Thanksgiving in Sicily

I know it's been awhile since my last post, but not too much has happened.  Last week I started at SAIC and life's been busy getting myself acquainted with the new job.  Last week was Thanksgiving and over the summer, Shanna & I decided we wanted to go somewhere warm.  After kicking around various ideas, we settled on Taormina, Italy, on the island of Sicily.  I mentioned it to my parents and invited them along.  They got their tickets and met us down there.  They flew into Rome Sunday, toured there, then flew to Catania Airport Thursday and met us there.

Thursday morning is when we left, and it was EARLY.  So early, in fact, that it was before the trains started running, so we had to drive.  We only live 15 minutes from the airport, so we got there plenty early.  It was FREEZING that morning.  By mid day it's been in the 50's for the past few weeks, but before the sun rises, it's been in the high 20's.  Our flight to Catania went smooth, and when we stepped off the plane, it was 70 degrees & sunny.  I had previously arranged for a shuttle service from the airport to the hotel, and am glad I did.  There wasn't really a public transportation option, so we'd have had to get a taxi for the 45 minute drive.  The drive was absolutely beautiful.  Catania & Taormina are right on the coast, so our entire drive was along the coast line.  Last May I visited Rome with some friends, and while I enjoyed it, I never really saw the Italian country side that I think of when thinking of Italy.  We definitely did this time though...it was the Med on our right and the beautiful old Italian countryside on our left.

We eventually got to our hotel and checked in.  I'd read in the reviews how friendly the staff was and how beautiful the view from the outside terrace was, and neither disappointed.  Our family must have been the only people checking in that day, because when I walked in & said I wanted to check in, the guy behind the desk, Sebastiano, said "Yes, welcome Mr. Norton.  Your parents are down at the restaurant.".  After we checked in, we walked out on the terrace and saw Mount Etna.

We then headed down to the restaurant and met my parents & brother there.  It was good to see them again.  We ate lunch and walked around the old town area for the rest of the afternoon.  Shanna & I called it an early night since it'd been a long day.

The next morning the plan was to explore the city.  The hotel provided breakfast, and then called a cab for us.  There was a village way up on a hill over looking the city, and up there was the remains of the old castle & fortress. 

On the drive up, our cabbie gave us a mini-tour, explaining all the things we were seeing.  He even pointed out the huge land mass in the distance across the water...turns out that was mainland Italy.  When we got to the top, we headed to the old fortress.  There wasn't much left of it, but it had a beautiful view of Taormina & the Med. Sea.

After exploring the fortress, we explored the little village up there.  There was a church (of course) and several restaurants and shops.  Mom & Shanna spent most of the afternoon wandering through the shops there, picking up all kinds of little things.  We also ate lunch while up there at a restaurant with a panoramic view of the city & hills.  The picture I posted above is pretty much what the view of the city was like from the restaurant...the picture below is of the hills.

Later that afternoon, we walked down from the village to a chapel on the hill side, but it had already closed for the day.  That night was the big Arkansas/LSU game, so we went to a local supermarket to get some beer, then set up the laptop in the lobby of the hotel, where they had free WiFi.  Arkansas is becoming an international sensation.  We've watched them play over the internet in Austria, Germany, France, and now Italy.  Unfortunately they lost, but it was still fun watching some college football.

Saturday we'd talked with Sebastiano, and he set up our day for us.  A driver would take us down to Siracusa, and we'd be met there by a guide who would give us a personal tour of the city.  Once we got there, we were met by Rosa.  The first thing I noticed was her perfect English...so perfect, in fact, that she seemed to have an American accent.  It turns out she was born in Sicily and when she was 8, her family immigrated to Connecticut.  When she graduated from High School, she moved back to Sicily and has lived there ever since.  She still has family in the US, so the visits have helped her keep up with her English, and her American accent.  We started in Largo Port, and walked through the city.  We started down a street with a house that was one of the few buildings to survive the devastating earthquake of 1693.  That fact jumped out to Shanna & I because we remembered learning that earthquake also decimated Dubrovnik, Croatia, killing 90 percent of the population in Dubrovnik.  We eventually got to the Siracusa Duomo.  That church had a fascinating history.  It was first built thousands of years ago as a Greek Temple for Apollo.  When Christians took the territory over, they converted it to a Church.  Eventually Muslims took the town over, and converted it to a Mosque.  Finally, the Catholics took the city back over and turned it back into a Church.  When you go in, you can see the old Greek columns, the area where the round top of the Mosque used to be, and of course, all the Christian symbols currently there. 

