Bari & Puglia: Is This Actually Italy’s Best Coast?

Cinque Terre gets all the attention, but the Adriatic coast of Puglia has been quietly doing it better for years. Based in Bari – a city most travellers dismiss as a transit hub – we took the same approach as Cinque Terre: a base city, local trains, and a string of beautiful coastal villages. What we found was quieter, cheaper, and in some ways more authentically Italian than anything the Ligurian coast has offered us in years.

This is our honest comparison: two coastlines, one verdict.

Refined Travel Insights:
– The St. Nicholas Revelation: How a church in Bari completed a pilgrimage we didn’t know we were on — from his tomb in Myra, Turkey, to his stolen bones in southern Italy.
– The €2 Focaccia Test: Why Apulian street food, a €15 restaurant wine, and a nonna who wouldn’t let us just order drinks made Bari one of our favourite food cities in Italy.
– The Cinque Terre Comparison: Same concept, fraction of the price – but is the 12-minute walk from the train station a dealbreaker? We give you the honest answer.
– Monopoli in March: One of the most beautiful places we have ever visited, almost entirely to ourselves. The Cinque Terre equivalent would have been a queue.
– Polignano a Mare & Volare: The clifftop town where the world’s most famous Italian pop song was born, and why it might be the most photogenic place on the Adriatic.
– La Passeggiata: Why Bari’s old town at night is reason enough to stay an extra day, and what a Martini Bitter has to do with it.
– The Schengen Exit: With just five days remaining on our 90-day allowance, we board a ferry to a country neither of us has ever visited. Albania is next.

Original Soundtrack by Adam
All music is original, composed and produced by Adam (PhD in direct audio-visual relationships) to capture the cinematic atmosphere of our Mediterranean winter – with the exception of Volare, which felt too perfect for Polignano a Mare not to use and has been fully licensed.
🎵 Volare by Aldo Botta & His Orchestra, licensed via Lickd.
https://t.lickd.co/l/Vm14eeorQ0N | https://lickd.co

Who are The Floating Nomads?
We are Rick and Adam, The Floating Nomads. We sold the house, quit the 9 to 5 and now live a life of constant slow travel by train, ferry and water. When not on our UK narrowboat, Serenissima, we live abroad for months at a time. Whether spending 200+ days in Malta (and Venice) or travelling from Buxton to Brazil without flying (as seen on CNN), we share the practical maths of life on the move.
Our films combine Rick’s marketing strategy with Adam’s music PhD to capture the authentic atmosphere of every destination we visit.

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Chapters:
0:00 Intro
2:19 Why We Chose Bari as Our Base
3:25 Bari’s Real Working Port
5:15 Exploring Bari Vecchia
7:17 From Turkey to St Nicholas in Bari
11:19 Finding Bari’s Medieval Castle
13:39 Eating Assassin’s Spaghetti
17:06 Monopoli: Puglia’s Quiet Beauty
21:08 Polignano a Mare & Volare
24:57 Bari at Night
28:05 Our Honest Verdict

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