travels

#13 Arrivederchi Italy – We’re Alberta Bound

We are in the final day of our 30 days in Italy and are relaxing poolside rather than walking 10,000 steps.

The southern sun has warmed. We’ve driven for miles and miles around villages and farmland, walked through steep hillside towns climbing to their centres  and grandiose cathedrals.

Strolled through gardens and orchards with even M, a non-gardener, trying to help me identify sweetly scented blossoms. 

  And we’ve dined morning, noon and late at night.  (A 7:30 dinner reservation is early, most restaurants don’t get guests until 9 pm.) We even discovered what Italians do when all the shops close from 12:30 til 4:30 – they go home and cook big meals and rest, before restarting their work day late afternoon. 

    Though we planned this day to be chill  before our return to Alberta’s late spring we don’t sit still. We wander through a museum created from a restoration of La Posta Vecchia, a grand home first built on a then already ancient site in 1640! Destroyed in a fire in 1919 it evidently sat ignored until purchased and restored by the famous magnate J. Paul Getty in 1960 with the guidance of the archaeological societies of Etruria. But then, presto(!) – artifacts of all kinds, including finely crafted mosaic floors were discovered under the basement dating to the … hang on … first and second century AD!!

Trying to get our heads around that we took a beach walk along the shores of the Mediterranean. I had to pause and consider the history of what we’d just seen – trying to feel the spirits from 2000 years ago!

It makes me want to cry and be happy at the same time. Being close to works of art so ancient makes me think we have to get the most out of our time here on earth, create art,  put down our iPhones, lol, love the ones we’re with,  and be present for each other. It’s what we have.

As we watched the fishermen  on the rocky ledge I couldn’t stop considering how I might make life at home  more Italian.

I’ve decided I need to build a stone wall, install huge (maybe ancient – 1st century) terracotta planters, shine a light up my apple tree, plant a lemon tree (ha!), drink all my future cappuccinos from a pretty pink china cup, eat more bread and gelato and somehow be thin, wear pungent floral perfume and gaze at it all through popular crazy-huge black rimmed glasses. Prego. Prego. We’re soon to be Alberta bound. 

#7 – Oops! Back to Sicily – The Post About Dining!

M and I are on a long holiday to see how much we can eat! … I mean to celebrate his retirement. We’re in the boot of Italy but so much bread, olives, pasta, sausage, calamari, pizza and gelato has gone to my head and I’ve left out this post penned in Sicily.

Back on Sicily we left the Baroque city of Noto, and traveled toward Catalina pausing in Syracuse, the birthplace of Archimedes and home of Pythagoras and Plato, to walk the seawall above the Ionian Sea  and lunch at an outdoor cafe. Beside us a chic and thin Sicilian couple ordered a big plate of crispy  calamari, just as we did. Full of the fat rings of fried squid, we were ready to pay and continue exploring but noted that the Sicilians were  now indulging in big plates of tomatoe and olive covered rigatoni, and you bet they’d finish with gelato and/or cannoli. Observing so many Sicilians dine that excessively I was desperate to know the secret of binging like the bourgeoisie and still mirroring skinny models. Behind us an American told his server the portion was too large to finish. The waiter declared rather emphatically, “This is Sicily. We only have big portions. Enjoy it.”

When M and I weren’t discussing how locals packed away so much fine Italian grub and remained fit, we were back to being blown away by their driving. They flew past us on rough stone roads, with garden walls boxing us in, maneuvering the blind corners with moterbikes overtaking us all. M exclaimed and I gasped and gripped the door handle, convinced the Sicilian drivers had some sixth sense combined with a strong faith in the afterlife. 

Drivers and diners aside,  what I’d like to bottle and bring home is the the delightful transcendent scent that filled the air when we arrived at the country inn we were booked into, situated in an orchard of lemon and orange trees. The afternoon that we’d heard there was a spring snow storm back home in Canada M and I competed for the best lemon tree photograph. I got into bed that night intoxicated not by wine or eperol, but that sweet aroma of lemon blossoms.

