Blogs from Sicily, Italy, Europe - page 58

With six water bottles in hand we left Mondello and set off for the Capuchin Catacombs and then on to the seaside villages of Porticello and Sant'Elia which are about 20 Km east of downtown Palermo. The weather was broiling, apparently it reached 42 C (108 F) but what was most striking were the number of wildfires around the freeways, in the moutains and well, pretty much everywhere. It appeared that a single "amphibious bomber" was dispatched to drop water on these hundreds of fires (kinda like spitting on a bonfire). The plane would land briefly on the ocean to take-in water then rush off to drop it's load. The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo were as billed; grotesque and eerie. As we descended into the Catacombs the temperature dropped about 10 degrees. The location of corpses ... read more

We picked up our rental car which is a VW Golf, turned up the air conditioner (it was hot and humid) and plugged in the TomTom car navigator. The Golf 4-door manual trans edition is a good size for maneuvering medieval streets as we discovered later on. After making a few wrong turns in the parking lot we were directed to our hotel in Mondello without any problems ( Hotel Conchiglia d'Oro ). It's pretty amazing that the GPS navigation technology is so well perfected that it can take you through the convoluted maze of narrow streets without missing a beat. Sometimes directions were being given in less than 50 ft increments....amazing! We arrived at the hotel to find out that our Palermo guide, Sabrina had been trying all day to track us down. That night ... read more

We made the SFO airport two hours ahead of departure only to find that Delta did not have permission to access to our seat assignments due to the fact that Alitalia had not released our seats from their system . After about thirty minutes of phone calls the Delta ticket desk was able to assign our seats and we were on our way to New York. At the Delta desk we bumped into an old friend at the airport who was sending off a Danish foreign exchange student who had been staying at their house in Fort Bragg. From there our trip took a turn for the worse. After waiting to take off from JFK (destination Milan), we boarded about an hour late and then waited on the tarmack while thunderstorms passed over the airport. After ... read more

I joined Lara for a tour round Sicily. We went to see the theatre and temple at Segesta, then onto the town of Erice, high up on a mountain with a lovely view of the North-East of the island. The next day we set off south to Agrigento, where we walked down the valley of the temples in the sunshine! From there, we went to Taormina and Giardini Naxos and even took a trip up Mt Etna in a jeep, but Lara was too scared of dropping me into the crater so I didn't have my photo taken there! Later in the week, we went to Syracuse and Noto and to Caltagirone which has some impressively steep steps with ceramic tiles on them... we climbed all the way up them to see the view!... read more

Welcome to the Sicily blog brought to you by the Blogfather . There really isn't much to add right now because, well...we haven't left yet (T minus 16 days). A couple of important items to point out: first, take a look at the icon located above next to the Contact Blogfather and note the uncanny resemblance to the Blogfather (short and stocky) . Feel free to email us anytime while we are on the road. Currently we are in the final stages of preparation - Monica is attempting to fit her entire wardrobe into a single suitcase and I have completed extensive Italian language training so that now I can order cannolli. Our TomTom 910 is filled with Sicilian destination data (this is the best car navigation system I... read more