Pictures of Sicily

Giardini Naxos, Sicily

We arrived in Sicily yesterday afternoon, flying in from the north over the Tyrrhenian Sea,  Palermo and then east to Catania.  The view of the Aeolian Islands and Mt. Etna was spectacular and the mountain certainly dominates all aspect of the local landscape.  It was even billowing a little bit of smoke.  We are staying about 1/2 hour north of Catania, in Giardini Naxos, a seaside resort near what was the first Greek colony in Sicily, founded in 735 BC .  We visited the museum and archaeological park where excavations have been conducted since the 1950s.  Some of the more important archaeological finds have been the remains of the city walls and houses as well as stones from a temple possibly dedicated to Aphrodite.  The museum has a nice exhibit of Greek pottery and bronze artifacts from the site.  We had lunch at a seaside cafe and then made the long walk back to the hotel, enduring the high humidity of the afternoon despite being so close to the sea. Greg says the two beers he had after were "heaven sent". Tomorrow we are planning to visit Taormina and may even catch-up with Rachel who will be on tour in Sicily with her schoolmates.  Also tomorrow is the Euro 2016 Italy vs. Sweden soccer game, so we'll be back at the hotel in time to watch that on the big screen TV. Watching soccer is certainly more enjoyable when surrounded by Italian soccer fans! Forza Azzurri!!

Telecom Italia and a river runs through it

Although we arrived in Berzo last Friday, it's taken a while to get to this next post because of internet access issues at the house that took four days to resolve.  Needless to say, Telecom Italia is not on my list of favorite utilities.  It seems that the automatic payment from our checking account was interrupted in January, so there were outstanding bills to pay.  The issue arose when I was first told there were only 2 bills to pay.  To do that, we had to go to the tobacco shop where payment could be directly transmitted to Telecom.  After waiting the 24 hour period, still no internet.  After recontacting them, I was told there were 2 more to pay, so I went back to the tobacco shop to make the second payment.  After another 24 hours, still no internet.  A third call revealed another 2 unpaid bills and at that point the kind lady at the tobacco shop and I became fast friends. Finally after 4 days, at least 10 phone calls, and 3 trips to the tobacco shop in Trescore (a neighboring community), internet service was restored.  It would have been a lot easier and far more efficient to have known that there were 6 bills to pay in the beginning, but I guess that's not how Telecom Italia operates.  Every person I spoke with had a different reason for the blocked service as well as a different timeline for restoring it.  I never thought AT&T would look so good!

While all the internet woes were going on, Berzo got hit by a fierce thunderstorm on Sunday night that resulted in hours of rain and heavy hail that lasted for over an hour.  All of the gardens were destroyed, the grape vines pummelled, and several homes were flooded - thankfully, not ours.  The small street in front of the house became a river of mud, hail, and water, and my neighbors underground garage was stacked with over a meter of hail.  They spent the next day wheeling out wheelbarrows of hail and their backyard looked like a mogul run of ice and snow. Elsewhere in town, hillsides slid to cover roads and a retaining wall near a creek not too far my cousin Gigi's house collapsed, almost taking with it several cars.  The Cherio River which sits in the valley below Berzo overbanked, flooding a number of businesses and homes.  Luckily, no one in town was hurt and as my  neighbor Mario said "These things only happen to the living". We learned later that Berzo was one of five towns over which the storm was centered, and many of the old-timers were saying that they had never seen anything like this.  Below is a picture of the river that ran in front of the house.

We're on our way to Sicily, where the weather is sunny and warm.  At home, thunderstorms are projected to continue through the end of the month, and it' already been raining daily since the end of May.  Looking forward to some summer weather!

Finally...Italia

Ciao from Italia!  We arrived last night after the usual long trip, this time totaling 30 hours.  Our flights went well, with no real issues.  We were anticipating a long security line in Los Angeles, but it only took us 30 minutes to get through.  That gave us over a 3 hour wait so we spent some time at a Mexican cafe drinking beer and margaritas and eating chips and guacamole - the perfect start to our vacation! Our long haul flight to Frankfurt went off with a hitch, but we had a bumpy ride into Milano because of thunderstorms and we had to circle around for 20 minutes until they passed.  I was thinking that US politics would be a point of discussion here and it didn't take long to get into a conversation about our Presidential elections with some of the Hertz workers while we were picking up our vehicle.  I think there'll be a lot more to come!  We're leaving Milan in a few hours and driving to Berzo - can't wait to see my cousins and the house.  There's no other way to end this first post other than to say it's so good to be in Bella Italia!!