Taking Off & Arrived in Bari ; Nov. 3-4, 2019. Sunday & Monday

Our flight on Alitalia was at 5pm on Nov. 3 to Rome then changing flight to Bari. My sister and her husband were kind enough to come and help taking care of Djuna and Iubi before they go back to China, which was such a big relief for me!! I worried about Djuna so much! If they were not able to help, I would not be able to enjoy this trip!!

I was busy for the last minute preparation all day Saturday and prepared baozi dinner for all of us – my sister and niece the whole family. Had a great time! The time change switching back to EST happened to be Saturday night, so we gained an hour and we were able to play some Mahjong.

Walked the dogs for the last time on Sunday morning before leaving for our 3-week vacation. Then we took off before 1pm. I am thankful that we did leave that much early! Going through the security line at terminal E was more painful than I remembered! For some reason we did not get the TSA PRE this time …. The line zigzagged but we eventually went through. This terminal E hosts Alitalia in addition to China HaiNan airline, etc. It was quite crowded. But we were able to have a nice lunch at Legal Seafoods before heading to the gate.

The flight took off rather promptly at 5:10pm. We were in economy, but the plane had the 2-4-2 configuration, so Bob and I were together by ourselves which made it a little more tolerable. Both of us were tired so we both tried to sleep. But none of us was able to really sleep. Had some close-eyes, then counted the minutes for the 7-hour flight to be over.

We got to Rome at 12:30am EST, local time 6:30am. The plane did not stop at any gate, so we had to board a shuttle to the terminal. It was raining, but not very hard. Our connecting flight to Bari was at terminal B. We got there and soon met up with Anson and Liz. Chatted quite a bit and learned more about the HongKong situation – it really is like the cultural revolution!! I could not believe it!!....

Our flight to Bari was to leave at 9:30am and it was rather prompt. And it was a short flight, less than an hour. And our checkin luggage all made it there! The 4 of us all got into one taxi which took us to our hotel – Hotel Oriente in downtown Bari. The taxi driver was a young man, drove like a madman! It was really rather scary – once he almost hit another car! He did not speak or understand much English, and tried hard to let us take a tour in his taxi. Sigh …. The ride was 30 euros.

This hotel was in an old stately building. Our rooms were ready, so we were able to get in right away. But the rooms were rather disappointing – very very small, the shower is even smaller than the cruise ship’s! And the air does not smell fresh ….. Oh well, one night!

The hotel is at a good location, within walking distance to the old town of Bari. Anson, Liz and we met at 12:30pm, walking out to look for our “comfort food” – something Asian. Unfortunately the two nearby Japanese/fusion places were both closed. We walked around and did not find anything that appealing, so we finally stopped at a bakery and each ordered a heated sandwich/panini. Not bad! My prosciutto/arugula sandwich was not bad. Bob ordered some sort of a ham and cheese pocket; Liz and Anson got a slice of pizza and some pasta. Not anything to write home about, but a typical Italian lunch.

After lunch, we started walking about the old town. I am rather disappointed – an old town, with quite some tourists (mostly from those cruise ships), with some charming narrow streets, a number of churches and basilica/castle, but nothing that impressive. It is a port town – a lot of big cruise ships were docked there. We were actually here once on one of the cruises, when we took a taxi to that famous town with cone shaped roofs. But nothing here rang any bells for me.

By around 3:30pm, we sat down at a roadside café and had some drinks. Liz and Anson then continued to walk, we came back to the hotel to rest a little. Will join them at 6pm in a restaurant – an Italian restaurant. There does not seem to be any decent Asian restaurants here, even though bob said he read online which said there were a number of them. But where are they?? Oh well ….

Oh, btw – the weather here is SO MUCH warmer than home!! Many people were wearing T-shirts, shorts, summer dresses. We wore only one long sleeve shirt and it was too warm at times! But once the sun sets, it will be much cooler. Bari has 73 degrees today as its high, low 59. Right now it’s still 68, at 5:30pm.

We met our friends at the restaurant before 6. It was just a restaurant on the side of the road, with seatings outside in a glasswall enclosed, tented space, like many others besides it. Liz saw there were quite a lot of people there in the afternoon and its menu looked decent, not just pizza. Now we don’t even know its name. But dinner was very pleasant. Bob and I both had pasta carbonara, which was quite good (perhaps not as good as the one in the fancy restaurant in Rome, but better than any in the US), Liz had a margarita pizza which was quite good, and Anson had a fancy vegetable pasta. We ordered some roasted vege and a nice bottle of red wine which I liked very much! Dinner was slow – took more than an hour to serve. By the time we left it was around 8:30.

Walked back to the hotel before 9. Dead tired. Ready for bed! Hope I won’t wake up middle of the night! Tomorrow the van Bob reserved is supposed to pick us up at 10am. We will be up before 7 for breakfast at 7. It will be the first day of the OAT trip, starting in Matera.

Matera; Nov. 5, 2019. Tuesday

Had a good night’s sleep, kind of made up for the last 36 hours without sleep. The TV in the room did not work – Bob finally was able to turn it on, but there was no sound. There did not seem to have any English station anyway, and I fell asleep before bob finished his shower. Even though I still woke up a couple of times during the night (not knowing where I was), I had a decent rest. When the alarm woke us up at 6:30am, we were both rested.

Despite the size of the bathroom, the water pressure was very good. The movable shower head was almost fallen off because of its broken hose, but at least it worked while we were there. But, the sink was totally blocked – it was slow the night before, but the water simply did not flow down in the morning. I had to ask Bob to hold the shower head and I stick my head in the tiny shower stall to wash my face, making a mess of the floor. We had to call the front desk. Despite the equipment issues, I must complement their service. They sent someone up right away, with a plunger, and he got the water flowing, albeit very slowly.

The hotel’s breakfast was quite decent, enough choices, we enjoyed it. Then I packed and were ready to checkout before 9:30. BTW the TV had sound now, and there were two English stations!

We met our friends in the lobby before 10am, and the vehicle and driver were already outside the hotel. It was a Mercedez van. The driver did not seem to speak English, but a nice polite guy. Liz and I chatted along the way, and we got to Matera before even noticing it. Probably an hour or so. Comfortable and smooth ride. Compliment to the driver, and the Limo company!

Matera turned out to be a really charming town!! It is on a mountain and the old town seemed to be built intentionally in the mountain, utilizing the caves. It was beautiful!! I did not expect this! Night and day from Bari which to me is a rather boring place. am not sure if the driver had been to this hotel, Locanda San Martino, before, and he was having a little trouble finding the right spot to park the van and unload our big suitecases, on that very narrow, cobble-stoned mountain street. But he finally found the spot that would not block the street, and the porter came out to help with our luggage. It reminded me of the hotel in FengHuang, for the luggage part …. We had to help dragging the big suitecases on the cobblestones a little bit, but the porter helped. Very charming hotel!

Our rooms were not ready yet (only a little after 11am), so we stored the suitecases there and started our exploration.

The new town of Matera is actually on the top of this mountain. We walked the winding cobble stoned streets, enjoying the scenery and the little shops along the way, Liz and I bought a couple of hats.

We got to the top of the new town and walked the streets to the right and left, then had our lunch at a restaurant around 1pm. The menu only had English for the two panini entries, but we saw some stuff the next tables ordered (fried pepper and potato chips, etc.) so Liz and I ordered their vege soup and a vege dish. The soup turned out to be mostly bean soup and the vege was a bit bitter and oily, but it was some sort of vege and I did not mind the bitter taste. Interesting lunch.

After lunch, Bob decided to go back to the hotel and take a nap, I went with Liz and Anson to continue our exploration. Anson was our guide who researched the map, and we walked a lot of nice winding cobble stoned streets, up and down, poked our heads into shops and hotels. We found out that the hotels here are quite interesting. The fancy ones had the guest rooms up and down on the mountain side, built inside the caves maintaining the walls and ceilings of the original caves. Nice!

We came back to our hotel around 4pm and to our separate rooms. Bob and I have room 11, which is on the 2nd floor. It turned out to be a very very small room, with a small bathroom 3 steps up, which had a tiny shower smaller than yesterday’s. Not happy with the room. But it’s purely a luck of the draw. The room Liz and Anson had was very spacious, with a flat bathroom. Oh well!

According to the travel book, we went down to the lobby before 6 to meet the group, but was told we were supposed to meet after 7. I guess our guide Barbara told us in her email but I did not remember. So the 4 of us sat in the lobby’s dining area and chatted, till everyone came.

So we have 8 guests in this pretrip – only Bob and Anson are male. We have Gail, Diane, Lorraine, and Betsy. All are seasoned travelers. Barbara was a very skinny Italian, with a bubbly personality. She chatted with us about some logistics things, we then headed out to our first “included” dinner in the restaurant 20 steps away from the hotel. Dinner was fine – I had the salted fish which was done quite well, and Bob had the veal wrapped around cheese.

We came back to the hotel around 9:15pm. Tomorrow breakfast will be at 7:30 and the group will meet at 9:30, to start our tour for the morning. Afternoon will be free time, and it’s supposed to rain – I dread thinking about walking on the cobble stoned up and down steps in the rain!! If it really rains, we might just stay in the hotel.

Matera/Sassi di Matera; Nov. 6, 2019, Wednesday

It took me a long time last night to fall asleep and I woke up early before falling back to sleep for a few minutes, before the alarm woke us up at 6:30. We went to have breakfast around 7:15. The buffet breakfast was not bad, not better or worse than expected.

We were meeting the group at 9:30, so we have some time after breakfast. It’s a cloudy day, at 64 degrees when we were up, and it will start to rain around 1pm, said the weather forecast. Sigh ….

We first met in the sitting area of the breakfast room where Barbara explained to us the itinerary for today and introduced briefly about this whole UNESCO Matera area. We first walked through Sasso Barisano, the area our hotel is in. She explained the history of Matera, how the cave dwellings evolved to what they are today. Then we walked to the Civita area where the most prominent cathedral steeple is. We stopped to visit one of the caves, which is sort of a museum now. After Civita, we walked to Sasso Caveoso which was an area not as developed as Sasso Barisano.

From there, we walked to the main square where we visited yesterday on our own. Along the way, Barbara introduced the local history etc. to us. We had noticed that the bread in this area seems to be quite different – quite big and shaped almost like a volcano. It turned out that this was from the old days when people lived in the caves had the communal bakery. They would bring their bread dough, with their family stamp, to the communal baker/oven. And each bread would last the family a few days. The bread was quite delicious – crusty and chewy outside, soft and fluffy inside.

