Monday, Monday... (June 14)

We have received your sympathy emails about the condo, and we appreciate it, but we want to assure everyone that it's all ok, we're just trying to make light of things. We’ve had a much better day today and have just re-aligned our thinking slightly. There are still a few bumps along the way, but all (most) is good. We're doing the blog primarily for our our records so that the trip doesn't become one big blur - but if you're reading along, we'd love to hear your comments!

Last night we made pasta for dinner on our little stove, and then we avoided the mosquitoes and tried to get into the ac, but I think that it was off in the lobby. We played skip-bo that Dana brought along, and we had a good time. We’ve discovered that we are quite the attraction, no matter where we go – people just enjoy looking at us Americanos (they don’t get many in these parts), and they especially love to stare at Amy’s dreadlocks. Last night while we were playing one little girl, about 4 years old, was just completely fascinated by Amy’s hair and had to get a closer look. Amy was looking to her left, and the girl started to circle around her chair from Amy’s right. She slowly walked entirely around Amy, and when she was at Amy’s back, and I called her name to get her attention and show her the girl – but by this point the girl had circled around to Amy’s left, I pointed at her, and Amy turned to find herself nose to nose with this little girl. Scared Amy half to death, she screamed – the girl ran, and the mother was apologetic. The girl had run off down the hall and her father went after her, he brought her back and on the way said to Amy, “boo!” in a joking manner to make light. It was funny… she was very cute.

Amy had asked at the front desk about getting more toilet paper, and we learned that we are responsible for getting our own… so Amy stole it from the men’s room in the lobby. Shhh. We also have to buy our own dish washing liquid, and if we want to swim in the pool, swim caps are “compulsory”, and they’re available at the desk for only 3euro. Oh, and the laundry service was “very reasonable”, it was only about 3 euro for a shirt… one shirt. No thanks. We decided we would wear what we had, rinse things out, and that we were grateful for friends that didn’t care.

We decided to walk down to the we headed down to the entertainment “animation” to see what was up tonight, but we had already missed the show, and the dance club music was starting up -- the others went back to the apartment, and I stayed to play on the internet because I knew that at least it was quiet at the computer bank, and back at the apt I would be in the dance club and I wasn’t in the mood. I went to bed about 2am after everything died down.

This morning (Monday), Amy went down to the front desk to make calls to the time share place, since the day before was Sunday there was no one there. She tried to see if there were other facilities available in the area. The only place was 300km south – and we need to be moving north since we have train tickets from Bari to Florence (through Rome and Pisa) on Friday night. We looked at their website and they are also a family fun place with lots of planned activities to keep the kids busy… must be an Italian thing. The company suggested that we request a different room in this compound, and they said that they would call the front desk to see if that was a possibility.

In the meantime we had decided that we needed to get away today and see Monopoli itself. I had done some research and we have a few restaurants we want to try. This area is know for its seafood and Mediterranean influence, so we were stoked to try something. We caught the city bus in and just explored the city, it’s gorgeous with its narrow winding streets, surprise piazzas, beautiful churches, and panoramic Adriatic Sea views. We found a church that had shown up in the information that I looked up, and so I tried the door to see if it was open – we got inside and it was gorgeous – made our whole day. Just the views of the streets were cool, and then we’d turn a corner and run into the ocean. There is a castle in town and we looked around that, and then we found the restaurant that we were going to try: Osteria Perricci.

One of the best parts of today was having fun with Italian and the language barrier. I wanted to try and see what it was like to talk with the locals that didn’t know much English, and it turns out that our sign language comes in very handy. They’re very good with their hands, and so are we, and its amazing how much we can really understand, we just have to remember that “one” is a thumb. Well we walk into the restaurant, and say “quatro” and they say something to us… and we we don’t move they say “prego” – we’ve learned that it really means everything. It means good, ok, go ahead, you’re welcome… just situational. So we knew that meant, go ahead and find a seat. When the waiter comes over he starts rattling off in Italian and we say, American-English… and we get through “aqua, still” and “no vino” – the next thing we know he brings out this fantastic bruscetta with incredible fresh tomatoes, and a bowl of kalamata olives. We have no menus yet, but we know that a “hostaria” has a limited menu and sometimes you just show up to one and you eat whatever they’re cooking that day. Well this menu is all oral told to us by this funny man with a toupee and wax eyebrows (think Groucho Marx's mustache) – we get through it, we can recognize most foods and there are only 3 things to choose from, the fish, grilled or fried; linguini with scampi; and something else that we can’t figure out. Patti and Amy had the fish and it was the best fish (truly) and Dana and I shared "linguini with scampi" which we had envisioned to be linguini and shrimp. But it came out served family style, red sauce with whole crawfish. Dana refused to eat them (she won’t eat food that looks at her), but ate some linguini. While we were eating we noticed that a table next to us had this awesome dessert - fresh berries with whipped cream and we knew we were saving room. BUT they ran out (hazards of a limited menu) - so we ordered lemon gellato (Amy, Patti and Dana) and I got lemon cake with almonds and cherries. Most of the time we can figure out what they're saying to us because of the way we know a restaurant to proceed, for example the waitress comes up to us when we have empty plates and asks us a yes/no question... It means, “Are we done with our plates?” See, easy. Amy was still eating some of the crawfish after the rest of us had our plates cleared and the waiter came up in very straight face and said, "She pays.". We said no, because we thought he meant "HAS she paid?"... He said, "No - she last, she pay"... Ahhhh!! Very funny! We agreed!

We headed back out and we wanted to find a place with toilet paper and dish washing liquid and find the bus stop going back. We found this tiny little store with fresh cheeses, meats, pasta, and a few of the items we were looking for. The owners spoke no English, but we mimed – we found the tp, and a large (very large) bottle of dish soap, but they could tell that we were looking for something else. The woman came from behind the counter and pointed to laundry detergent, and made a sign like “bath”, like scrubbing clothes… no… not that… Patti signs “dish” and I mime washing dishes… AH! She points to the big one, yes! But small.. no. So then her husband points to himself, like “me, me” and then points to the back, and back to us… we understood that he was just going to give us some of their own soap, or that they had some in the back. He comes back with a water bottle (single serving) FULL of dish soap! And gives it to us for no charge, then thanks us for coming to his store! It was really cool – that’s what I was looking for. Another man helped us with the bus stop – it was supposed to be there at 6 and it was after 6… I signed “time, 6 (5 hand and a thumb), and he said “si..” and noticed the wrist bands and knew where we were going, he even confirmed that this bus went to Cala Corvino. Very cool day.

We get back and Amy goes to the front desk to check about the room, and the lady says that it’s possible to change rooms, but that we could have just said something to her instead of involving the time share people (apparently now there will be a write up about the noise on the website or something) – Amy says that we DID ask about the noise, and that we were looking for relaxing resort, and the woman says, this place is for fun, not for relax. She shows us the new room, and its much further away from the music, we can barely hear it. And it’s a little bigger, we can all sit in the living room at the same time, and we don’t have a kitchen in a closet anymore!

The other girls even went ahead and bought their compulsory swimming caps and headed down to the pool after we moved to cool off. We got lots of stares!! Tonight is the world cup game for Italy and they’re all gathered around tv sets together, carrying flags and equipped with air horns… so far its not going well for them. I’m sure it will be very loud if they win. The games have a hummmm to them, the horns of the people that are there live, and the whole compound sounds like a big bee hive with all the tvs buzzing.

Tmw we’re going to do the beach and maybe go back into town for dinner.