# 9 Damn! That Volcano Is Errupting!

We had an odd experience on our Sicilian travels – M and I were in our lovely hotel room hearing perhaps  thunder – there was an incredibly loud ‘huffing’ outside.  I opened the door and gasped (lots of gasping on this trip). “Mama Mia!” (Okay, my exclamation was in English and more explicit). “M get out here!” I cried. “There are  (another bad word) flames coming out of that volcano!” We rushed to the reception to find out if we needed to scurry for our lives. A hotel employee told us Mount Etna suddenly erupts with flames many times  a year, but agreed that it was frightening, before going back to casually serving drinks. Be still again, my Canadian heart. 

Mount Etna

By morning the flames had stopped and (more scariness)  we drove up, up, up to view the rich black lava rocks high on Mount Etna (with a zillion tourists), hiking over red and black lava rocks. Some believe the volcano is the gateway to the underworld, others credit it for making the hills down to the sea a Mecca of fertility. 

M’s Italian barber back home insisted we must visit the town of Taromina – we wound our way there next, more narrow roads, speedy drivers, ridiculously steep climbs with switchbacks – so more freaking gasps. (Of course). 

   M swears it hasn’t been intentional but we’ve saved loads of Euros by always being in the villages from 12:30 to 4 pm when shops are locked up. But nothing closes in the tourist meca of Taromina. With enough lemon printed linen I focus on the perfect Italian leather hand bag, explaining to M how it’s too well priced to NOT  buy it. Prego. Time to wind back down away from the volcano – a few chunks of lava rock in my new bag. 

Below Mount Etna

# 8 The Godfather

It was the big tour day!  And it was fantastico. To recap: M and I are on holiday in Italy. Our route through Sicily has been created with the suggestions of a wonderful travel agency in Canada aptly called “Quench” but we are driving on our own, except for two scheduled tours. 

We were again steadily changing elevation, this time in our tour guide, Vitorio’s car, rising high above the sea on switchbacks. M and my kids are huge movie buffs, and a favorite film is The Godfather. Vittorio was driving us to Savoca, the tiny mountaintop village where Michael Corleone hid in exile and where he met and married the beautiful Appolonia. Savoca is at the top of a perilous peak approachable only by a goat path road that winds around like a child’s mindless scribble. Vittorio, a local, drove always with one hand while gesturing to us with the other; this so even as he remarked at a passing truck “woo-a, that was a close”. And he nevertheless expressed amazement at Coppola choosing to shoot in that remote, hard to reach village recalling the antiquated cargo and cameras from that age of film.

The view of the sea far below was stunning, as was the revelation that we were being invited to order drinks and granita, (a Sicilian iced dessert), in Bar Vitelli, the actual bar where Coppola filmed Michael convincing the father of Appolonia, that his intentions were honorable. 

Vittorio told us the villagers were the extras, including his grandmother, during that thrilling time in Savoca 53 years ago. Myself, I couldn’t stop thinking about our movie aficionados back home and how I’d love to show them this curious exotic world we’d time-travelled into. Honestly, so many in my family can recite The Godfather from Vito Corleone’s first, “Why did you go to the police? Why didn’t you come to me first? To Michael’s final “Don’t ask me about my business, Kay.”

 Next Vittorio drove us even higher up some more goat paths (ineptly translating to English for us, he mistakenly called them “roads”) which were made of glassy volcanic stone, to the church Michael and Appolonia were wed. He showed us the now tattered robe, hanging (unprotected) on the church wall, that the preist in the movie wore. The priest’s red prayer book, also a prop in the actual movie (presumably rather valuable for this reason alone) lay on a chair like a discarded pamphlet for us to pick up and leaf through.

It was difficult to believe there was civilization any further up the mountain, but Vittorio drove us still higher yet. Our ultimate, even more precarious, destination felt like a village out of a Dr. Suess story, the breeze circling up over our heads in a place close to heaven while the beach and bars beckoned far, far below. M was already texting our kids his photos and exchanging famous Mario Puzo lines.

This tour had all the intensity of “going to the mattresses” coupled with a perfectly reasonable apprehension of “sleeping with the fishes.”

      

# 5 We Dare To Drive in Sicily!

Driving! Mama mia! After three days in Palermo we rented a car to drive through the middle of Sicily from the north coast to the south coast. First nerve racking task – leaving Palermo. The roads have lanes but no lines. Motorcycles, and there are plenty of them, seem to be exempt  from all rules of the road, and where in Canada other vehicle drivers might catch your eye with a look, or even a nod, here it seems like the attitude  is to avoid indicating intent, rather it’s “I’m just going where I’m going. You watch out!” 