That elephant statue I took picture of yesterday did not seem to be there any more – maybe we simply did not get to that spot today. But that statue turned out to be a replica of Dali’s design and there is currently a Dali exhibition in town.

We had a coffee break while we were in the Civita area, on our own, then we had a lunch in the main town square, at around 1 or 1:30, in a restaurant which is supposed to be rather popular. A nice lunch – with various appetizers, choice of a hearty soup or a lassaglia, and a dessert. All good. After lunch, we visited the restaurant’s cellar which was like a museum that had old pictures and other old stuff on display. It was no longer used as the restaurant’s wine cellar.

While we were having lunch it started raining quite hard, pouring actually. We were quite thankful that the rain did not start in the morning! We all had our rain coats on but did not have to really use it until then. When we left the restaurant, it was only drizzling slightly. We walked to the main square, Barbara showed us another structure in the square, which used to be the main cistern of Matera and later became a cave church through different eras.

Our organized activity for today ended when Barbara led us back to the hotel – I did not realize how close our hotel is to the main square! If the weather were better, I would go back to the square to wander some more, but with the rain, the cobble stone streets were simply too dangerous! We came back to the hotel around 3:30. Bob is taking his nap, I am writing my journal, the TV is on CNN just to have some noise on, and there is nothing else to do. With two wooden chairs in the room beside the bed, there is not even a comfortable place to sit. Oh well ….

The weather is supposed to be bad (raining) for the next week at least. Very disappointing. Tomorrow we will be leaving Matera and head for Lecce, visiting Alberobello on the way. More UNESCO places (bob and I have visited Alberobello once before on our own on one of our cruises). This evening we will meet Anson and Liz in the lobby at 5:30 – going to some nearby restaurant for dinner. They found a Japanese place but it’s too far in this kind of weather.

We met at 5:30pm and left the hotel to search for the restaurants Anson got recommendation for from the hotel. All of the three were nearby. We found them, but none was open that early. All the ones the hotel recommended seemed to be more of the casual ones and even they did not open until 6 or 6:30. So we looked into a couple that looked nice, with white table cloth and nice atmosphere, but they would not open until 7:30. Anson talked to an old man in one of them, called Dedalo. The old man was very kind and he agreed for us to go in and sit in the sitting area and wait. The place turned out to be quite a fancy place (www.dedalomatera.com). Very big, with white cave styled inside, many rooms, artistically constructed. So we sat on the comfortable couch and waited for more than one hour (I took a nap).

Dinner was nice – the portions were appropriate. I (and Anson) had pork for the main course, bob had beef, Liz had octopus. Anson and I also had the green salad and some pasta for appetizer, bob and Liz had the fried crispy peppers, and Liz had some fried bread balls. Each couple shared a dessert – panna cotta for us, tiramisu for them. It cost us 100 euro each couple including tips (we chose to leave a good tip because they were kind to us). More expensive than what I’d like to spend because I would be just as happy with a good pasta dish. But once is fine.

We’re back to the hotel around 9:30. Too late for our liking, but had no choice unless we skip dinner.

Tomorrow we’ll meet the group at 8:45am, and they collect our luggage from our room at 8:15am.

Oh, Barbara introduced us to a book named “Christ Stopped at Eboli” by Carlo Levi, which would give us a good view of how the people lived in these cave dwellings all the way through the 1950s. I will go get the book – found it on Amazon already. Also need to refer to the Wikipedia to know the history of Matera.

Matera to Lecce, Visiting Alberobello on the Way; Nov. 7, 2019 Thursday

Surprisingly I fell asleep rather quickly last night, but the hateful junk phone call from back home (US) woke me up at 2:45! I did not dare to shutoff the phone’s voice because I had the alarm set. But I should have turned on the airplane mode. Will do that tonight! Strangely, Bob has his phone on airplane mode, but he got calls from the US three times already! Need a talk with Verizon wireless!

I did not sleep well after that phone call, and the alarm got us up at 6:30. I had everything packed and the 2 big suitcases ready before 7:15. Then we went down to breakfast. We had a leisurely breakfast, then back to our room and relaxed until 8:40. Then went down to the lobby to meet the group. We were earlier than 8:45 the scheduled meeting time, but we were the last two.

We had to walk up to the main town square to get on our small bus – did not know we could get up that quickly! The hotel really was at an ideal location! Aside from the fact that we got probably the smallest room at a most inconvenient location, I had no complaint for the hotel!

Our 2 big luggage were taken away by the porter by 8:15 and they loaded them onto the bus.

It was a mid-size Mercedes bus and it rode nicely. There were plenty of seats for the 9 of us so we could put some of our backpacks on the spare seats.

Our first stop was Alberobella, the town with the cone shaped roof dwellings (trullo/trulli pl.)) which Bob and I visited once before on some cruise. It was a little more than one hour’s drive away. We were lucky that the rain held off the entire time. We spent an hour or so in Alberobella, walked through the area with concentrated trulli. Then spent another 15 minutes in their open market where people sell mainly clothing and shoes. Then we got on the bus again at around 11:15. It turned out that the streets Bob and I visited before probably were different from the area we visited today. Even though the streets had trolli, they are not the area tourists come to see. The open market was right by the streets we visited last time so it must be the town center, and our taxi driver last time did not really know exactly where to take us. Oh well! Glad we came again!

Our next stop was at a private family owned olive mill. This was the first time I learned how they harvest olives and how they make olive oil! Pretty impressive! They harvest the olives manually and do not use those shaking machines. They do also use a net. The olives must not touch the ground otherwise they would turn acidic. They labeled their olive oils from #1 through #7, 1 being the best. The girl showed us how to evaluate the olive oil – by color, by smell, then by taste. I learned how they taste the olive oil – similar to wine tasting, you need to swirl it in your mouth, to the left, then right, then swallow it with a sucking motion. Bob and many others tried, I did not, simply could not stomach drinking the oil. But I did taste the various grades after they’re drizzled onto bread. Nice. There was also something I never knew before – they boil the grate juice for 12+ hours which then becomes a reduction. You then use it instead of balsamic vinegar! I tasted it – really nice! I bought a small bottle of this grape juice reduction and a small bottle of orange flavored olive oil. Really have no room for the bigger bottles!

After the olive oil tasting, it started drizzling. We got on the bus again for our 3rd stop – the town Ostuni by the Adriatic ocean (also named the White town because of its white washed houses). That was where we will have lunch in a local resident’s house. The bus drove us into town, then we walked up the hill to the place. The husband was the chef, the wife was the waitress. Lunch includes a number of appetizers such as some cheese, some vegetable (cauliflower and potato), a piece each of prosciutto, a small fried bread (like the fried dough) and finally some pasta which was simple but very nice – just the kind of shell pasta which we had in the last two days, with spinach. Quite tasty! A nice homy lunch, but we did not really have any interaction with the hosts. Quite different from what I imagined about interacting with the locals ….

It continued to drizzle as we walked back to our bus after lunch. We got a glimpse of the ocean a few miles away, beyond a large stretch of olive groves (some of the olive trees were thousands of years old, Barbara said). I would have LOVEd to have a picture of the white washed houses on the hill, which reminded me of the Greek isles, but we did not get the chance. Plus it was raining.

Our destination today was Lecce where we will stay for the next three nights before heading to Sicily. We got into our hotel in Lecce around 4:30pm. It was already getting dark and was raining. Our hotel is “Patria Palace Hotel”, in the middle of the town. Great location and great hotel! It was an old renovated building – not quite sure of its history. It was very nice! We were first assigned room 217 – we were stunned by how spacious and nice the room was when we first opened the door. Wow!! Difference of heaven and hell compared to the room we stayed since we stepped onto the land of Italy this time! BUT! The room reeked of smoke! Quite strong! There was no way we could have tolerated it! So we went to the front desk and they had to change the room for us. Unfortunately there was not another room of that class!! I guess it was not meant to be! God wanted to compensate us for the suffer of the last two days, but we did not have such fortunate. Now we have room 223 – a standard room half of the size of 217 ….. Oh well….

Barbara offered to take us for a short introduction of our surroundings at 5:15, so the group met then. She took us to the left then right of the hotel, walked the few streets and introduced us to some good restaurants, the big square, etc. Pointed out where the old section was, where the shopping streets were, etc. Anson had done homework and figured out where we should go to have some good Asian food. So we did not come back to the hotel with Barbara after the short walk, and took off on our own.

Like most of the restaurants here, the one we were going to would not open until 7:30! So we walked through the street in the old section, then one of the streets in the new section (where Barbra said the shops were on) – there did not seem to have anything interesting! The only thing I bought was a bag of truffle potato ships for 8 euro. But it was not as good as the ones from Spain which I could get from home! Sigh ….

We finally waited to 7:30! The Japanese/fusion restaurant was owned by an Italian (maybe also the chef?). We each ordered what we wanted. I had a miso soup and some stir fried noodles; Bob had rare tuna and pad thai; Anson had some Japanese soup noodles and some gyoza, Liz had plain rice with tempora. It turned out that we were very pleased with everything!! We liked it so much that we decided to come back tomorrow again for dinner! Haha!! The quantity was rather small, but ample if we do not want to overeat. But they were so good that I would have eaten a lot more if it’s just Bob and me.

We walked back to the hotel around 9:30, getting a bottle of water on the way. Tomorrow our activity starts at 9:30, but we will be up early to have breakfast which starts at 7. It’s 10:30 now – better call it a night.

I feel we’re back to civilization again! The TV works and the city is alive with places to wander and things to do!!

First Full Day in Lecce; Nov. 8, 2019 Friday

We were up before 7 this morning and done with breakfast around 8. Sat with Betsy for breakfast – it was a decent spread. Today was the only all-sunny day for a long time to come – the weather forecast shows all raining for the next 10 days. Ugh!!

The group met at 9:30. Today’s activity is mostly in the morning followed by a trip provided lunch. Rest of the day is on our own.

Barbara took us for a walk around Lecce and introduced to us the important spots and the history, etc. Did not know that Lecce had such an ancient history! We visited a couple of churches, learned the underground historical world, the local food, The amphitheater which had been partially restored and the theater, both of which are below the current ground surface, etc. There were the following local foods I learned: a couple of kinds of bakeries: the stuff that’s like a scone but the dough was made with various kinds of vegetables; the Lecce coffee which was coffee and almond syrup poured over ice cubes. We were treated to this drink, which was quite sweet and the sweetness was from the almond syrup. At exactly 12pm, Barbara took us to the big square where music played on loudspeakers before the clock chimed 12. It was a tradition because of the famous musician Tito Schipa, who was from Lecce and made a lot of contributions. His body was laid in the square for people to say goodbye when he died. Since then music is played every day at noon time, in memory of him.

