We have returned to Florence from our 10 day jaunt to Sicily and it felt like coming home! We have often walked down these streets before (Janice, I can hear you singing that). The guys who run the auto service station next door cheered our arrival. Mozzarella guy greeted us like long lost friends. We missed being greeted with paroxysms of ecstasy by our Franklin, but otherwise it felt right. And damn good.
I'm trying to avoid sounding like a Rick Steves promotional brochure, but a certain amount of hyperbole is unavoidable when discussing Sicily. The island is simply fabulous...some of Mother Nature's finest work. The blue in these photos has not been digitally enhanced.
Neither has the view of Mt. Etna, which erupted for our visual delight. We watched it by day and by night from our hotel room in Taormina. And also from the restaurant.
We spent a day with a geologist climbing to 2500 feet, which is as far as the powers-that-be will let you climb during an eruption. Our guide also took us into lava tube. Spectacular!
These are the Turkish steps. An outgrowth of sandstone on the Mediterranean Coast.
And the young man on the right in this photo is Guiseppe, who took us around Ortegia in a little tuk-tuk. His smile has also not benefitted from digital enhancement. It is genuine. He is very small, but unfortunately, still too large to fit in my roller bag. I'm already the mother of three young men and one honorary son. What's one more? He spoke about four words of English, but when I said we lived near New York City, he very proudly shouted, "La Grande Mela!" (The Big Apple). I could just eat him up.
Here we are in his tuk-tuk.
Taormina is a lovely tourist town with picturesque winding streets lined with shops selling an impressive array of refrigerator magnets, but as history buffs, we favored Siracusa, Noto and Agrigento. The Greek and Roman ruins are awe-inspiring. How did they shlep all that limestone up mountains to build gigantic temples in the fifth century BC? And how did the Temple of Concordia not crumble in the earthquake of 1693? Toll Brothers could stand to benefit from Architecture 101: The Ancient Greeks.
The Temple of Concordia is the logo of UNESCO.
This is called The Ear of Dionysius, built by the Greeks for water storage. The acoustics inside this gigantic cave are incredible. A whisper can be heard from one end to the other. And the shape does resemble a human ear. Do I sound like Rick Steves yet?
Switching back to modern times, love is in the air! As in the US, the pandemic in Italy wreaked havoc on matrimonial plans. Thank God that's over! Brides are everywhere!
It does one's heart good to see so much true love. I can hear my mother now, "The bottom of your dress is getting so shmutzik! The dry cleaning is going to cost a fortune!"
Estimates of the number of Jews currently residing in Sicily range from 0 to 5. In 1965 there were 50, but most of them either died or left. So how do you explain the prayerbook I found in our hotel room in Syracuse?
Or the current exhibit of Israeli art at the Museum in Noto?
Could they have known we were coming? "The Jewish bathroom" is listed as a point of interest in self-guided tour literature in Ortegia. Len, our Lithuanian Protestant friend, was the one who figured out it was a mikvah (ritual bath for Jewish women).
Finally, back to food. Meet my fish.
And meet my fish meeting other fish.
Weekly stats:
Aperol Spritz: 4 (slowing down)
Gelato: 3 (perfectly reasonable)
Steps: Many thousands, most of them straight up!
Regrets: We had such a lovely time with Sylvia and Len that we regret more of our friends are not joining us for a visit. Florence, anyone?
Salute!
We have only three reasons to come home to the US. Family, friends and Franklin. They are all powerful reasons.
If not for the wonderful people (and dog) who give our lives meaning we couldn't imagine why we would return to a country where an 18-year-old can't legally order a beer, but can legally purchase an AR 15...a country where it's not okay to abort your rapist's child, but it's okay to do nothing after 19 fourth graders are savagely murdered...a country where insurrectionists can win primary elections. Don't get me wrong, Italy has plenty of problems, but the ever-increasing frequency of schoolhouse slaughter is not one of them.
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