Today we caused a bit of an international uproar in the town of Gallipoli. Gallipoli is an old city that was originally built on an island just off the mainland. Today it is connected to the modern part of the city that grew up in the 20th century on the mainland by a causeway, but the old city has maintained its old feeling and is a charming place.
We decided to time our visit for lunch as Ton had read about a seafood soup that was supposed to be delicious. There was a place that served it near the fish market so that was our first stop of the day.
The restaurant we chose did not have a menu instead there was a table in the center where you went and selected from what was fresh caught that day. It had a large selection of fish that you could pick from. We told the guy fish soup and he took my name and told us to find a table. It was an interesting way to do things. We sat down and a couple of white wines showed up which were part of the meal, and then a few minutes later the fish soup showed up.
We were duly impressed with the meal presented and it more than met our expectations for freshness and size. It showed up with a large spoon for ladling out the fish that you can see at the top of todays blog, but when we opened up our silverware packs there were no individual spoons. So we flagged down a waiter and asked for a spoon he said Si, and set off to the kitchen. Meanwhile I had tasted the broth and thought it could use some seasoning, so when a different waiter came by I asked for a lemon. He said Lemon? , and just to make sure he understood I pointed to a big basket of lemons by the fish display. This set off a loud and indignant burst of Italian directed at me, the only thing I could understand was the occasional Lemon said with disgust, he did not appreciate my attempt to alter the taste of their soup base. All of the tables around us were kind of taken aback by his reaction, (particularly because squeezing lemons on fish is very common throughout the mediterranean.) but I found it amusing and Ton was too busy tucking into her soup to be bothered. Seeing our reaction everyone else started smiling too. He finally left and we did not get our lemons. He then returned and told us we had our spoon pointing at the big serving spoon in the middle of the fish. I was not sure if this was revenge for asking for lemon or some other problem. At this point we decided to just go with the flow so Ton used the giant spoon for tasting the broth and I dipped the bread that came in the soup to get my broth, which might have been the point he did not bother to explain. Anyway we made a dining faux pas which caused a bit of an international incident, but it was actually funny as his reaction was almost out of a movie and certainly a bit dramatic. I was also thinking about asking for some Tabasco, but I suspect he would have had a stroke. So Ton took one of the red peppers from the plant which was the center piece on our table and secretly added it to the soup.
We spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying a stroll around the island. It is surrounded by a sea wall on sides so we walked along the wall to get our bearings.
Then we dived into the center to walk down the street with all of the shops. The nice thing is except for the street that runs next to the seawall there is no car traffic on the rest of the island, except for one miniature garbage truck that was making the rounds of the streets collecting the locals garbage bags.
This region was also famous for underground Olive Oil presses. As we were walking down the street in town we saw a sign for one and took a look. About 2o feet below street level there was a large mill for pressing the olives. The cave included a mill, a stable for a horse or donkey to pull the mill, storage for olives, and a fresh water source. It was kind of interesting to see, though none of the ones on the island are still being used.
We headed back to the campground, and noticed there was a large grocery store only a couple of hundred of meters away. We have been looking for two things for the last week, windshield washer fluid, and paper cone filters for our pour over coffee. The paper cone filter situation was getting critical as we were down to our last three, and we have been looking since we arrived in Italy. The Italians consume coffee very differently than we do and we were beginning to wonder if the paper filters were not for sale here. Ton began walking around the grocery looking for alternative devices we could use but we did not come up with anything. I did find what appeared to be washer fluid, and went to confirm it with an employee by doing a pantomime of windshield wipers moving back of forth and making spraying sounds, he looked at me flapping my arms and making spraying sounds with amusement and said in excellent English, yes the water to clean the window of the car. We noticed an appliance store next to the grocery and went in there, and found paper filters next to a new Mr. Coffee machine on sale. They are not quite perfect and were a bit expensive, but they will work and our coffee crisis is over.