After the tour ended around 12:30 we came back to the hotel for some rest, before meeting at 1pm to go for lunch together. The lunch was just around the corner from the hotel, and it was the best lunch we had so far! Delicious appetizers followed by the most delicious lassagnia. And for dessert, we had fresh fruit salad. Really good!

I was chatting with Lorraine whom we met this trip. From her I learned for the first time the difference between cathedral and church!! We came back to the hotel with Lorraine – all of us wanted to use the facilities in our own rooms. And we met again at 3:10 to go out exploring. We wanted to visit a couple of shops that had the paper mache sculptures. But, most of the shops were closed until after 5:30pm – the time after lunch hour is their siesta time! So we walked the streets we walked last night with Lorraine, then visited the cathedral square (Piazza del Duomo). Bob and I are not museum or church people, but Lorraine is catholic and knew a lot about the religion and bible. So she gave me the best lessons on Catholicism! I like her a lot – even though she is quite religious (when she said something that was a little bit off color she always said something like “lord forgive me” which I found quite endearing), she seems to be quite open minded and rather liberal. After we finished the cathedral, we visited the museum, then the chapel. Then we walked back to the hotel which was quite close. I do not have much sense of directions, but Lorraine seems to be even worse. I showed her the restaurant Barbara showed us yesterday before we came back to the hotel. It was before 5:30.

Suddenly I felt quite tired. It was a nice day today so I was able to wear my new cheap shoes without socks. But my feet was hurting. I rested until it was time to meet Liz and Anson in the lobby at 7.

For dinner, we went back to the same fusion restaurant we went to last night. It was before 7:30, their opening time, but they accommodated us without a fuss. The same waiter who came from Ghana who spoke English well and was a very nice waiter. But the food tonight was way worse than last night – the rice was hard, the gyoza was soggy and not that good. Oh well – you win some and lose some.

Back to the hotel after 8:30. Tomorrow we are taking the optional tour called Salento’s Way which was not far outside of Lecce. In the morning we will go to Galatina, and Otranto in the afternoon. Unfortunately the weather will be bad – probably rain all day! Ugh!! ….

Salento’s Way near Lecce; November 9, 2019 Saturday

We were up at 6:30, had breakfast and started our activity at 9:30. I had to hand wash Bob’s T-shirts and socks and my pants – too expensive to have them done by the hotel. We sent one bag, 3 shirts of bob’s and 1 mine which will cost 20 euros. Ridiculous! The biggest problem with doing it myself is drying – weather is so wet and humid the clothes do not dry! Sigh ….

The weather forecast said that today it’ll be rain all day, but this morning it changed – rain would not start until after noon time. It is sunny now, at 9am! Let’s pray the sun will remain this way, or at least the rain will start at night!

It turned out that we were very lucky for today’s weather! The rain held off until this afternoon and we only got short periods of rain, and the rest of the day was mostly sunny, with beautiful blue sky with clouds! Wow!

Our first destination was the town Galatina and the main sight there is the church of Santa Caterina d’Alessandria. And the most famous thing about this church is its impressive medieval frescoes. It was the first of such church I’ve ever seen – all the walls were covered with colorful frescoes which were restored, but NOT repainted! Not sure what methods they used to restore and clean up so the original colors were showing. If some parts were missing, no repainting was done and the parts remain blank. We walked to this church through the cobble stoned streets, then walked back to our mini bus through other streets. By the time we were done it was after 11am.

Next stop was “Masseria Astore” – it is a private olive farm/mill and vineyard. The owner was an old surgeon who had the passion for olive mill. They own quite a lot of olive groves. The mill only made olive oil for fuel, NOT for cooking/eating. The young lady liza who works there showed us the cellar that they used to store the olives and made the olive oil. Quite impressive. The workers spent 6 months in the cellar during the olive harvest season until the olive oil was all made. We saw the mills, the equipment, and the place the people and donkeys used to live. The workers were paid well so that’s why they did the job. They don’t make the olive oil any more, but they make wine now. We visited the wine cellar which was an extension of the original olive cellar. They are a special wine maker – no blends, every wine was one kind of grapes only. Not a big production wine maker, they only make 7 or 8 kinds of wines – white, rose, light red.

After the visit to the cellar, we had our lunch in the owner’s house – the owners live upstairs, where we ate was downstairs. The current owner is the original man’s son who is also a doctor, a dentist. They have two kids, a girl and a boy. The girl was 12 years old and showed the interest to inherit wine making. But she was also interested in being a vet and had multiple kinds of animals – chickens, ducks, rabbits, cats, and a couple of dogs, We saw a good looking pure gray cat walking with us in the yard.

Lunch was three kinds of local breads, plus some cheese, plus a potato/egg/fennel salad. Nothing fancy or outstanding, but pleasant. Plus wine. A few ladies in our group bought wines to ship home. Bob and I did not think they are special enough to worth the trouble.

After lunch, we started towards our third and final destination for today – the town Otranto that is in the far eastern corner of Puglia. Even though we did not get to the east most point of Italy which is a bit to the south of Otranto, we got to see the Adriatic ocean. The rain started when we got there but did not last too long, and the sky was absolutely beautiful! We walked by the seawall and visited a 11th century cathedral – the Otranto Cathedral. The most impressive thing about this cathedral was its mosaic work. Hard to describe and I did not catch all the history Barbara was trying to tell us. But I bought a postcard that has the entire mosaic floor of the church.

After we visited the old town of Otranto, we got on the bus to return to the hotel. It was around 4pm. By the time we got back to the hotel, it was around 5pm. Today is Saturday. But the streets were very quiet and the traffic was very good, maybe because of the weather.

Dinner tonight was the goodbye dinner. We would meet at 7 in the lobby and walk with Barbara to a restaurant near the hotel. Tomorrow suitcases outside the room door by 8am and we will take off for the airport at 8:30. Barbara is leaving tonight because she has to help a grand circle group who had some ship trouble to visit Alberobello. I am a little apprehensive about tomorrow morning – what if we have some trouble, whom do we go for help?

We had a very pleasant goodbye dinner! The food was fine, but the company was better! Barbara is a very seasoned world traveler – majored in history in college, been a scuba diver/instructor for 10 years, was in the Maldives when the tsunami hit Asia; speaking 4 languages (Italian, German, English, Spanish), quite an adventurous lady, very skinny. She told us about the funny stories she experienced, very funny! We came back to the hotel around 9:30. Will need to be up at 6 to pack. BTW we sent out a few pieces of thick T-shirts yesterday and today we got them back, with one piece wrong. They finally got ours back after dinner. It turned out that the laundry was done by an outside service! I really need to think twice before sending laundry out again! I’ve been washing Bob’s socks and T-shirts, but his clothes and socks are way to thick. Not only are they hard to wash, but it’s impossible to dry them in the room without AC. Simply do not dry even in two days! Sigh ….

Lecce to Palermo, Starting our Sicily tour; November 10, 2019 Sunday

Finally we are in Sicily now after a day of traveling! It’s 9pm, the four of us just came back to the hotel after dinner at a Chinese restaurant nearby operated by people from WenZhou. Believe it or not, a real Chinese restaurant with decent food! Ha!

We were up at 6am today to get everything packed, then went down for breakfast before 7 and back to the room before 8 to put the two suitcases out at the door. Then we went down before 8:45 to join the group on the minibus and headed towards the airport in the town Brindisi (which is where Barbara lives).

The Brindisi airport, as Barbara said, was a very small one. After we checked in our luggage, we waited at the boarding gate and had nothing to do – the one convenient store there had nothing interesting to offer. We started boarding around 10:40 and the bus took us to the plane parked somewhere. The flight was at 11:15. We were on schedule, and arrived in Rome at 12:30. Our connecting flight to Palermo boarded at 12:50. By the time we got off the plane for the connection, it was already 12:40. Thankfully it was the same terminal and there were 8 of us. Again, we had to get on a shuttlebus that took us to the plane on the ground. Our flight was on schedule and we got to Palermo after 2. Both flights were on schedule and both had beautiful landings! Not even a bump!

Getting our luggage was a bit slow and scary – we got our first piece right away but the second did not come until a long time after. Betsy had the same experience. Luckily we all finally got our luggage. An OAT person was waiting for us and checked off everyone who arrived. Then the driver took us to the hotel - the Wagner Hotel, which is at the edge of the old town and next to the new town, perfect location!

Frederica (Feta) was waiting for us at the hotel – a very pleasant young lady who speaks perfect English! She gave us a brief intro of the important logistics, we got our assigned rooms.

The hotel looked quite classy (except the pink lights outside when it got dark). Rooms were not large, but comfortable enough. We got room 901, which is on the first floor. Breakfast would be on the 4th floor starting at 7am.

We met up with Liz and Anson at 4:30 to go out exploring and looking for some Asian food – none of us had anything to eat since breakfast and we were all hungry. Feta gave us some suggestions. So we first went to the place that serves the traditional Sicilian snack – the fried rice balls. We found the place and shared three among us 4. Then we walked on to look for the Japanese restaurant that Feta suggested (and made reservation for us at 7:45). Found it, but it was only 6:30 and they would not let us sit down and wait. So we yelped and checked tripadviser, and decided to explore an Italian restaurant to have some pasta. The restaurant we had in mind was close to the hotel. Before reaching that restaurant, we found a small Italian restaurant that looked quite good. Just as we were looking at the menu, Liz saw a sign for a HongKong restaurant, so we decided to check it out. And that ended up being the place we had our dinner.

We learned later from the WenZhou girl who served us that the restaurant used to belong to people from HongKong who are now quite old, so they bought the restaurant and have been there for 3 or 4 years. Food was decent – we had a fresh steamed fish which was very good, and some stir fried rice noodles that were good, a couple of vegetable, etc. The ShaoMai was not that good, and the dumplings were ok. Not sure if we will have the chance to go back – tomorrow is the welcome dinner and the last night we want to try that small Italian restaurant which is not open for lunch.

Back to the hotel around 9, got some hot water from the bar, back to the room to call it a night.

Oh, so what is my impression of Sicily and of Palermo? On the drive from the airport to the hotel, we saw the mediteranian ocean and the jagged mountain which was quite different from the landscape of the past week. The city of Palermo? Well it was just another city – we only saw the new town this evening. Tomorrow we will have the walk in the old town and I am looking forward to that. But it will be a rainy day …..

