental car altogether and build the itinerary around trains, buses and pre-arranged transportation for the harder-to-reach places.