Early to Market in Bisceglie

The drive from Bari's airport to Bisceglie is deceptive. The landscape is marked by an incredible amount of modern development: big box stores, a giant outlet mall, and huge cranes building new apartments. But, peel back a layer of the Apulian onion, and you'll find along the coast the old whitewashed towns with narrow streets that wind their way up out of the Adriatic.

I got up early on my last day in Bisceglie and walked along the water into the old city center, where there was an incredible market. The fishermen head out early from the town's small harbor, pushing colorful wooden boats against the tide, and return with a jaw-dropping bounty of seafood -- octopus, squid, clams, oysters, and silvery, glassy-eyed fish. Adjoining the fish market was a vegetable market teeming with fresh produce -- bright fall persimmons, puntarella, pears, olive dolci (fresh, uncured olives), and green and purple artichokes with stems as long as your forearm.

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