Palermo Day 1; November 11, 2019 Monday

We were up around 6:30 and before noticing it, it was past 7 so we rushed to the 4th floor for breakfast – just want to have enough time afterwards before leaving for today’s tour.

Breakfast was fine – I think I liked the ones in Lecce better even though it’s also a big spread here. After breakfast we met at 8:45 for an introductory meeting for the whole group. We all introduced ourselves and Feta covered a bunch of important logistics, etc. Then we left for today’s activity which consisted of the following:

First we had a guided tour of the old town of Palermo, with a local lady guide who was quite a classy lady, probably in her 50s. She spoke decent English and had a good sense of humor. I really enjoyed the old town – much much more interesting than the new town which we walked through part of it in the evening. The old town, with its many historica sites and its narrow cobble stoned streets, really warrants a more leisurely visit! I wish we had more time, and better weather, to spend here. We saw the fountain that was moved here, outside the original convent where the nuns lived. The fountain has all its naked men etc. so therefore it was later called the sin fountain. Haha! We saw the Palermo Cathedral and a couple of other museums/historical buildings and I liked them! We also saw the opera house which was supposed to be the third largest in Italy! The movie Godfather used some spots in that opera house! We saw the old buildings that were bombed during WWII, and some were not repaired or restored, for various reasons. After the two hours old town walk, our local guide left and Feta took us for the rest of the tour.

We had a coffee/toilet break, then she took us to a surprise, which was a puppet theater where the old man and his son are still maintaining the old trade. It is one the three puppet theaters left. It was pretty amazing to make and play those puppets – made of wood and metal, each was very heavy!!

The next thing was the last for the morning – visit to the local market! Because of the weather (it started raining shortly after 12pm), the market was not as crowded or vibrant as it could have been. It was by and large a food/vegetable/meat market, right in one of the narrow street. For most the stands, the shops were right behind them. Feta said she loved to eat, so she bought things typical of Sicily for us to taste – olives, raw pistachio nuts, cooked artichoke, prickly pear, etc. My favorite was the prickly pear – they’er the fruits of the cactus! They’re absolutely delicious!! Very juicy, not sweet, very refreshing, better than water melon!!

We walked through the market in the rain, which was very unpleasant to me. Our morning tour ended after 2pm. Then it’s free time and we dispersed to look for lunch. Liz, Anson, and we went to a local Italian restaurant that served pasta and pizza. Bob and I both had pasta carbonara and shared a capresse; Liz and Anson had a pizza and some pasta and a roasted squid which was very nice. Our pasta came with quite a large amount, being cheated. We should have ordered one to share. I feel the lunch was fine, but did not impress me that much. So-so.

It continued to rain pretty hard after lunch. Liz and Anson wanted to take the free bus which would run around the entire old town. We were going to take the opera house tour which seemed to be a good thing to do on this rainy day. But I was also interested in the free old town bus ride, so we decided to go with them. But we could not find the bus stop and did not know if it even still runs. I decided we would go do the opera house tour.

We ran into Gail and her two friends and the 5 of us took the opera house tour together. I was not that impressed with the opera house, aside from the fact that some scenes of the godfather were shot there. The only thing that truly impressed me was the “echo room” where you would stand in the middle of the room and you can hear the echo of your own voice!! Amazing!!

After the opera house tour, we walked back to the hotel in the rain around 4:40 – feeling very relieved. We’re so wet, even though we both had the rain coats on. We would meet Feta again at 5:45 for the next activity.

It turned out that tonight’s first activity was the “toto” ride! Feta arranged 5 or 6 toto cars for all of us to have a tour around town. It was my first time on a toto car. Bob called it the Sicily massage, especially on the cobble stoned streets which we rode on quite a bit. We thought we were just going for a ride around town, but actually she took us to one specific section of the old town (name I cannot remember) which was a historical area. She took us to visit a family where the mother, father, and a 16-yr-old son lived in this one room which had a small bathroom and a shower which was just the corner of the house, with a water heater like the kind people use in China, and a shower hose. When they take a shower, they move away the counter. It was a historical room which used to be a bakery – one can still tell from the brick ceiling. The woman who was hosting there was 38-yr-old. She does not live there, her mother and father and brother do. She was already a grandmother – eloped at the age of 16 or 18, etc. etc. She entertained tourists like us almost daily. It must be a decent income. She owns some sort of a shop. The room had a very old radio which actually works, we were told. Also an old phone. This “house” was in an area we probably would not be able to find on our own, real residential area, and not a rich neighborhood ….

The toto cars' next stop was by the University of Palermo. She pointed to the cart that carried the Saint ? and explained to us the tradition and history of it. We then got back on the toto car which took us to the restaurant, Sapori Perduti, a rather modern looking restaurant. We had a nice dinner.

The restaurant was rather close to our hotel. We walked back, and bought two prickly pears in one of the stores on the way. What I did not know, and Feta told me back at the hotel, that I need to be careful about these fruits – their tiny thorns could fly into your skin and it’s rather annoying. No wonder I am feeling the pricks. Ugh!! ….

Back to the hotel around 9. Need to be in bed not too late – tomorrow we need to meet at 8:15 to start the optional tour.

Optional Tour to Cefalu & Castelbuono; November 12, 2019 Tuesday

The wettest day since we set our foot on Italy this time!

We were up around 6:20am when the alarm woke us up. It was raining all night and was raining when we got up. This morning we needed to leave at 8:15 which was why we were up that early.

It was a big bus for the 13 of us plus Feta – three of the 16 decided to tour Palermo more on their own and did not take this optional tour. The driver (Marcos?) was from the same town as Feta, which was a town right outside of Palermo (name I could not remember). Marcos spoke perfect English because he actually lives in England with his wife and two kids, as a bus driver. He was just back here for a short time and will return to the UK in a couple of weeks. He dressed quite sharply.

We drove along the Mediterranean coast – wish I could take some photos but the bus drove quite fast so it was not feasible. Our first destination is a seaside tourist town called Cefalu – a charming little town. We were lucky that the rain held off while we toured the little town. Because it’s off season, most of the shops were closed and the little town was very quiet which was lucky for us. Otherwise it would be packed with tourists! We walked along the cobble stoned streets to the cathedral of the town. From the outside of the cathedral, it was rather plain, but the inside was nice – not the fancy and overly decorated kind, but neat and solemn. I liked it. But we did not linger or tour much of the inside. We only had a short time so we chose to walk the streets and poke our heads into the few small shops that were open. I bought a t-shirt.

On the way to the cathedral, we stopped at a coffee shop to use the bathroom and people bought coffee or hot chocolate – the public paid bathrooms were closed, the coffee shops would allow you to use theirs if you buy something from them. That was the deal.

The scenery of the little town was nice. The first place in Sicily I was able to take some pictures. We then got back onto the bus. Now it started to rain.

Our next stop was our lunch break, at the restaurant called Nangalaruuni which is actually a Michelin mentioned restaurant. We had the best meal so far! Delicious! Some appetizers, a pasta with sort of a bolanea sauce, and a dessert. The bread was home made. It was a farm to table restaurant. Lovely!

We walked to the restaurant in the rain, and walked out into the rain. Our next destination was the Castelbuono Castle. The bus took us to as far as the bus could go, which was outside the little old town’s gate, we walked in the rain to the Castle. The cobble stoned streets were easier to managed, compared to the cobble stoned grass slope to the castle entrance. But we did it – nobody falled! The Castle in my opinion was hardly worth it. It was a museum now and had various exhibits in it. It was a quick visit, and we walked back to the bus in the rain. Everyone was wet, especially our pants – I never thought the weather would be this, otherwise I definitely would have brought our rain pants! Oh well….

On the bus ride home, I slept most of the time, uncomfortably, until a junk call on my cell woke me up (probably others as well, hateful!!). We were back to the hotel by 4:30. We would meet again at 5:45 to do the Mafia discussion.

Apparently it did not rain here in Palermo during the day because the roads were all dry. Bob and I took a short walk to the store Desigal where I bought a couple of things.

At 5:45, we walked to a nearby hotel to have the Mafia discussion. It turned out that we had two speakers – Gino ? and Angelo Provenzano. Gino did most of the talk for the first half – he was a very eloquent speaker speaking perfect English, with a British accent. Angelo spoke OK English with a rather heavy Italian accent. Gino gave us a short talk about the Sicilian Mafia’s history, especially related to both his own and Angelo’s personal encounters with Siciian Mafia (Costa Nostra) – both of them were from Corleone and their fathers lived 5 doors from each other.

The most poignant part of the discussion/talk was actually about Angelo whose father was an important Mafia “Don” – Bernardo Provenzano, who spent 43 years on the run and finally was caught in 2006 and died in prison. Angelo was only 43 years old now. He and his younger brother and their mom spent the 43 years with his father on the run and did not have a school education until 2006. Because of his father, he has never been able to get a job and live as a normal person which was all he wanted to be. He was approached by the Mafia to join, but he refused because he wanted to be a good normal person. Unfortunately the society would not let him. When OAT approached him to do this Mafia program, even the press persecuted him (I took picture of the article on the paper). His younger brother got a good education and went to work in Germany. Everything was going well until the press chased him to Germany and accused him for not telling his family history, so now he is back in Sicily and could not find a job. And the reason why we had to go to a different hotel for this Mafia discussion was because a number of hotels refuse to let OAT have the talk with Angelo! And our Wagner hotel was one of them! ….I was SO SAD to hear all this!!! I really wanted to help him! But what can I do???..... Sigh ….

Feta recommended a book about Mafia which I will try to buy and read.

We had dinner in that HongKong restaurant, and we invited Feta to join us. Back to the hotel after 10. Tomorrow I need to be up early to pack – luggage need to be out at the door by 8am and we leave at 9am for out next spot – Mazara del Vallo.

Palermo to Mazara del Vallo; November 13, Wednesday

It’s already almost 9:30pm now in Mazara del Vallo. We just came back from dinner and both of us are deadly tired. But I must write my diary so I can remember what we did today.

We left Hotel Wagner at 9am, and we drove out of Palermo city towards the famous Monreale Cathedral. Laura was our local guide again – she was such a lovely classy lady, everyone seemed to like her.

The Monreale cathedral was indeed very impressive. I cannot relay the history and story of it, just now that the inside of the cathedral was more beautiful than most of the other cathedrals I’ve been to, mostly because of its very elaborate and beautiful mosaic, which were made of 24k gold!

