Bari — where grandmothers make pasta in the street and the focaccia changes your standards forever

Walk into Bari Vecchia (the old town) on any morning and you'll find something that exists nowhere else in Italy: grandmothers sitting on chairs outside their front doors, making orecchiette pasta by hand — rolling, shaping, laying them on wooden boards to dry in the sun. They've done this for generations. They sell bags of fresh orecchiette for €5. Some will let you try. Some will laugh at your attempts. All of them are making pasta that no restaurant in the world can replicate, because the ingredient that matters most is the 80-year-old hands. Beyond the pasta: focaccia barese (thick, oily, topped with cherry tomatoes, olives, and sometimes potato — €2 a square at any panificio), the Basilica di San Nicola (the bones of St. Nicholas — yes, that Santa Claus — are in the crypt, stolen from Turkey in 1087), and a seafront lungomare that Naples wishes it had. Bari is the gateway to Puglia: Alberobello 1h, Lecce 1.5h, Matera 1h.