14 Gennaio, 2012 - Gallipoli!!!

Free Day!!!!

Francesca and I decided to head to the little seaside town of Gallipoli today.  First of all, we had a small sleep-in and then Fra spoke to her children back in Sydney.

We packed our gear for the day and found the train station (thanks to all the lovely Italian men out on their Saturday morning stroll!!).  Bought our tickets and then had a coffee and bought a snack at the bar in the station.  Lovely little place with 2 men in lovely uniforms serving!

We hopped on the train and had a slight misadventure as we got on the wrong one.  Not our fault as there were 2 trains attached to each other, both going to the same first stop (on the same engine) and then were to detach.  Not that anyone saw it important to let us know about this....until we were just about to leave.


Also brings up the very horrible and nasty experience in the Italian train toilet.  Never again.  I'll hold on next time.  let's just say that I don't think many of the men managed to get it in the toilet.  Bleh!

A lovely hour later, and a chat to the engine driver, we arrived in the lovely little town of Gallipoli.  This comes from the Greek word, Kallipolis which means "Beautiful City".  There are roughly 21,000 people living there.  The main things the city exists for is tourism and fishing....and I can't say the weather was good enough for many tourists!!  This resulted in many of the shops being closed for us :(

We had a walk around the point, and saw the 'calm' sea on one side first.  We came to main castle and historic area before walking back up the 'rough' side.  This was very icy and windy....VERY cold.  Our train didn't depart for another hour and a half, so we headed to the one bar that was open to keep warm.


Fra had a child's icecream bowl and I had some wine, which came with a large portion of aperitivi.
We sat quite happily for a while and then went downstairs to have a coffee.  I had a koala clip on thing and gave it to the guy who served us...only to be rewarded with some sweets!  Augh! Didn't really need them but it would have been rude to leave them.

We hopped on the 3.45pm train and arrived back in Lecce at 5pm, caught the bus to the main square and did some shopping.  I was a little upset that all the shops had jackets that didn't fit - and were all black.  Fra did some shopping in Zara and on the way home, I did a quick pit stop into United Colours of Benetton and saw that their jackets were 40-50% off!!  I tried 2 on, and they both fitted beautifully....so ended up getting both.  A lovely white long coat and a stylish grey one to go out in when it's chilly in winter.  Really love them and both together were under $100.


Very pleased with myself.

When I got home, we got dressed up to go out for Kristy's birthday - went for a drink to 'Persone' bar again.
We were there from 8.30pm - midnight and then went searching for somewhere with some music to dance to, but found places with good music, but no room to dance.


We got home at 1am and slid into bed and fell asleep.  Was woken up at 4.23am when Jess came back in from the discoteca.  Need to get up to be out of here for the day trip tomorrow at 9.30am.  Will be a tough one!


Miss A


Challenge: What is the name of the little Italian island where the cruise ship sank recently? Read the news!!