Laura gave us a tour of the cathedral inside, then we were free to wander around the cathedral, and we met back at the bus at 11:30am. The bus then continued to drive for more than an hour, to a farm to table restaurant for lunch. It was quite a unique place – it was a private farm of 95 acres, of grapes and olives. It was called Agriturismo Pispisa Segesta. The owner came to the gate to pick all of us in a minivan and took us to his house and restaurant. We had lunch there – various appetizers and pasta and fruite dessert. All vegetable, some stuff were quite tasty! They had two german shepard dogs there – well behaved.

After lunch, we had the choice of either walking back to the gate (2.5 miles) or take the minivan. Most of us chose walking. It was a very nice walk – beautiful scenery! But the road went up and down, Bob and I found it rather tiring. But we did it!

We were back to the bus and started our final destination for today at around 3:40pm. We got to our hotel, Maara Hotel, in Mazara Del Vallo around 4:30.

This hotel was built in the 1980s – it was by the ocean, and from the front of the hotel, the entire thing looked quite grand. But the rooms were very much like those of a motel in the US. I had nothing to complain yet, except the shower which has those typical half glass doors. We’ll have to see how it works ….

Liz, Anson and we walked out of the hotel at 5 – we learned in the bus from out fellow travelers that we should bring a gift for our host family for tomorrow’s lunch. I did not read about this. Even though it is not mandatory, we all felt we should go get something. We walked along the ocean and enjoyed some beautiful sunset ocean scenery. It started to rain but did not last long. And it was windy. We walked for quite a long time and all found something. Anson and Liz got a picture frame. I got 6 beautiful Japanese porcelain bowls that were on sale – I will give the hostess 2. On the way back we wanted to get some bottled water. It took us many detours to finally found the store that sold waters. We walked back to the hotel shortly before 7pm when there would be a welcome get together at the bar, followed by dinner at 7:30.

Dinner was fine and we chatted until 9pm. Tomorrow we will meet at 9am to start the walking tour of Mazara.

We are both very tired, and I got a big blister in the middle of the sole of my right foot. Ugh!

Tour of Mazara, Lunch with Local Family, & Cooking Contest; November 14, 2019 Thursday

Being how tired we were yesterday, I thought we would have gotten a very good night’s sleep, but that was not the case with me at all. I woke up many times and never slept well, until the last hour or so, before the alarm got me up at 6:30. Oh well ….

It rained last night and the sun did not come out until around 8:30, but only very briefly. Definitely a rain coat day again.

The first part of our morning activity was a tour of the “Casbah”, which was similar to the Souk but without the market aspect. It was a section of Mazara which is like a labyrinth, with narrow and winding streets that may or may not lead anywhere. It used to be a high crime area, but has been converted into a special section without the crime (credit to one of the mayors), and with interesting mosaic arts by local artists. 80% of the people living in the Casbah was Muslims. In fact, the entire Mazara town is heavily Islamic, with most of them coming from Tunisia.

OAT does not have a local guide (working for OAT) in Mazara, but Feta hired a friend she knew, who was Tunisian and spoke Italian and Arabic (among other language), except English. He was a 20-yr-old man, trying to finish his high-school degree, and planning to go to England to study English, then coming back and working for OAT. Quite an experienced tour guide! He led us through the Casbah for a 2-hour tour! Then we ended up at the Museum to see the Danding Satyr that was discovered and obtained by the seamen/fishermen from Mazara! That statue had a really beautiful face! We watched a video that described how the fishermen got the statue out from the ocean 500 meters down!

After the museum visit, Feta had another surprise for us. We met one old Sicilian man who was from here. He used to work in a bank, for more than 30 years. Now he owns a store near the museum, for information and souvenirs. He gave us some more surprises. We were first brought to an old restored “opera house”, which was built in 1848 and later restored. It was built using the wood from the ships. He sang two songs for us – one Italian song in Italian, another song by Sinatra, in English. He had a decent voice. The second surprise was that the captain of the ship that found and got out the Satyr statue, an interesting man! He did some Q&A for us and joked a bit (about certain part of the statue). After that, we went to the store owned by the old man and his wife, where we each got a postcard with the image of the Satyr and a map of Mazara. Some of us got a few souvenirs – I got a t-shirt and a couple of small things.

At around 1pm, Feta divided us into groups and our host families picked us up.

Liz, Anson, Bob and I were in one group. A young man (the son of our hostess) picked us up. I did not quite catch the name of the young man. He’s a college kid studying Economics in Milan. Their house is in a different section of the town and the drive took less than 10 minutes. He stopped in front of a non-descript door of a building that looked quite industrial. We really did not know what to expect. Into the door, we saw construction material, an elevator, and a staircase. He said to go up to the first floor where his mom was waiting for us.

His mom was waiting for us right at the door. (Sorry I did not remember her name ….) Once inside the door of the apartment, it was a dramatically different world! A very nice apartment, spacious, and tastefully decorated. Lunch was already on the table. What we thought was the lunch turned out to be only the appetizers! Sundried tomato, cuscus, cheese, bread, cooked eggplant which we all loved, etc. etc. Then we got the most delicious pasta dish – casarecce in simple tomato and shrimp, with a elegant taste of garlic. Light and delicious!! The pasta was produced right in Mazara – Poiatti, the factory of which we saw on the way into Mazara! And after that, it was dessert – fresh grapes and tiramitsu, the most delicious tiramitsu I’ve ever had, just the right sweetness, creaminess, and ladyfingers! Wow!!

We left our host house around 3:15. The young man drove us back to the hotel where we said goodbye and I left him my email addr. Feta was waiting for us outside the hotel wall. She wanted to know where we would like to go so she could give us directions. We all wanted to go back to the room and rest. The 4 of us would meet in the lobby at 5:30pm then walked to “the square” to meet Feta, for our evening activity – cooking lesson and test followed by dinner.

So far I must say, OAT certainly has a more unique and interesting organization of the trip, much more in touch with the local people! Compared to Insight Vacations, the couple of things Insight seems to do better is (1) the dedicated bus with more legroom; (2) the initial trip organization, such as not allowing us to use OAT’s transportation from Bari to Matera ….

The group met at 6pm in “the square” and headed to the restaurant where we would be having our cooking lesson and dinner. The owner turned out to be from the UK originally who married a man/chef from Sicily, so language was no issue at all! We were divided into three groups. One group was responsible to make the appetizer – three kinds of bruchetta, another group was to make the entrée: veal marsala; the third group was to make the dessert: tiramitsu. I was in the group to make the veal marsala. Even though they had the gravy/sauce already premade, I learned how to make the dish! Then we all sat down and ate the dishes we cooked. Not bad at all! I was really not hungry at all – lunch seemed to still in my throat. But I ate the dinner regardless. Sigh! No wonder I am gaining weight!....

Back to the hotel around 8:30. Great! Did a little laundry then sat down to write my diary.

The schedule tomorrow was to visit the Mothya island but it has been cancelled because of the wind and weather – the island is shutdown. So Feta has been on the phone with the main office. The plan has changed to visiting the city Marsala and some museum instead. Marsala is the city closest to Tunisia – today at lunch our host son was just talking to us about that. One reason so many Tunisians came to Sicily was because Tunisia was very close to Sicily, to Marsala. And the word Marsala means something very special in Tunisian. So it should be interesting.

Tour to Marsala, Museums, etc.; November 15, Friday

It’s 6pm now – we’re back from Marsala and I rested for about an hour, dead tired. The group will meet at 7:15pm at “the square” for dinner. Somehow it’s been a very tiring day, maybe because I did not sleep enough last night ….

We were up at 6:30 and our bus started at 9. The original boat tour was cancelled due to the weather. The new plan was to visit Marsala. Our first stop was to visit the Salt pans. I never expected much about the visit, thinking it would be the same as the salt place we visited in Taiwan. But I was very wrong. This salt pan place was a rather large place that makes sea salt manually using the same method from thousands of years ago! It involved 4 main stages – 4 different salt pans, plus windmills, and the sun. The 4 different stages of salt pans have different temperatures and the salt was made at the 4th stage. Very impressive!! I bought the two different kinds of salt – the very fine kind that’s rather expensive which has all the minerals, used in cooking; and the crystal kind.

The salt pan place was not in Marsala – not sure where exactly it is. We then boarded the bus and got to Marsala shortly. There was some sort of a monument place where we stopped to pick up a local guide (not OAT guide but a local volunteer) and Feta was the interpreter. Our guide gave us a brief talk on the history of Marsala, then we walked to the Marsala old town.

The old town of Marsala was a walled small place. We walked in and first visited the Spanish market – I was quite underimpressed. Then we walked by the Cathedral and through a couple of streets. The wind was very strong and it was hard to stand in the middle of the streets to talk, so we decided to go to the restaurant for lunch – it was around 12pm.

It took a while for us to finally find the restaurant – Feta has not done this before and the local guide did not know exactly where the restaurant was. We first went to the wrong one – got the owner very confused and they scrambled to try putting the tables in place to accommodate the 18 of us. After we squeezed in and sat down, Feta and the owner talked/argued for a while, they realized we got into the wrong restaurant. Haha! So we all left, feeling quite bad for the owner. After a short walk we finally got to the right restaurant. We had a pleasant lunch – lots of food. Appetizers and three kinds of pasta, all tasted good except the one with anchovie. Finally everyone had the Marsala sweet drink for dessert. After lunch a bunch of us went back to the first restaurant and each bought a bag of cookies, because we wanted to compensate the owner a little for his scramble.

Last stop of the tour today was the museum where we saw the ship wreckage from 4 thousand years ago. It’s impressive to witness the remnants of the war ships from that long ago! But I really did not have too much interest, and I started to feel really sleepy and tired.

The bus ride back was a little more than an hour and we’re back shortly after 5pm. Not the most interesting day, but not too bad either.

We met the group at 7:15pm in “the square” and headed to the restaurant for dinner. Feta already told us about the dinner menu and asked for our choice. It’s a seafood central dinner so I chose the vegetarian version – grilled vege and pumpkin risotto. Even though I was not really hungry, the dinner did not make me too stuffed. We then each had a almond icecream cake dessert which was probably the best part of the dinner. We walked back to the hotel before 9.

I need to start packing now. Tomorrow the luggage needs to be out of the door by 7:45am and we leave at 8:30. And tomorrow night is the only 1-nighter of this trip, in a farmhouse. Not sure what to expect, and with some trepidation ….

