After Ferragosto, Giulia’s dad offered to take us on a 3 day road trip around Sicily. And so it began…

Fun fact… You know how in the states we have things like truck stops and Buckees? Well, in Italy the equivalent is basically a coffee bar. In fact, the best cappuccino I had the entire time was from one of these “auto grills”. I’m not kidding when I say that when you walk in, 50% of what you see is coffee and say 30% is wine. And the smell is DIVINE. Oh, I forgot to mention that one of them had a huge bakery and pastry oven inside.

So on to the road trip… Giulia’s dad had washed and packed along some fresh fruit from his garden – pears, grapes, plums, peaches. Beautiful.

Day 1:
We headed south to Syracuse. It’s an OLD place. There, we walked along the old city area called Ortygia. We saw some beautiful churches and plazas. The sea was wonderful. And we also got to visit an old castle on the sea. So cool! After all our walking, we tried a refreshing seltz. It’s lemon juice mixed with sparkling water and salt. Sounds gross possibly, but it is so refreshing.

It wasn’t even lunch time. So we headed on over to the small town of Noto. It’s said to have the most beautiful piazzas in Sicily. We basically just walked around and took pictures of crazy ornate baroque style buildings and churches.

After Noto, we moved on to Scicli. Everything is starting to blend together, but we had an afternoon coffee there and also saw a wedding. That was pretty cool.

Next was Modica. Here we tasted a unique kind of chocolate that’s modica’s specialty. It’s made Aztec style without heating it or something like that. After chocolate we walked down the street to climb the 250 steps to a cathedral. We all laughed when we got to the top and realized there’s a street that goes right up to the door!

For dinner, we continued on to Ragusa, where we ate wonderful Italian pizza. I love pizza.

Finally, after construction and winding around to find the right way, we made it to our super nice hotel.

I learned about the separate basin that Italians use specifically to wash themselves after using the bathroom. Very interesting… (Though I originally thought this basin was for feet- washing, so I washed my feet and shaved my legs in it before learning what it was really for…)

Day 2:

We awoke to the most complete Italian breakfast. Pastries
galore… Yes because that’s a typical Italian breakfast. I was really thankful to see that they also had a variety of other options like yogurts, cereals, meats, juices.

After breakfast, we had an incident of lost keys, but after we found them we made our way to Agrigento and its Valley of Temples.

Here we saw several Ancient Greek temples – including the temple of Hera/Juno, the temple of Zeus, the temple of Hercules, and the temple of concord. Some are as old as 400 BC.

After the temples, we put on our swimsuits and went to discover the Scala dei Turchi – a huge white rock shaped like giant stairs that just out into the Mediterranean Sea. I don’t have much to say about it at the moment except that it was SUPER crowded. I almost didn’t take any pictures (even with my good camera) because I felt so overwhelmed.

For dinner we went to a nice little restaurant with what I pictured as the perfect Italian atmosphere. A quaint little side street. Low lighting. Tables on the side walk. Soft music in the background. Though we laughed because when they realized I wasn’t Italian, they changed the music to Frank Sinatra.

Day 3:
We spent the day in Palermo… I’m pretty sure it’s the biggest city in Sicily. We saw a lot of great buildings. I tried the snack, arancina. And I learned a lot about the mafia and the present day anti-mafia organizations. Before driving home, we went to Mondello, the famous beach area near Palermo. And I ate a life-changing cannoli. 🙂 if there’s one thing Sicilians love, it really is cannoli.

As Giulia’s friend Angelica said when she first met me, “in Texas you have guns in your hands, but here in Sicily we just have cannolis in our hands.”