Mama Mía!

Finally we’re on the open (skinny) road winding through the Sicilian hills. Unlike on a trip through the Canadian Rockies, we rarely lose sight of farms, villas and orchards. Amongst the greenery, the houses in the fairytale hillsides are exclusively shades of yellow or gold. And the magnificent vistas! – layers of hills, farm land, and then the Ionian Sea.

  Looking for a pizzeria in the city of Caltagirone, we found the streets quiet and shuttered.  Settling for a Italian McDonalds (no Big Macs or Quarter Pounders) we learned that Monday is the only day of the week that Caltagirone’s businesses ‘take a rest’. 

Back on the highway to Noto, our next destination , the landscape levels somewhat to an impressive variety of vegetation: palm and cypress trees, whole groves of prickly pear cacti, orchards of olive and lemon trees. M got used to me gasping at each hairpin turn, with drivers passing us to head straight for oncoming traffic, like why wouldn’t they? 

    For a distance we followed a giant semi and worried what impatient Italian might try to pass us both. On a hairpin turn it wasn’t a vehicle slowing traffic but rather  a horse and buggy. Mama Mía! 

Semi and horses

At last we were inside Noto,  where I thought we’d be stuck to this day! The cobblestone roads, shrunk in width as we drove. Back at home we might call them sidewalks. The strident voice of Google maps, demanded we turn left in between two ancient buildings a few feet apart. Seriously!? Behind us three drivers were waiting for us to get on with it. The walls of the buildings on each side of our rented KIA’s supposed path were scrapped with paint from non-Italian drivers who’d passed this way before. 

Seriously?

M now insists it wasn’t so big a deal. (What?!) My solution,  cried out between bad language, was to just let the Italian guy in the car behind us take the wheel in our car and get us out of the jam. M is far too much of a red blooded male to have considered that – and he persevered, manoeuvring by inches until our car could move forward. With adrenaline still rushing through my Canadian veins we made it through Noto to where the Google maps lady said, ‘Your destination is on the right.’ And Prego! A giant double door opened to a courtyard with parking for our hotel. Be still my heart. It was time for an afternoon cappuccino and an Aperol Spritz! 

#4 Take the Cannoli

My husband, a guy not always crazy about organized tours suggested one dull winter day, as we planned our month long Italian adventure, “Oh go ahead, book us a few tours.” Prego. I picked one I’d love. And one he’d love. Mine was for our second day in Palermo, Sicily  and was fantástico! Discover Sicily has been an exotic, sometimes scary adventure. It has a rich history marked by centuries of conquest and influence from Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans. Our tour was called Ten Tastings of Palermo and went beyond our expectations in culinary delights!

Mercato di Ballaro

The aromas! Oh the tantalizing aroma’s! And the vivid colours! Michelangelo, our guide with a company called WithLocals, was too good to be true. It sounds corny but it was as if we’d met an old friend – an Italian history foodie-type old friend – our kid’s age,  but stay with me! 

   He described Palermo as being layered like a lasagna. It’s Sicilian cuisine has been influenced by Arab countries, the French, Spain, Greece, and North Africa and to explore this Michelangelo took us to the historic Mercato di Ballarò. Located in the Albergheria district.

Our first delight was a piece of fluffy Arabian style salted bread hot off the grill. Our taste buds were awakened. From their we let him deliver us through milling customers to a booths selling tuna crouquettes, and lightly battered asparagus, mushroom, and artichoke where described the artichokes as as being as big as a baby’s head. Michelangelo then insisted we’d never tasted egg plant parmigiana if we had eaten it in Sicily. So true – it was an alluring mouthwatering mix of the ‘aubergene’, tomato sauce and gooey cheese.

Sicilian Artichokes

From there we stepped through a bottleneck of people, to an open area with American music blasting, and all ages of folks dancing and laughing in a square crowed with food booths, and plastic tables and chairs. Michelangelo called out an order to a  woman behind another grill and soon presented us with our last plate of hot delights.

Since our arrival in Palermo we’d noticed people everywhere, seriously everywhere – sipping on bright orange drinks, resembling orange Fanta – but not. It’s an apéritif known as an Aperol Spritz, a mix of Aperol, prosecco, and soda water. On that sunny afternoon we discovered its refreshing appeal to accompany our thinly battered, crispy fried sardines and the best ever lightly spiced potato croquettes. 