Mazara to Piazza Armerina; November 16, Saturday

It’s almost 6 pm now and we’ve all checked into Vecchia Masseria in Piazza Armerina after a full day of traveling.

We were up at 6am and finished the packing, put the luggage out which were to be picked up at 7:45. After breakfast, we boarded to bus at 8:30 and departed towards our next stop which was more than one hour’s drive away, the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento.

The whole structure was originally built by the Greeks around 581 BC and later destroyed and rebuilt by the Romans, the Arabics, etc. It is a UNESCO site and is very reminiscent of the Acropolis in Athens. Quite impressive! Never knew there is such an existance! These temples were all built in a line facing the Mediterranean coast. Being off season, the place was not too crowded, but there were enough travelers there. We had a guide who was very knowledgeable and told us the history etc. An interesting anecdote was the goats! Apparently there were many of them in the area, but there were only a few by the road in an enclosed area. These goats had the unique characteristics of their twisted long horns, pretty amazing! Our guide broke some olives branches to feed them. These goats are called Capra Grigentana and they are only in this area!

We spent more than an hour at the Valley of the Temples, then got back into the bus for our next stop: lunch at a private house, which was only a short drive away.

I cannot remember the name of our host. They had a very nice estate. His wife prepared a delicious lunch for us and he was the server. We had appetizers: bruschetta with sundried tomato and olive, sundried tomatos, olives, cheese, frittata (eggs and peas, super delicious!), etc. which was followed by a very tasty pasta dish. I’ve got to learn how to cook it – seems to be simple chopped up zucchini, eggplant, mint, sautéed in olive oil, salt and pepper, so good! He then served us a baked potato and cheese cup. For dessert, it was fresh fruit cocktail with sorbet. Nice.

After lunch, we were given a surprise. We went down to the basement of the house, where he had a room with more than 4 Sicilian wooden carts that were made by his father! It’s a lost art now and the carts were UNESCO relics! He told us the history of these carts. I happened to be standing by him so he let me sit on the cart to demonstrate how these carts were used. I was quite honored.

We left their house around 3pm. Next was today’s final destination, the farmhouse lodge where we’re to spend tonight. I was apprehensive until we got to the place. It turned out to be a farmhouse resort, not just a farmhouse! Feta explained that to have such a business, their food must have 90% from their own farm. We were led to our room, 306, which is a simple room but clean. My only complaint is that the room has a strong paint smell. I did not feel like making an issue, so I guess we will just endure this one night ….

While waiting for our luggage to be delivered, we went outside to explore a little bit. But it was already dark so we really could not do anything besides walking to the front of the building and looked at the bar and the dining room which looked quite upper scale, with white tablecloth, etc. We’ll see how our dinner goes.

Wow the dinner was great! This restaurant turns out to be a Michelin mentioned restaurant! We were served a full three-course dinner plus dessert. And everything was delicious!! And of course I stuffed myself again. Sigh ….

They broke one of my suitcases – the black one which LL Beans replaced our brown one with. They broke the bottom metal bar. Not sure who broke it or where, but I know for sure it was not broken when we left the room this morning! Fear it won’t last us this trip …. Asked Feta to get us some strong tape and see if we could survive ….

Nothing to do here at night…. Will watch some youtube and go to bed. Need to be up at 6, pack then go for a walk and see if I can catch a beautiful sunrise. Tomorrow breakfast is at 7:30, luggage out at 7:45, departure 8:30.

Going to Ragusa; November 17, Sunday

5pm now and we’re in our next to last destination of this trip – Ragusa, and we’re in our room in the San Giorgio Palace Hotel. This is another cave hotel, believe it or not! I was a bit apprehensive and my fear came true after we were all assigned rooms. Ours was a cave room, but one of the smaller ones. The size was ok, but the smell was intolerable!! Sewage smell permeate the entire room which had no windows. Ugh! Absolutely could not stay there. A few other travel mates came and said the same thing. Despite the manager’s unwillingness, he had to reassign us a room. For whatever reason or deal OAT had with the hotel, he said the only room he could give us is one on the third floor (vs the rest of us who all have ground floor rooms), and there is no elevator to the third floor. We came to the room, it was ok. Much bigger than the cave room, and there is a window that opens to a wall but a window noneless. We took it. We got to the hotel around 3pm. By the time we settled in the room it was around 4pm. Bob and I then took a walk in the “old town”. But it was Sunday and the siesta time so aside from a couple of sicily magnets from the tourist trap store, there was nothing to do. But, I did get a couple of nice pictures of the cathedral.

The town of Ragusa has two parts – the upper Ragusa and the lower Ragusa. Our hotel is in the lower one. To go to the lower Ragusa town center, we need to take the elevator to the 5th floor which takes us to the town center. Kind of like Matera – the town center is above us. We will meet Feta at 6pm. She will give us a short walk intro and we will walk to have dinner in a local restaurant.

OK let me start from the beginning of the day. I was up at 6. Aside from the fact that I woke up a few times, I actually slept ok. I finished packing and we went to have breakfast at 7:30 – we actually got to the bar at least 15 minutes early and waited there.

Breakfast was good – best part was the prickly pears!! It turned out that this area is the main production area of these prickley pears. We saw fields of cacti along the way. Unfortunately the bus was too fast for me to take a picture. The other products were olives and oranges.

Our departure was at 8:30 and our first stop was the Villa Romanan del Casale. We wanted to be there early to avoid the crowd. The villa was built in the 4th century AD, a Roman villa that belongs to some wealthy and important people – we do not know who the owner was. It was an elaborate roman villa, with baths, guest rooms, owner’s rooms, and basilica which was used to conduct business negotiations. We had a guide who walked us through the villa and explained everything. The most impressive thing about the villa was its fancy mosaics! Much of them were kept intact till today! They were mainly northern African mosaic. Very impressive! I bought a booklet from the store for it, despite its weight.

After the visit to the Villa, it was already noon time. Our next stop was the town Caltagirone. We had lunch on our own there. Liz, Anson, and we went to a pizza restaurant, ordered 4 pizza to share. But they were just ok. I guess my expectation was too high. Don’t think these pizza were any better than the good ones back at home. Oh well! Our first pizza meal at a pizza restaurant this trip!

We met at the bus again at 2:15 and started towards our final destination of today – Ragusa. Got here around 3pm.

As bob and I tried to take a walk around town, we met a lady from the US as well. Turned out that she is also with OAT – the same trip prior to ours. She led the way for us to get to town from outside the hotel door on the 5th floor.

At 6pm, the group met at the 5th floor and we set out for tonight’s activities. Feta first took us to a surprise for us – visit to an old man who lives in the old town. We walked there. She knocked on a small door and an old man came out and let us in. OMG – it’s like we walked into some sort of a museum – a house with many small rooms decorated with all sorts of pictures, furniture, sculpture, etc. etc. It smelt quite stale and mildew – somewhere I would not have gone in myself. It turned out that this old man was a musician – a pianist who played for a number of well know singers. He also came from a nobleman’s background – his ancestors were all sorts of people with royal connections. Two were popes! (Can’t remember the names of them even though he told us). He played a few piano tunes for us – looking at his fingers playing, I don’t think he was a solo pianist. He now teaches and plays the organ at the San Girogio cathedral. He lived in that house since he was born and that house was from the 1600s. Wow!! I would be creeped out if I had to live among those antics…. He lives alone – never married. He lives in a separate part of the house. The part we visited was definitely a museum! ….

After the surprise visit, we went to dinner at a restaurant called Monsu which was owned by a French lady and her Sicilian husband. We had a simple buffet dinner, very light, followed by a dessert. This was the first light dinner we had since we came to Italy!

We were done with dinner and left the restaurant before 8:30. We walked to the well known gelato place and each had some gelato. Their gelato was home made – had onion gelato and olive gelato. I had ginger and hazelnut ones. Pretty good! First gelato on this trip, thanks to the light dinner.

Back to the hotel before 9. Tomorrow we will meet at 9:15am to do the old town walking tour which would include the cathedral. Lunch will be on our own, followed by a free afternoon. Then we will be going to Modica by bus to do the Fiat 500 ride. I have no idea what that is about – better google it to get prepared.

Day 2 at Ragusa; November 18, 2019 Monday

Even though we did not meet until 9:15am today which gave us plenty of time to sleep more, I still set the alarm at 6:30 so we could have a leisurely breakfast then plenty of time to get ready. I slept ok last night, waking up only once because it was too warm.

Breakfast in this hotel was the worst so far – there was not much to choose from. And they would charge extra if you wanted an egg. How could this be a 4-star hotel?! Fellow travelers had plenty of complaints. I could not forget how bad the cave room was that they assigned us initially ….. Definitely need to put in the feedback.

Our local guide today was a lovely young lady who had been a tourist guide for more than 15 years! She worked in Canada, the US, etc. Her father was Canadian, mother was Sicilian, she spoke perfect English. And she had a lively outgoing character making our morning tour of the town extremely pleasant! So we left the hotel from the 5th floor, walked to the bus stop outside of the “garden”, and had the experience riding a public bus all the way to the upper Ragusa. I learned that in Ragusa there was a university that specializes in foreign languages – lot of the students riding the bus were students in that college. We rode the bus to the top of the hill where we got a good view of where our hotel is – wow it looked quite far and I could not figure out how the bus got us there! From where we got off the bus, we started walking back to our town – the Ibla (lower Ragusa). She told us all sorts of interesting facts of the place we walked by. We stopped at a place where we could use the public bathroom and get a cup of coffee. Then our last stop of the tour was the St. Giorgio cathedral. She gave us a short tour inside then she bid us goodbye.

Oh, on the way she pointed out the 2 michelin star restaurant to us – it turned out that Ragusa has a couple of Michelin star restaurants in town!! I really wanted to try one of them! Willing to do this splurge!

Also, we visited a site where the owner was in the process of renovating an old building and making it into a B&B. It should be quite nice when it’s done in a couple of months, especially the suite (larger) rooms. The price does not seem to be that high, less than 100 euro per room! We all have his card. IF someone ever comes here, that might be an option.

Feta offered to take all of us to a ceramic shop and learn how to make the ceramics. Liz, Anson and we skipped it and headed to the restaurant that our guide mentioned, which she said was from a chef that split from the Michelin star restaurant and opened his own. The price is lower and food quality was very good. Unfortunately when we got there, it was closed because it’s Monday. So the four of us walked around looking for a place where we can have a decent hot meal which was not that easy. Many restaurants were closed on Mondays. Then suddenly Liz noticed one that was open and we walked in. It looked very nice and had pasta dishes, so we decided to eat there. It turned out the restaurant was a very good one and our pasta dishes were superb! Bob had a pasta cabonara, I had one with pesto sicilian sauce. Both were very yummy! The man sitting there eating next to our table turned out to be the sous chef of the Michelin star restaurant we planned to go to tomorrow night! His name is Michael. Ha!

