A vacation in a foreign country is a great opportunity to have your eyes opened to the ways of other cultures. And, fortunately, it also gives you the chance to find some scrumptious blueberry products along the way.
My eyes were certainly opened wide when I had an embarrassing “incident” happen to me in a restaurant bathroom this week. I pulled the emergency cord thinking it was the cord for flushing the toilet! I realized my mistake immediately when the alarm sounded very loudly. Of course, at that point, I saw the real flush button on the side of the wall—too late! In my defense, I have to explain why I did what I did.
When I was younger and living in Europe with my family, most of the toilets had the water tank on the wall, and there was a string to pull to make it flush. In the bathrooms here today, many of the toilets have a large, silver square on the wall behind the toilet, and it is the flush button. In this particular restaurant, the silver square was a permanent decoration, so when I saw the cord, I assumed it was the flush button. I don’t think I will make that mistake again.
So, now that you have had a good laugh, let me tell you about the rest of our trip so far—it has been incredible. At our first hotel in a town along the sea, we received a bottle of champagne with two full accompaniments to add to our glasses of bubbly. Of course, I was a bit partial to the blueberry-flavored addition because of its flavor and because it turned my champagne a beautiful lavender color. The next morning, we were brought two flavors of jam with our breakfast, and I was pleasantly surprised that one of them was blueberry. Many restaurants often serve just a marmalade, with a strawberry, raspberry, or cherry jam as well. They must be on to something special here by serving blueberry jam!
Our travels have also taken us to a small village in the Italian Alps where we found a food specialty shop. In this quaint store, they make a variety of jellies, jams and sauces for restaurants in Italy. I discovered they even supply products for the Eataly store in the United States! We were so excited by all the great things we found in this store, not to mention our new Italian friends who gave us some useful tips. We even found out that the Italian word for blueberry is “Merlini.” It was so exciting to see all the amazing ways the blueberry is being used in Italy.
Trying different types of foods and learning how they are prepared has been an adventure for us on our trip. Most of the menus in the restaurants have been in English, but earlier this week, we encountered our first “no English” restaurant—no English menu and no English wait staff. I had also forgotten my Italian phrase book back at the hotel, so we had no idea what to order. My husband and I scanned through the menu looking for words that looked vaguely familiar. Surprisingly, there were many words in French and Italian that were similar, so we could somewhat figure out what we wanted to order. Our dinner arrived, and it was absolutely fabulous! I had ordered shrimp that was breaded in cornflakes. That’s actually what the words looked like on the menu, but I wasn’t completely sure until the dish was set in front of me. I also had a piece of fish (no idea what kind) that was delicious and coated in a cherry red coating that looked like candy. It didn’t taste like candy at all, and I still don’t know exactly what it was, but I do know it was amazing. Steve ordered some Boef (beef), as he knew that would be some type of steak, and that was adventurous enough for him.
We were able to “converse” enough with our waitress for her to know we were celebrating our 25th anniversary, and she brought our a pretty plate of “small desserts.” She was so sweet and even apologized profusely for not speaking English. Really? We are in her country!
It has been a dream vacation—despite my embarrassing bathroom incident.
