Tablet Trips combine expert-led, artisanal travel adventures with elevated stays at some of our most soul-stirring hotels. Here are the places you’ll enjoy on our trip to Puglia, Italy.
Tablet Trips are here. These once-in-a-lifetime journeys immerse you in a destination through excursions and activities rarely available to visitors, while setting aside time so you can relax and enjoy a selection of experiences at unforgettable hotels — all curated through Tablet’s singular lens.
We’re starting with five trips:
Puglia
Provence
Patagonia
Japan
Morocco
What makes our trips special — other than the unique daily itineraries and small groups — are the hotel stays. Tablet Trips features smaller, more exceptional hotels not usually found on these types of travels. These thought-provoking properties are as much a part of the overall story as anything else on the itinerary. Best of all, the trip schedule is never overstuffed. You’ll be busy, but we’ve built in free time at the hotels so you can take a moment to detach, unwind, and explore.
THE PUGLIA TRIP:
Farm-to-table cooking and farmhouse culture at Italy’s masseria hotels
Puglia is home to two of our favorite things: incredible food and deeply charming hotels. Staying at two beautifully converted agricultural estates, we’ll sit at the table with farmers, winemakers, cheesemakers, and bread-bakers, tasting Puglia’s most delicious food and wine. From Puglia, an optional trip extension takes us to Matera, where ancient cave dwellings have been transformed into hotel suites.
Between excursions to meet the chefs and producers carrying Puglia’s culinary traditions forward, we’ll have plenty of time to enjoy our rustic-luxe hotels—walking through their gardens, relaxing by the pool, sipping wine in shaded courtyards, and taking our time over some delicious farm-to-table meals.
Learn more about the Tablet Trip to Puglia. Learn more about the featured hotels below.
Set in a classic Puglian landscape of limestone and low-slung almond and olive groves, Masseria Palombara feels splendidly sequestered, a few miles to the south of the town of Oria, about midway from Taranto to Brindisi. At first glance little more than a typical stone-walled farmhouse compound, upon further inspection it’s revealed to be a luxe little adults-only resort, spa, and restaurant. It’s small, with its 18 rooms and two suites divided between the lovingly restored original masseria farmhouse building and a separate structure, the more contemporary annex. It’s an immersive, rustic-luxe experience, and each set of rooms comes with its own outdoor pool.
The setting for Masseria Torre Coccaro is classic Puglia, on a sun-bleached hillside facing the Adriatic Sea, amid groves of olive trees. The view is no accident — the Masseria began its life in the 16th century as a watchtower, a fortified farmhouse, designed as a stronghold against marauding Turks. Today the fortifications are strictly ornamental, and the Masseria’s architecture just adds to the charm. Some rooms, in the old farmhouse, are fairly typical, while others are located in the towers, or under the arched ceilings of barrel vaults, and two are carved from limestone caves, one opening onto an orange grove and a private pool.
The village of Matera, in far southern Italy, is famous for the houses carved into the volcanic hillsides, some of them dating back to Paleolithic times. An ordinary hotelier might have built a traditional inn somewhere in town, to offer some proximity to the village’s famous sights. Not Daniele Kihlgren, whose albergo diffuso concept is one of total immersion. Here the hotel rooms occupy the caves themselves — needless to say the look is not exactly frilly or delicate, and the décor is untraditional, to say the least. What separates Sextantio from merely sleeping in a cave is a certain dedication to luxury, if not quite an ordinary version of it.
WHAT ARE TABLET TRIPS?
Tablet Trips are curated journeys for boutique hotel lovers. With your specialist trip leader and a small group of Tablet travelers, you’ll meet artisans, insiders, and luminaries to learn about the local culture, with an emphasis on architecture, design, craft, cooking, and cuisine. Then, our unique spin on trips: stays at hotels that tell an essential part of the story, located in the neighborhoods and natural surroundings you came all this way to see.
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