After lunch, we went to the one grocery store near the square but it’s closed for siesta. We met a Betsie and Suzane and we decided to walk to the garden. Bob went back to the hotel, I continued the walk with the rest. I did not think the garden was that special, but it was pleasant. We went shopping in the few shops that did not close for siesta, then came back to the hotel around 4pm.

After a short rest, our group met at 5pm for our activities of tonight which was a ride with the Fiat 500 club in their Fiat cars around the town of Modica. I did not have any idea what the Fiat 500 club was and what the car was. It turned out to be a club of the old car Fiat 500 which was a very well known vintage car! So two or three of us went with a driver of his/her little Fiat car and the driver drove us through the narrow old streets of Modica old town. And we stopped at a few places to take photos of the night sceneries of the old town and the old churches. Interesting ride! Our driver was a lady. Unfortunately she did not speak much English and we did not speak Italian at all, so we could not communicate, otherwise it would have been more interesting! Our final stop before dinner was in a chocolate store where we were introduced to Sicilian chocolates! Pretty amazing!! Everyone of us ended up buying many chocolate bars which can be eaten as chocolates or used to make hot chocolates. I am thinking of making hot chocolate at Xmas when Caleb comes!!

Then we went to the restaurant to have dinner – the restaurant was very close to the chocolate store. The dinner was very pleasant! Sicilian dishes. The entrée was chicken – all thigh meat and extremely delicious! Very tasty! Feta said mainly it was marinated with olive oil, lemon, and rosemary, then baked/roasted. Just delicious!! I did not think too much of the broccoli which seemed to me to have been cooked to death. But the cow milk cheese, the orange/olive/xxxx salad was very nice.

We were done with dinner and left the restaurant around 8:40, back to the hotel shortly after 9pm. A good day!

Tomorrow we will be visiting a local farm family and have lunch with them. Then we will have free time and dinner on our own. Anson has asked Feta to make the dinner reservation for us at the Michelin 2-star restaurant. I think it’s worth the splurge – not sure if we’ll be coming back here again ….

Local Farm Family Visit, & Dinner at Michelin Star Restaurant; November 19, 2019 Tuesday

It’s only 4:30pm now but it’s as dark as 5:30. It’s been raining and we just came back from out “Day in Life” experience less than half an hour ago. It’s been a great and fun experience!!

We were up at 6:30 and it was sunny. But it clouded up by the time we finished breakfast and got on the bus at 9. We arrived at the farmer’s house around 10 and no rain, yet. We saw the cows, the pig, the chickens, ducks, the goat, the geese, etc. Then we went inside to have our introductory meeting with the farmer’s family. Unfortunately I was not able to capture their names. The man/host was 72 years old, his wife was 61. A lovely couple! They have 4 children, all grown. And they have 8 grandchildren. They told us how they met and got married. The husband was outgoing, and the wife was relatively quiet and naturally composed. A few of their friends were there helping with today’s activities.

We first watched how the wife made the bread, and we each helped – well, to be exact, they let us try how to use the tool to help knead the dough, then help making the bread. Then we watched how they made cheese. Wow!! Very interesting!! And amazing! From fresh milk to ricotta cheese and “tuma” cheese, really interesting! By this time, it had started raining – not just drizzling, but serious rain! So the rest of the day was spent inside the house.

We had a delicious lunch!!! The first course was ricotta cheese soup – my first time and it was absolutely delicious! You break up the bread (from the day before, so it was dry) and put in the soup, wow! Delicious! And we were served cheese just like the kind we made which would take two days before ready to eat, and sausage from their own pork. Also olives and lettuce salad. The main dish was roasted chicken and sausage – absolutely delicious!! Plus a pumpkin dish which was so good! Right after we had lunch, their oldest daughter, Margaretta, came after her school finished – she is a elementary school teacher. She had a very gregarious personality, a bit like her father. Later on Anson danced ballroom dancing with her – Anson was very good! We also asked Liz and Anson dance and they really impressed everyone! Everyone had such a good time.

Betsie told me that every OAT trip has such a “Day in the Life” activity which I found very interesting and rewarding! So far I found the OAT trip quite good! Will definitely go with them again! My complaint is mainly about the hotel room assignments …. Maybe it is our bad luck….Need to write the feedback on the hotels!

Feta helped us to make tonight’s dinner reservation at the Michelin star restaurant. Even though we’re all very full, I don’t want to give up this opportunity. So we will meet at 7 for our 7:30 dinner. Hopefully the amount is small and the dinner is worth the price!

Tomorrow we will leave Ragusa and head for our last stop, Catania. Luggage needs to be out by 7:30, and we leave at 8:30. From the map, it looks to me quite a long distance. We will first stop at Syracuse.

We had our dinner at the Michelin 2-star restaurant “Ciccio Sultano Duomo”. It was the most fancy meal we’ve had on this trip and I don’t expect us to splurge again even if we see another Michelin star restaurant. We were lucky that for their Degustation (testing) menu, they have a 2-for-1 plus 30 euro deal now, also a wine tasting 2-for-1. So, for the 160/per dinner and 50/per wine tasting, we ended up paying only 250 euro each couple. Definitely a Michelin star service! As for the food, I did not think every course was that tasty. My favorite was the pasta dish, which was just two biteful. As I expected, the amount was small, but every course was very elegantly prepared. Unfortunately they had two courses that had bread and the bread was SO GOOD! So I felt stuffed. Sous Chef Michael came out to greet us and we took pictures with him. The only other customer in the restaurant was another American who came from Chicago. He was a sommelier in the restaurant “Palm” and we started chatting. His great grandfather was sicilian and he came here for vacation and do wine tasting. He stayed in a couple Agriturismo (?) which were different from each other – one owned by just a husband and wife, the other fancy like a resort.

We left the restaurant around 10, back to the hotel before 11. Need to call it a night.

Ragusa to Catania; November 20, 2019 Wednesday

Now we are at our last stop of this trip, Catania. We got here and checked into our hotel, Il Principe, around 4pm. My fear seemed to always come true – even though I was hoping we would get a better hotel in this larger city, we got assigned probably one of the worst rooms – room 207, tiny, without window except a door that opens to an outside staircase. It is so small that the two of us could hardly turn around. We went to Feta and tried to upgrade on our own, but was told the hotel is full because of an event. The only available one was a 3-room suite which would cost us more than 500 euro for the 4 nights. NO WAY! We asked if we could upgrade to a better room. Feta communicated with the guy and they will let us know. Sigh ….

This morning we checked out of the hotel in Ragusa at 8:30. An hour and half or so later, we reached Ortigia, Syracusa. Our local guide gave us a tour of the old city. I must say, Sicily is so full of ancient history! So many old relics and ruins, from centuries BC! Quite amazing! But the place was old. We walked through the narrow winding streets, stopped at various squares and visited the cathedral, the church of Santa Lucia, etc. etc. The tour ended around 12:30 and we had free time from then until 3pm. The 4 of us we had delicious pasta dishes! Then we tried to walk through the shopping area hoping to find something good, but did not find any. Back to the bus before 3. Then the bus took off again towards Catania. I slept very uncomfortably almost all the way. When we reached Catania, the bus could not drive into the city, so we got off the bus and walked to our hotel, then a small hotel van brought all our luggage in and the porter delivered our stuff to each room.

The only good thing about the room was it has two chairs instead of one, so both of us could sit without one on the bed! After we settled into this room, we walked out to explore the main street. Well, it was quite disappointing! I honestly don’t think much of this city – like Palermo much better! Very disappointed!! And I am really looking forward to going home!!

The group met again at 6:50pm when Feta took us all to dinner at a nearby restaurant. It’s got to be the worst restaurant we’ve had so far. It was at one of the back alleys nearby, a small family restaurant. All the dishes were pretty uninteresting and not tasty. Oh well, wasted one night that we could have gone on our own to something better. But, we were not stuffed!

Tomorrow’s itinerary seems to be rather uninteresting. A guided tour around the city in the morning, then a visit to OAT’s foundation in the pm where we will visit a foster family that’s fostering 8 refugee children. And we will have lunch there, back at 4. Feta organized some sort of a music event in the evening. Anson has found out that there are two Asian restaurants in Catania – one Chinese the other Thai. Tomorrow we will go to the Thai restaurant which requires a taxi ride. We will see how it works out.

Calling it a night now – feeling exhausted and disappointed…..

Catania City Tour, & Visit to Refugee Children Foster Family; November 21, Thursday

Today we were up at 6:30 – the alarm woke us up from our deep sleep. Even though it’s a tiny room and the AC seemed to be on and not adjustable, we slept relatively well, probably for 6 hours.

The breakfast in this hotel was definitely better than the last one, but that did not take much. The group met at 8:30am and our local guide “Elfie” met us at the hotel. She was a nice looking and a very pleasant lady, in her 30s (?), speaking perfect English. She had a great sense of humor. She took us on a very interest trip of the Catania. And I feel I learned quite a bit, even though I can hardly remember much now …. Sigh!

Out of the hotel, we turned right and walked up the three flights of rather steep steps. As soon as we got to the top of the steps, there were two churches. One of them was actually a convent. Elfie told us about the her own story about being a cloistered nun. She was from a small village and she almost became a nun. But she did not, because her grandmother could not tell her how many years she would have to stay in the convent in order not to go to the purgatory.

Catania has a long history. The few big earthquakes did a lot of damage to the city and it was rebuilt one time after the nother, and on top of each other. There were many churches in the city. The most famous cathedral is part of the university now and we could not visit it. We walked with her through the market, which was the most interesting place and it made me want to move here to live for a while! Those fresh vegetables, the seafood, etc. etc. Wow!! I bought some freshly hand-made nut candy, and a souvenir on a stand. Wish we had more time to stay there!

Our morning tour ended at the “elephant” square where we bid Elfie goodbye. Then we had 40 minutes free time. A bunch of us climbed (in our case took the elevator) onto the “dome” where one can get a good view of Mount Etna, which looked beautiful because the lignt was right and the clouds were nice! It looked like Mt Fuji! That was fun! I wish we had gone one layer higher, onto the highest dome! But we were running out of time ….