We continued walking around the city, seeing all the various landmarks, including the remains of the first Greek Temple built in the city in 800 B.C.  Our driver picked us up and drove us across town to the location of Roman & Greek ruins.  The Romans had built a small Gladiator ring there.  In the center was a pit with two columns in the center.  The Gladiators would stand on the columns and try to knock the other off.  The loser would fall into the pit of water, which had crocodiles in it.  She also showed us the mass graves they'd bury the dead Gladiators in.  Right around the corner from it was the old Greek Theater.  The hill it was built into consisted of Limestone, so all the Greeks had to do was chisel the stage & seats out right in the mountain.  It's the only Greek Theater in the world built that way.  Behind the theater we walked through the old rock quarry where they mined the rock that was used to build the city.  They used slave labor, and it was an accepted fact that once you went in, you never came out.  The slaves who died down there were just left there.

Finally Rosa showed us the old altar area where they performed animal sacrifices.  The king at the time sacrificed 450 cows for protection against the Romans.  What the people didn't know was he had made a secret deal with the Romans to not attack.  Siracusa had peace for 22 years of his reign.  When he died, a resistance movement sprang up and killed all the Romans who were living in the town and blockaded themselves.  Archimedes, who lived in the city, came up with inventions to keep the Romans at bay.  It's a 3 day journey by boat from Rome to Siracusa.  He first came up with catapults that launched stones doused in oil & lit on fire.  They repelled the Romans, who had never seen anything like that before.  They assumed Siracusa had a God protecting them.  When they tried again, Archimedes had a new invention.  He'd put a huge magnifying glass on a wooden lever that could move up, down, left & right.  The result was they could set the Roman ships on fire from a distance.  The Romans finally conquered Siracusa by sending spies, who found out the real reason Siracusa was able to fend them off.  One night the Romans snuck in and the spies let them in.  They then proceeded to decimate the city, and beheaded Archimedes.

The history of the town was absolutely fascinating.  The next & last stop was a Basillica in the town of Arcireal.  It's famous because it has the tomb of St. Clemente, the fourth pope, who died in 89 AD.  It was absolutely beautiful inside.  After we finished there we headed back to Taormina.  Shanna & Mom walked through a few shops until we came to a restaurant to eat at, Mama Rosa's.

It was some of the best Italian food we'd had.  We actually didn't have a bad dish the entire time we were there, but this place stood out.  I had lasagna & ravioli, and Shanna had seafood ravioli.  It was our last dinner before my parents left the next morning, so we had wine, great food, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  My parents & brother had a 6am flight out the next morning, so we said our goodbyes that night.

The next morning we got up early.  Shanna & I had a 5:30pm flight out, so we decided to do one more tour before we left.  Sebastiano made all the arrangements, and even acted as our driver that day.  Shanna & I first took a picture on the terrace with the sun rising.

The plan for the day was for Sebastiano to drive us to Mount Etna, us to tour it, then he'd drive us to the airport in Catania.  We hit the road, and it was a crystal clear beautiful fall day.  The leaves on the trees were turning and there was only a little bit of smoke coming out of the Mount Etna volcano.  We got there a little early, so Sebastiano took us to a crater that was now dormant.  All around us most of the frost had melted, but it didn't in the shadows.  The result was you had some interesting shapes of frost.  At that point we were only 2,000 meters high (approx. 6,000 ft), but we had a beautiful view of Taormina.

Finally it was time for the tour to start.  Normally they have a cable car running up most of the mountain, but it was broken, so they took us up by bus.  By this time the clouds had rolled in and you couldn't see much, but when we got to the 3,000 Meter mark (9,000 ft), we were above the clouds and it was bright & sunny.  It was amazing seeing the clouds from above.  The guide gave the tour in Italian, but we had some English speakers in the group, so he'd explain things sometimes in English too.  He showed us the house the guides used to live in that was now covered in Volcanic rock from the eruption in 2002.  Some parts of the rocks were above a fissure, so if you grabbed a handful, the rocks were actually hot!  It was surrounded by snow, so it was really weird grabbing hot rocks.  He walked us all over the top of the mountain, and it was one of the most amazing experiences we've had since moving here.  After the tour, they bussed us down part of the way, and now the cable car was working, so we took that the rest of the way down.  At one point the cable car came to a complete stop, and it was just Shanna & I in the car.  It was cloudy again, so you couldn't see far around you, but we could clearly see the LONG drop below us.  Thankfully it only stopped for a few minutes. :)  When we got to the bottom, we walked through some of the gift shops, and I finally found a souvenir I wanted.  I usually get beer steins, but I thought this time I'd get something more appropriate for Italy...a wine carafe!

Sebastiano then drove us to the airport.  It had been a long day, and in that warm sun, I was OUT.  Shanna told me at the airport that Sebastiano had noticed me asleep and made sure to go over speed bumps as slow as possible so he wouldn't wake me.  As you can see from this post, the hotel was GREAT.  If you ever find yourself in Taormina, stay at the Hotel Continental.  You won't regret it.

The trip home was uneventful, and we finally landed back in Stuttgart around 11pm...and it was back to the cold weather.

This trip was a LOT of fun, and Shanna & I agreed that this is one of the few places we really want to go back to to explore more. 

You can view the pictures by clicking here, or any of the pictures in this post.