With our bellies bursting Michelangelo suggested we stroll to a wide seaside boulevard when we walked amongst local parents and grandparents pushing little bambino’s in fancy Italian strollers, kids on scooters, cruise ship passengers, and dog walkers of decidedly Italian dogs. 

In the afternoon sunshine, we were treated to creamy Sicilian gelato and the popular cannoli. Prego.

The tour I booked with M’s heart in mind won’t be for a few days, but here’s a hint – ‘leave the guns take the cannoli.’ Ciao for now.

# 3 Three Coins In The Fountain

 Third day in Rome, but on this day we have a concrete plan. Prego! (We’ve learned that  ‘Prego’ – is a word for – well, everything – You’re welcome. Please. Go ahead. Prego. Prego Prego.) 

So finally we were setting out with a set of destinations. It’s a jubilee year in Rome, something that the Pope declares every 25 years and Catholics from around the world make pilgrimages to Rome, filling the streets with tourists, as well as groups of travelling nuns and priests. 

Traveling nuns in Rome’s airport

In a day ripe with sunshine we grab an Uber through the city to stand before the iconic Spanish Steps. The Spanish Steps are a grand staircase connecting Piazza di Spagna to the Trinità dei Monti church, and the 1953 film “Roman Holiday,” starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, made them famous as a romantic backdrop. M and I take a zillion photos but don’t traverse the steps. Some trivia: there are 135 steps, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, represented  by three tiers, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

Iconic Spanish Steps

From there we wander amongst the high end shops, stopping for a glass of vino to watch the folks stroll by, then with dreams of tossing a coin in the fountain a la Audrey Hepburn, we head off to the Fontana di Trevi. The younger crowd will know the song as the one Steve Martin, not John Candy, sings in the movie Trains, Planes and Automobiles – “Three coins in the fountain,

Each one seeking happiness

Thrown by three hopeful lovers

Which one will the fountain bless”

It’s so Jubilee-busy that there is a controlled line a block long to get anywhere close enough to toss a coin. Now, if we had tossed our three coins what would be our reward? One coin ensures a trip back to Rome, two coins and we will find love, and three coins guarantees we’d marry the person we found love with in Italy. Thank goodness we have each other because M and I settle for a selfie of us grinning before the crowd, the swirling fountain water behind us.

No coins in the fountain

Our next patio stop is for an Italian beer, and a cappuccino, ignoring ChatGPT telling me Italians never drink milk in their coffee after 11 am. Finally, we traverse the cobblestones, again following the mix of worldwide tourists to the colosseum. We face it, where it rises above the crowd, the world’s largest amphitheatre, almost 2000 years old. Perhaps, it’s the jet lag coming back, but honestly I sit in awe even of the marble bench we rest on  that feels worn so smooth I imagine Romans who have sat right there, through the centuries. A busker begins to play something classical on his violin  – ah Prego!

2000 years old

Another wonderful day traversing Rome. Tomorrow it’s off to discover Sicily, another world entirely. First stop Palermo – remember, “In Sicily, women are more dangerous than shotguns.” (The Godfather).

Rome: Awe-Struck Jet-lagged Wonder

April 2025. We’re here in Rome, Italy! I’ll skip past the actual travel days, with sleepy boredom in an airport lounge and then almost missing our connecting flight having miscalculated the distance to the gate in Frankfurt’s insanely enormous airport. And I won’t go on about my vow against airplane breakfasts (icky icky eggs) or the usual circadian rhythm mess of a 30 hour day. All the same, the triumph of Rome is so alluring that its wonders were magnified by the state of our stunned jet lagged brains. Jumping ahead eights hours with only poor sleep and a bunch of niggly naps, heightened the marvel of that first mixed-up day of sleep deprived sight seeing.

With clearer  heads we could have performed speedy searches on our phones to name the monuments, to pin point the cathedrals,  and understand the streets direction,  but that would have subtracted from our awe struck confusion. 

The coliseum

From the fresh squeezed morning orange juice to the midnight cocktail on a six story rooftop, the day unraveled in a winding, blur of awe. We tread over cobblestones trying to follow that blue dot on google maps, stood stunned  before ornate fountains, magnificent cathedrals, and ancient (like really, really ancient) statues of the likes of Neptune and Caesar.