Our second activity was the visit to the foster family Casa di Maria in Biancavilla which was about one hour drive away. I did not know what to expect of this visit, and was pleasantly surprised!

This foster family currently is caring for 10 (ish) children – some domestic, some refugees from Libya and Nigeria. The oldest girl, Suzanne, who has a 2 year old son, was from Nigeria. Her parents paid for the human trafficers to smuggle her to Italy. She spent 3 days in Sahara desert without eating anything. After she got to Libya, she was put into prison. Then a guy was able to get her out of prison to live with his family. She was 14 then. After a while, that man said he wanted her to marry him, otherwise they would not give her food or water. So she had no choice but to agree to marry him. Then she became pregnant. Then they both were smuggled to Italy. Some fellow refugees told the man that she did not love him, so he beated her up. That’s when the authority at where they were housed intervened. She told them the whole story and that’s how she was sent to this foster family. She slept 3 days after she got here. And she slowly learned to trust them and knew she was safe here. Now we see her with her 2-yr-old son, Gabriella. She knew she was having a son, but she told that man that she was having a daughter. Even though that man said the daughter would be good to the father, he probably wanted a son. So Suzanne said he is probably now still waiting for the daughter. And they did not have any contact with each other. She was not officially married to him. She has learned to speak English and she seemed to be quite ambitious, wanting to come to the US to make something of herself.

A young lady Liana was there. She was a volunteer at the place years ago, now is on a Fulbright fund to document the story of this place. She introduced us to the history of this place – how it was built from nothing, etc. The owner’s son and daughter-in-law are both social workers and they took care of this place in addition to the son’s mother whose name is Maria. The place was named “Maria’s house” NOT after the mother’s name (even though she is named Maria), but after the saint Maria.

We were served a delicious lunch there! WOW! Better than most restaurants! After lunch, the kids all gathered at the meeting room and we gave our gifts to the kids – we gave the cookies I bought at Mazara. We then took a photo with the kids and adults at the house, before heading back to the hotel.

Our bus dropped us off not too far from the elephant square, and we walked back to the hotel. We will be meeting Feta at 6:30 outside the Bellini garden and she will take us to some kind of a music event. Then Anson, Liz, and we will head to an Asian restaurant.

Bob found a Chinese restaurant called il Monda. He thought it’s not that far from the hotel. We went down to the front desk to ask. Turned out it was the same restaurant as what he told Anson yesterday. It’s not that close to the hotel, but rather close to the Bellini garden where we have our music event tonight. So we will see …..

We met the group at the Bellini garden around 6:30. Then Feta took us to a place nearby – it was a big wooden or iron door. She knocked on it and someone came to open it. It was the gate into a yard. Then we went into the building onto the 2nd floor. It turned out to be a Catanian historical society. The place used to be a palace – we could still see the fancy ceiling. The rooms were filled with bookcases full of books and other antics. Many old pictures filled the rest of the wall. The event for us was a young man who spent 15 years researching Sicilian native music. And he played all those instruments for us – at least three different kinds of flutes including a double flute, a tambourine, the bagpipes, the predecessor of an accordion, etc. He played very well – definitely a musician! Later he told us that he used to play guitar. And it’s his ambition to establish a Sicilian music historical society. He already has more than 50 recordings. Very amazing! I totally did not expect this!

After the event, we started walking towards the Chinese restaurant which would be only 15 minutes walk away. But it was already around 8 and we got to the restaurant before 8:30. This might be the only Chinese restaurant around! And it was quite decent and homey! Thankfully we were early, because the place got so very crowded around 9. Wow!! Somebody should open up another Chinese restaurant!! The girl server was so busy but she was very efficient! And friendly. The kitchen was also very efficient! With so many people plus takeout orders, the food came quite promptly.

We were stuffed, and happily stuffed – the only Asian food for the past two weeks!! It took us about half an hour to walk back which was good! We needed the walk!

Tomorrow we will be going to Etna. We will go as high as 6000 feet. Even though we were told the weather will be in the 40s, we need to be prepared for worse. I need to get our clothes out now.

Mt. Etna; November 22, 2019, Friday

After 4pm and we’re back in the hotel after the trip to Etna mountain. We left at 8:15am (and we got up at 6 to make sure we had enough time after breakfast). We were divided into 4 groups, each group had a SUV. Liz, Anson, and we shared one and we’re number 4. Our driver was Ricardo – a nice man who spoke a little English. Our local guide was a volcanologist who had a passion for hiking and knew a lot about volcano. What I learned most was there were two types of volcanos – one type is the kind that erupts, the other kind has a lot of flows. Mt Etna is the latter kind. The one in Hawaii was the erupt kind.

After a short pit stop, our cars parked at a spot where we started a short hike that was relatively flat, which was followed by a short but very steep climb. We were given hiking sticks which came in really handy. Bob started feeling sick, due to the car ride which was bumpy and windy, and he was sitting in the back, in the middle. So he did not do the steep climb. I did. It was well worth it! We had one of the very few best days of the year – blue sky with a few clouds and very clear! Wow!!

Climbing up was pretty hard, even though it was a short climb. The highest we got to today was about 5600 feet, not quite the 6000 Feta told us. Where the tree line stopped was 6000 feet, above that was where the snow started. The scenery was SO BEAUTIFUL! We were SO LUCKY today. Our guide said Mt Etna has only 4 or 5 days like today, purely clear and beautiful! No wind, no snow, beautiful blue sky with pretty clouds, WOW!

We did not stay too long on the mountain. After we all climbed down, we got into the cars and started our return. We had lunch (and bathroom break) at another Agriculturism place. But the food was so-so – the appetizers were fine, but the entrée, with its three kinds of meat, really was not that tasty. I only ate a little, but ate all the potato and bunch of bread.

The drive back was about 1+ hours – I slept uncomfortably almost all the way. It was around 3:30pm that we came back to the hotel. We talked about tomorrow’s activity – WWII museum visit in the morning then Taormina in the afternoon. But it will be raining tomorrow, especially afternoon. So Liz asked Feta if we could switch the two activities. Feta said the guide will not be available till the afternoon. But she suggested that if we want, we could hire a taxi to drive us there in the morning, skip the museum, then meet the group there. Wonderful idea!! She called the taxi driver and would get back to Anson this evening.

Bob and I rested for a few minutes, then went out to look for duct tape. First went to a store which was run by Chinese – the kind of store that sells all sorts of miscellaneous stuff – bob and I got a couple of packs of tissues for me the other day in that store. But the only thing they had was some electricity tape. We bought one. Then we walked on the street for a little bit, then came back to the hotel around 5:30. We left again shortly before 6 – Bob and Anson had talked to the front desk and found out how to get to that Thai restaurant which is called Thai Princess. We followed google map, which said it would take 29 minutes to walk there, and started our walk. Not too hard to find, but we did have to walk across a major multi-laned road which was not pleasant. We got there shortly after 6:30. The restaurant did not open until 7 but we were allowed in to sit and wait. A nice restaurant, much much fancier than yesterday’s Chinese restaurant.

Liz and Anson came before 7. They walked from where the Chinese restaurant is. We ordered some appetizers and 4 dishes, plus a soup. The food was very very good! Very tasty – one of the best we’ve had! The service was very good as well. If we stayed here longer, we would definitely come back! Its location was too convenient, unfortunately.

We decided to take a taxi back and asked the restaurant to get a taxi for us, which worked out very well. We got back in front of the hotel before we realized it, for only less than 12 euros.

Feta has communicated with Anson and got the taxi for us. We will meet Feta at 8:30 in the lobby tomorrow morning to go over how we meet the group in Taormina. The taxi will pick us up at 9am. This way, we will be in Taormina when the stores open and have the time to wander around before joining the group.

It’s almost 10pm now and I’d better call it a night. Tomorrow will be the last day of this trip. Our flight is 6am on Sunday so we probably will need to leave at 3am. No sleep I guess, and I’ll have to pack tomorrow after we come back. Sigh ….

Taormina; November 23, Saturday

It’s 9:40pm now – we had our goodbye dinner and bid goodbyes to our travel mates and friends, then we came back to the room and I packed everything I could pack, now I can sit down and record our last day of the trip which has been fantastic!!

The rain held off even though the afternoon became cloudy. The 6 of us – Liz and Anson, Betsie and Suzanne, Bob and me – got on our van at 9, in the beautiful sunny day, headed towards Taormina. Pleasant drive and we could see the snow capped peak of Mt. Etna for most of the way, even though I was not able to take any good pictures from the car. Then, as we approached Taormina, our driver stopped at various places and let us take pictures. The sceneries were absolutely gorgeous!! We took many many pictures and had the driver and others to take group pictures of us. Our driver was really nice and we left him a good tip!

We got to Taormina shortly after 10am. What a lovely town!! Most of the stores were already open – it was so much fun just to window shop around. It was even better than I remembered!! It’s got to be THE BEST town we’ve visited this whole trip!! We walked the main street which had the arched gate at each end. I would have bought quite a few things that I really liked, but I did not (and regret very much, especially that softsided Briggs carryon suitcase!). I only bought 3 T-shirts, for me, Caleb, and SS. I found the store that was closed and I liked very much, but it was closed (until after our tour of the amphitheater). Time went by very fast. We did not walk that much before it was 12pm when the 6 of said we would meet for lunch.

We had lunch at a restaurant called La Botte. It must be a very well known restaurant – its wall was covered with photos of famous people! We ordered pasta and pizza, all were good. After lunch, we walked around some more, then met the group at 2pm, at the taxi stand.

The group then visited the Amphitheater, which Bob and I did visited a few years ago. But with a good local guide, I felt I learned more. The weather was much better than when we were the last time and I was able to take a lot more pictures!

After the visit, we started our way back. On the bus ride, I slept most of the way. We got back to the hotel before 4pm. I then started packing and finished 1 suitcase. 6:15 pm, we went down to join the group for our goodbye cocktail, then went out to dinner. Dinner was in a restaurant that was close to the market we walked through the first full day in this city. And we walked through a fish market where the ground was wet. But I enjoyed tonight’s food, even though the salad was just many tomatos and onion, which many others did not like. We chose the entrée, spaghetti norma which I liked but not others. For dessert, they prepared a cake that had our group picture on it – pretty amazing!!

We were back at the hotel around 9. Tomorrow our car will pick us up at 4am. We won’t get much sleep tonight but that’s OK.

On this trip, we have formed a friendship with Betsie and Suzanne and hopefully we will travel with each other again, the 6 of us.