Don't Eat That.

While I usually give my best efforts to act as a fairly well-behaved, polite international traveler and not an obnoxious, imposing American, sometimes thing end up entirely out of anyone's control... For example, while in Genova we went to the aforementioned wonderful seafood restaurant. We arrived early to escape the pervasive dampness and chill, immediately identifying ourselves as tourists. The waiter sat us at our table and brought us our menu and drinks. He came back to see if we had decided, and then the madness began. Though by now we are fairly familiar with general food terms, none of us had any knowledge of sea food terms and proceeded to ask the waiter what nearly every item on the menu was. As you can imagine, there were quite a few items that simply were lost in translation, and we were all giggling and confused by the end of the clarification. He apparently decided that explanations were worthless as he opted to bring out a plate with a raw piece of each of the pastas on it to show us our choices. With much negotiating and confusion (on our part) and certain despair (on his as Rachel combined pesto with seafood), we finally ordered. After polishing off the provided basket of bread (decisively UN-Italian as they typically wait to eat their bread with their entrée), we then nibbled on the raw pastas and looked down to see we had eaten it all. When the waiter came back to bring our entrées, he glanced down at the empty pasta plate and asked snidely "may I take this now?" causing much laughter amongst our party. We sat there laughing at ourselves, joking that he probably though we would eat anything...
Dinner and dessert were finished without too many glitches, and he brought out our bill. He sat down the bill and a small plate with 4 white mints sitting on it, or so we though. The four of us made a move toward the "mints" and our waiter cried out (again in dismay), "Don't eat that!" Without a word of explanation, he proceeded to pour a little pitcher of steaming water over the "mints" and we watched in wonderment as they sprang up and grew into little columns of wet hand towels. He archly glanced at us and informed us they were orange blossom scented. In case you were wondering, yes, in fact we were still laughing. By this point we were laughing so hard we could hardly talk, except to point out that he must really think we would eat literally anything. So, if you ever wind up in a small seafood place in Genova, please note, the white tablets at the end are in fact to cleanse your hands, not your palate. And please remember, no matter how seasoned and refined a traveler you are, sometimes things are much more fun when they go a slight bit awry.