Free oranges and wet laundry.

Italy has it nailed with shoes, wine, food.
But America has clothes dryers. And hair dryers. I guess they just don't like to dry things in Italy.
It's been raining on and off in sheets all day, but oddly, when it's not raining, it's bright and sunny, which means I have been doing a comical dance routine with my laundry and the clothes line all day. I hand washed literally everything I have worn, including my coat (not terribly smart), and as I walked past the pier into town to find some lunch, it started to pour.
I came back and everything was sopping wet, and I have now taken my laundry inside and outside about 4 times, no exaggeration.
Lunch, though, was a really fun treat. I saw a man in a little golf cart driving around my fishing village, the back piled high with huge oranges and lemons. I picked out a few, and asked how much they were, and with a smile he shooed me away. "Basta, basta", he laughed, literally pulling my hand out of my purse. "Manga!". So, thanks to a kind old citrus farmer, I had the beginnings of my lunch.
The rain let up as I walked through the grotto through the famed Rock of Scilla that lets out in town, and I saw this beautiful shrine with an old statue of the Virgin Mary and some makeshift vases filled with fresh flowers and candles recently lit, glowing red in chipped glass jars. I looked at the statue, and the plaque, "La Madonna del Mare". The Madonna of the sea. I followed her gaze out to the foggy sky and the deep sapphire sea, framed by the hard, jagged rock of the grotto. It didn't look like much walking up, but when you turn back and look, it's the perfect place for the Madonna of the Sea. Quietly watching sailors navigating the fabled rocks and enjoying the spectacular view.
As I went past the deserted beach, I found another man with a similar golf cart and a more extensive selection of produce. I picked up a huge bunch of ruby colored tomatoes, some sprigs of flat leaf parsley, a few red onions (dirt and roots included). Just a euro. Fantastic.
Then, the small store by the train station. I was looking around, aimlessly, and the store owner (your standard, charming old Italian man) said the magic words, "Salami? Cappicola? Frommagio?"
Si, si, si grazie!
I got a few pieces of cappicola, which was wonderfully fatty, and some frommagio of undetermined origin. It was soft, thinly sliced, and a little smoky. For a total of 2 Euro, I now had lunch, and feel significantly less guilty about having another dinner out (the places around here are pricier then Tropea - I think the other places only open in the "on" season). A squeeze of fresh lemon, a drizzle of oil (from the store by the Grotte), a glass of local wine and a orange, speckled blood red on the inside and candy-sweet for dessert...
And the 2 books I still have to read for class on Sunday. Oops.