And why so many leather goods shops I pondered, buying a cute little purse I didn’t need, (though who couldn’t use one more cute little purse) while trying not to be run over by scooters and motorbikes, ubers and taxis. Like sheep we followed a crowd to St Peter’s Basilica mesmerized by a single guitarist serenading us with the Beatle’s tune ‘Here Comes the Sun’. Lingered before  midcity  architectural digs, pizzerias, and pubs all the while listening to the  sing song-y Italian spoken around us. 

Time travel archeological sight

There was an afternoon nap, before our dinner of fat olives, rich gnocchi with ragú sauce and then chocolate topped  basil gelato. Fantástica. But the highlight was the nighttime stroll home.  Rome is amazingly lit from the ground up, cathedral windows, marble fountains, and tall cypress trees glow in the black night.

We walked slowly, well satiated, our feet tired, staring up at seagulls flying in and out of the light. It was ten pm as we lined up for pistachio gelato, then relied on Google maps blue dot to end our circular route through narrow alley ways with curious closed shops. In bed with closed eyes,  I still viewed marble angels, Roman gods, and the wide rolling Tiber River. Tomorrow we’d set more exact goals of  historic sights. And throw coins in that fountain. 

30 Days in Italy – (but first prune the apple tree)

A burst of energy happens the morning of a big trip. There I am rushing to have an extra key made for our mailbox, because I’m certain my adult kids will lose mine checking the mail in our absence. I’m slurping a cold latte while buying mini toothpastes and tiny deodorants at the drugstore, then back home pruning our apples trees – chopped branches falling into the snow. Crazy I know, but the jobs been on my pre-trip to-do list forever, and our return will be past the date that pruning is advised if I want to come home to dreamy blossoms.

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Patience is a Spring Time Virtue, right? Right??

We’ve been fortunate enough to take a holiday from the  hard Canadian winter and escaped to Maui , along with groups of spring break tourists with kids of all ages in tow, tiny children splashing bravely through aqua waves, to pouty teens glued to their cell phones.  I felt blissful in Hawaii.  My Alberta-straight hair curled with the soft humidly.  My skin glowed (or perspired), turning light brown – where it wasn’t glowing red.

We jumped waves, lay on the beach and drank by the pool – and our drinks always had little umbrellas in them beside the chunk of pineapple – it was part of the holiday.  As I walked along the tropical landscape I picked up plumeria blossoms and held them under my nose, trying to hold the  luscious sweet scent in my memory.  I took photos of the red ti leaves and of the even brighter ruby-colored torch ginger. I aimed my camera at the startling orange tulip tree and below it at a brilliant yellow hibiscus, and even at the comical pineapples dropping off a palm tree during a hard gust of wind.  I wore sandals and breezy skirts and bathing suit tops – I had purposely left behind any gray and black summer clothes – those too often being the colours of my winter wardrobe.

I never forgot that I was in vacation land – not my own land. With the time change we arrived back home in Calgary midmorning.  We didn’t say much as the taxi drove us passed what is still, despite my hopeful fantasy otherwise, a gray, white, and beige landscape.  While my husband tried to deal with his jet leg, I slipped my  brown bare feet back into a pair of winter boots, as there were still small heaps of snow outside and I walked the garden – the way gardeners do in the spring.  I forgot the huge Hawaiian leaves and dazzling tropical blossoms and looked so carefully, pushing at the soil with a stick until I found the tiny red-tipped tulip leaves struggling through the firm soil, then further along a clump of round fresh leaves of an early columbine plant reaching for the sun, and finally – spiky deeper green shoots of a chive, as well as a young strawberry plant in the corner of the vegetable garden.

My tropical holiday was like a trip to Atlantis – mystical in its abundance of   showy  displays of blo0ms.  But home again, I have no choice but to wait patiently for colourful floral and fauna.  I can only anticipate the blanket of snowy pink apple blossoms, the  crimson hollyhocks waving on long stems, a scattering of  midnight blue cornflowers, or my magnificent rose-hued double poppies springing up somewhere new.  I promise myself to appreciate them more than ever when they come, to marvel not just at their beauty and grace, but at their hardy fortitude.