Under the Sicilian Sun

We went to Sicily to see if we liked it enough to try to invest in some real estate. I LOVED Sicily. It was better than I expected in every way… although the stone 17th Century hillside homes we liked would cost a little more to renovate than I budgeted.

But it was our 16th anniversary, so you know what Chris gave me?

Covid. I wanted an Italian house and instead he gave me covid. Isn’t that an apt analogy for marriage? I’m not sure.

Anyway, if you, too, would like to fall in love with Sicily, here’s our itinerary.

We flew into Palermo late close to midnight. A taxi dropped us off at our first Airbnb. Airbnbs and hotels in Italy are good for 2-3 hot showers, our family of four has learned. Never four hot showers. Never. Man, for a trip where I never had a hot shower and also got covid, I really had a lovely time. I can’t stop thinking about it! The good parts I mean!

Our first day Isaac requested we have a beach day. We took a taxi to Mondello Beach and (eventually) had the best pizza in the universe. The previous blog post focuses exclusively on this pizza.

A full day in Palermo took us from the cathedral roof to the harbor.

We picked up a rental car and drove across the island to Siracusa, stopping for sandwiches and a giant plastic bottle of popcorn that would drive me crazy for the rest of the trip with crunching and fighting over whose turn it was to crunch. Madness. Once we arrived at the most bizarrely decorated home I’ve ever seen, we beelined straight to the beach again, then had a beautiful dinner. Am I in ancient Rome? Am I in ancient Athens? No! It’s modern Sicily!

This night Chris suddenly announced he felt weird and needed to go to bed immediately.

A full day in Siracusa for wandering back alleyways, exploring an old seafront fort, the ruined temple of Apollo, another ancient temple that was turned into Siracusa’s main cathedral with all its pillars perfectly visible, gelato and another swim at the beach until a fracking storm sent us running, and a thwarted attempt at a traditional puppet theater. It’s good we didn’t go in the end, because it’s the only thing we would have done inside without masks this trip! And one of us was probably contagious at this point, although we of course couldn’t know that since we felt fine.

Chris and I spent a morning tracking down his favorite Greek hat after he left it under his chair at dinner. The next night I suggested he leave it home since it was already dark. “No,” Chris said firmly. “It’s important to my travel identity.” Days later, as we got out of the rental car for the last time, Eloise handed Chris his hat. “Here, Dad—your travel identity!”

The next day, we drove a couple hours across smooth, broad, uncrowded highways to Agrigento to see the best preserved temples besides the Parthenon in Athens. This was so freakin cool. The Valley of the Temples lines a ridge visible to passing ships, declaring the mightiness of the ancient city. The city of 200,000 collected 30,000 slaves after defeating the Carthaginians in battle, then had them build the temples as a way of congratulating themselves on generally being masters of the known universe.

“Dad, what’s a forum? Mom didn’t give me a satisfactory answer,” Isaac asked Chris. Chris physically grew taller at this excellent opportunity to share important bonding information with his likeminded son and proceeded to give Isaac an explanation about how Greek and Roman forums were gathering places where—

“No!” Isaac could barely contain his glee. “It’s a two-um plus a two-um!”

Yes, both Chris and I fell for this ridiculous joke.

I made myself a wreath of olive leaves to fit in. Chris came over: “Wait, let me fix it.” He rearranged them to stick out but soon gave up on the uncooperative branches, leaving them angling out of my hair. “Chris! What? Now I look like a deranged reindeer!” “There… um… you fix it,” Chris said.

This was it—the moment we turned inland to drive to the hillside town of Cammarata. Would it share the same lack of infrastructure we saw around Palermo with uncollected trash piles, dead rats, crumbling sidewalks? Oh no, the hills around Cammarata shone in the setting sunshine like a family in portraiture. Our Airbnb hostess volunteers with the architect we met with the next day. Everyone was so friendly. The streets were great. The sidewalks were paved. We didn’t see any bags of garbage, just school kids meeting up for gelato and old friends walking around the lookout points. Birds soared and swooped as the hills and vineyards stretched out in undulating waves below. Bells tolled across the city.

Touring the houses was a delight. “My friends think I’m crazy to spend my free time doing this,” said Martina, the architect behind the nonprofit Streetto. And my friends think I’m crazy to consider buying in Sicily. At least I don’t have to be crazy alone.

“Do you know what our life is? Yours and mine? A dream made in Sicily. Perhaps we are still there, dreaming.”

Leonardo Sciascia

I felt abnormally tired at the end of the day, our last day in Sicily. I started feeling congested the next morning. By the time the plane landed after our short flight to Rome, my hears wouldn’t pop—the pain was excruciating. I collapsed into bed after midnight after two delayed flights and hours in airports. The next morning I got the dreaded positive covid test. I am so thankful everything we did all week was outside. I wore a new FFP2 mask on each leg of our flight and in the airport, but oh man. What an unfortunate day to fly.

So that’s the souvenir I came home with. Now the question is… should I go back and get the other one?!?!?!