GALLIPOLI: Sights, Caos in Otranto, Gigi D'Agostino and more..

Today I will take you into the historical centre of Gallipoli, as I said in my recent blogpost Gallipoli is divided into two parts the modern centre and the historical centre which is connected to the main land by a bridge.

Whilst I took pictures of the beautiful sights, I was lucky enough to see a local fisherman getting ready to go out fishing.

As we made our way more into the centre we came across a lot of handmade leather shoes and stalls selling real sponges. We got talking to the seller of these sponges and he told us that he dives 50m into the sea to harvest these sponges. When brought onto land they are a dark colour so they leave them in a chemical liquid for a month. When they are clean they turn a bright yellow colour (like in the photo above). This man said that before you use this sponge for the first time, you must soak it in bicarbonate soda for 30 minutes and then its perfect to use. You don't have to repeat this process. These sponges last for up to 15 years without ever growing mould or mildew. I found a link here for all the benefits of sea sponges including the fact they are biodegradable and grow bigger and better each time they are harvested.

And of course I can't go to a new city without checking out typical foods, I bought these amazing Tarallini made with oil. They came in tonnes of different flavours. The best way to describe their texture is like biscuit bread. The same texture as bread sticks! (but these are nicer)

If you notice the colourful ones, well done, they are actually sweet types. I also bought a packet of the hazelnut ones. They are just so good and are typical to the region of Puglia.

Otranto

Dress: Brandy Melville

Shoes: Primark

Bag: Italian Leather shop

When I say or even think the word Otranto all I can remember what happened when we were returning home from there. Before I get to that I will explain more about the city.

Otranto like Gallipoli, is on the coast. I decided to whip out my new Brandy Melville dress for the occasion. In this city there is a huge castle which supposedly inspired the first Gothic Novel in history called "The Castel of Otranto" by Horace Warpole.

We ended the night sitting at a bar beside the sea with the cheapest cocktails, watching a 50 something year old go skinny dipping. It was hilarious to watch!

So, as Otranto is roughly 50km from Gallipoli we knew we would have to fill up the car again with petrol on the way home. Davide had used up all his battery leaving him with 1% so he needed to use my phone for google maps to get home, in which my battery had only 20%. After about 10 minutes google maps offered us a quicker way back to Gallipoli so we changed route. At some point during the journey home I started to fall asleep (normal because it was after 2 in the morning). The next thing I remember is waking up to Davide telling me that for the whole trip there were no petrol stations and in 2 minutes the petrol was going to go. I asked how much percent I had, he said 5%!!

So he drove as fast as he could to get some speed for when the petrol actually does run out. And then it went! 2:30am in the middle of nowhere, in the pitch dark countryside of Puglia. No internet, phones on 1 and 5 percent and no petrol. Immediately Davide put his dads number in my phone because if his phone dies we were screwed. We call his dad who calls us a taxi (remember we couldn't find one as we had no internet). The taxi man rings my phone asking us where we were, we were obviously clueless because earlier google maps had changed our route. The only thing that we were sure about was a the number of kilometres on a sign beside us so we told him that. He was also clueless and we had no time to wait because my phone was on the brink of death! Somehow for the Grace of God I managed to send him my location through Whatsapp, Then we sat there waiting. (Secretly I was buzzing from the excitement of this while Davide was about to have a heart attack ahaha). The Taxi man came finally, and here was the next part of the story. In the car we had 1 bottle of water and in the taxi he had 2. He drove us to a petrol station which was about a 10 minute drive from where we broke down. Next thing we were looking in bins for more plastic bottles! I gave Davide €5 to buy petrol and we began filling up all these water bottles. We hopped back into the taxi, absolutely stinking of petrol with the thought that we were going to blow up into flames with the petrol bottles!

We got back to the car and emptied the bottles into it. With a €60 taxi fare later we were back on the road. Stopped in the same petrol station again to put in another €5, and we got home in one piece!

Bodysuit: Boohoo

Shorts: H&M

Belt and Shoes: Primark

Bag: Italian Leather Shop

Gallipoli is also known as a huge party destination, me not being very party party, we only went one night and decided to see Gigi D'Agostino, we grew up listening to his music in our teenage discos so I was filled with nostalgia the whole night!

If anyone is looking for a party destination I would definitely recommend Gallipoli because amazing DJ's come like Skrillex and Steve Aoki.

On our last night we had organised to go out for dinner. I finally got the chance to wear my absolutely stunning low v neck playsuit that I bought in Terracina last year in White120. Perfect for summer nights to add some sexy elegance.

I also got a beautiful rose to top off the last night. It went perfect with my outfit! 

Top and Dungarees: Boohoo

Shoes: Primark

Bag: Italian Leather Shop

But wait.. the holiday doesn't end there? Instead of returning immediately home from a week of heaven we decided to spend 3 nights in Terracina to "wean" us off the holiday. We also returned to Sperlonga, an absolutely beautiful white coastal town! We travelled there last year so I will leave you a link about Sperlonga that I covered already.

Chat soon lovelies!