We get a warm farewell
from Nellie and Giuseppe. I manage to navigate my way out of his miniscule
driveway with his assistance. Nellie can’t speak English but is astute enough
to point to the trip advisor sign for Julie. We will write them a good review
when we get home. Its tough times in the off season in Sicily at the moment. We
head to Etna on a sunny day. The sharp winding roads are easy compared to
navigating the narrow streets of some of the towns on the way. Italian drivers are two paced. They are
either crawling along as if siesta had already started, or going 180klm/hr with
lights flashing and horns blowing for anyone unfortunate enough to be in the
way. Speed limit signs appear to be only there for one’s amusement.
When we hit the snow
we know we are getting close. We can drive to nearly 2000 mtrs and then a cable
car takes you another 500 mtrs … about 1,000 mts short of the summit. We meet a
Swiss couple with their walking sticks on the cable car. They had walked some
of the lower craters the day before and were looking to walk closer to the
summit today. We mentioned that we were going to Israel on this trip. The
husband said he had spent 3 months on a kibbutz in the early 1980s…just like my
sister Vivienne had done about the same time. We leave the Swiss couple to
tackle the mountain, while we do a more modest walk and take photos and watch
the tobogganing. The good news is
that I get to use the moon boots I bought in Ortesei again. Makes it worth all
the effort of packing them.
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| Lucky kept my Moon Boots ... will probably auction them off after this trip |
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| The Italians can be heavy smokers....same for their mountains! |
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| That's the ocean down there. One of the few places in the world where you can be skiing and then swimming in the ocean only an hour or so apart. |
We now head down the
mountain toward Catania. We are
still working out which navigation medium to trust. The GPS visual guides seem
the best. The voice prompts are often wrong (like having a back seat driver
with no sense of direction). Italian signs are still a mystery, with many signs
having a two way bet by being placed diagonally. The other thing about Italian
signs is the “All roads lead to Rome” effect. The way this works is that you
may find two signs both labelled Rome, but pointing in opposite directions.
They are both right, it’s just that one way is 20klms and the other way is 200
klms. We seemed to be suffering this effect with signs to Catania. We decide to
follow the GPS visual cues and only have to make 2 u-turns on the way.
We arrive at our
Syracuse place in plenty of time. Our airbnb host is an American woman Linda,
who is married to a Sicilian, Bruno. Its novel to have a native English
speaking host in Italy. It sound like she may have been missing some native
English conversation as well as she gives us about two weeks worth in 30
minutes. We learn about complaining American and British tourists, easy going
Aussie and Canadians; the Sicilian real estate market; lazy Sicilian men who
are spoilt by their mamas; the mad French guys that went swimming in winter and
now want to buy a place here; the German woman up the road who is trying to
steal her husband…she can have him she says; not to mention a few recommendations
for restaurants and pizza and some places to visit. We go for the pizza.
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| Promenading at the sea only a couple of hours after tramping in snow. |
Social Network Update
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| New connections |
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