Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Thanksgiving in Sicilia (Sicily)
Originally we had no plans to travel during Thanksgiving weekend, but the more we thought about it, the more we were inclined to take the opportunity of a long weekend to go somewhere we haven’t been. Friends of ours, the Rashans had invited us and another family, the Aljabi’s to go to Sicilia a few weeks after our trip to the Northern tour of Italy (Assisi, Venice, Siena, see the previous blogs). Trying to be more fiscally prudent this time, we thought may be we should stay put and save some money. But wanderlust set in & won, so we planned our Sicilia trip somewhat hastily. The Rashans wanted to take the ferry from Napoli port which would take off on Tuesday night and get there on early Wednesday morning. Su-chun is very prone to motion sickness and boat-rides are especially a no-go. So we decided to find flights that would take us to Sicilia instead. As luck would have it we were able to find direct flights from Napoli to Palermo for decent prices on Alpieagle (a small Italian carrier that only has 8 planes in their fleet).
The night before our scheduled departure, weather took a turn for the worse. All throughout November, we had experienced wonderful weather in Napoli, cool and sunny days with little rain. Wouldn’t you know it, right before our trip, temperature dipped down to about 40F with gusty winds. We contemplated to delay our trip and move the dates of the flight to go at another time. At the end we decided to suck it up and go as originally planned. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 0700 that means we had to be at the airport no later than 0600. Because of the poor weather conditions, we were delayed for almost 3 hours and eventually took off from the airport close to 1000. So, at this point, we are already 3 hours behind schedule on a very short 4 days trip to the island. We finally got to Palermo’s Punta Raisi airport around 1100 and the fun really began. First, for those of you who have not been to Italy and more important southern Italy, it’s an adventure just to figure out how to find information. Minor details like street signs, train info, etc. is fairly scarce and we quickly learned that finding signs for info is even more of a challenge than in Napoli. No matter, we carried on anyway and with broken Italian and some English, managed to get train tickets to Palermo Central station as well as round trip tickets to Taormina (a resort town on the eastern coast of the island). The plan was ever evolving as far as what to do in Sicily, but we thought we would spend some time with the Rashan’s and the Aljabi’s in Palermo and then we would go our separate ways as we venture out to Taormina by train.
Palermo has had very interesting history, occupied by Arabs, Normans (present day French), and Spaniards among many others. The architectural of the city shows a hodge podge of previous invaders. We had very limited time in Palermo, so we tried to do as much on foot as we could on Wednesday afternoon. We met up with the other parties around 4 p.m., after visiting the cathedral and taking in more of the city, we decided to start looking for dinner as the night was getting colder and rain started falling again. Patrick, as usual, was well armed with numerous tour books and suggested several trattorias in the central area of the city. We struck out on all the eateries suggested in the tour books, as well as some of the local establishments that the locals had suggested. At this point, we were starting to make contingency plans, after all, there’s always the McDonald’s where we had lunch. Not exactly Sicilian cuisine, but at least it’s food (more or less) in the belly. We ended up in a night market, where the fruit, vegetable, seafood stands are still open. We ended up buying a variety seafood (fresh tuna, octopus, and fish fillets) and had a grilling vendor cook our dinner in front of us. It was perhaps one of the best fresh seafood that we’ve had since arriving in Italy. To top it all, we were able to have some fresh seared tuna, something we’ve not had since leaving San Diego. YUMMY!!! It was a great end to the first day of our journey.
We took our train to Taormina on Thursday morning, the whole trip took about 3.5 hours and all along the coast, the scenery was truly beautiful. Taormina sits up high on the hillside, with gorgeous views of the Ionia Sea (basically the Mediterranean). Patrick used increasingly improving bargaining skills and lowered our hotel cost from €98 per night to €80 (saved us enough to have a good dinner). Taormina has lots of arts (ceramic and oil paintings), wine shops, and high-end stores, all geared towards the tourists.
Friday morning we took the intercity bus to the next town over to Naxos, the first Sicilian town that was settled by the Greeks. We saw the ruins where archaeological excavations are still in progress. It’s amazing that we were allowed to wonder all over the archaeological sites without supervision.
All good things must come to an end; Saturday we began our long journey back to Palermo to catch our flight back to Napoli. We took the interbus from Taormina to the Taormina train station, waited for about 1.5 hours for our train to Messina (a major seaport town on the northeast coast), changed trains at Messina to Palermo central station. A side note: trains are usually on time, except this time, where our train was delayed for over an hour. From Palermo central station, we took another train to Punta Raisi where the airport is located. Altogether it took us over 10 hours to travel back on train from the east coast back to the west coast of the island. I would not recommend anyone to go the route that we did (as Patrick had repeated reminded me throughout the day). Sicilia is deceptively larger than first appears and going from one coast to the next when you have tight timeline adds unnecessary stress. So back to our journey, by the time our train pulled up to the airport, we had 25 minutes to catch our flight. One minor problem, the gate closes 30 minutes before the plane takes off, so by the time we got there, the gate was already closed and the airport looked almost completely deserted. I hadn’t worry too much throughout our trip back to the airport because I figured that our flight would probably be delayed because the winds are once again gusting. What luck! The flight was about ready to take off as the airline personnel took pity on us to check us in at 9:05 p.m. The gate agent called the pilot and asked him to hold the plane and told us to RUN to the gate to catch the flight. At the end, we made it through security, took a shuttle bus, and made it on the plane at 9:25 p.m. as the door was literally closing for the on time-scheduled take off. Living and traveling in Italy is always full of adventures, and this one was no exception. Check Sicilia off, now onto the next destination.
The night before our scheduled departure, weather took a turn for the worse. All throughout November, we had experienced wonderful weather in Napoli, cool and sunny days with little rain. Wouldn’t you know it, right before our trip, temperature dipped down to about 40F with gusty winds. We contemplated to delay our trip and move the dates of the flight to go at another time. At the end we decided to suck it up and go as originally planned. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 0700 that means we had to be at the airport no later than 0600. Because of the poor weather conditions, we were delayed for almost 3 hours and eventually took off from the airport close to 1000. So, at this point, we are already 3 hours behind schedule on a very short 4 days trip to the island. We finally got to Palermo’s Punta Raisi airport around 1100 and the fun really began. First, for those of you who have not been to Italy and more important southern Italy, it’s an adventure just to figure out how to find information. Minor details like street signs, train info, etc. is fairly scarce and we quickly learned that finding signs for info is even more of a challenge than in Napoli. No matter, we carried on anyway and with broken Italian and some English, managed to get train tickets to Palermo Central station as well as round trip tickets to Taormina (a resort town on the eastern coast of the island). The plan was ever evolving as far as what to do in Sicily, but we thought we would spend some time with the Rashan’s and the Aljabi’s in Palermo and then we would go our separate ways as we venture out to Taormina by train.
Palermo has had very interesting history, occupied by Arabs, Normans (present day French), and Spaniards among many others. The architectural of the city shows a hodge podge of previous invaders. We had very limited time in Palermo, so we tried to do as much on foot as we could on Wednesday afternoon. We met up with the other parties around 4 p.m., after visiting the cathedral and taking in more of the city, we decided to start looking for dinner as the night was getting colder and rain started falling again. Patrick, as usual, was well armed with numerous tour books and suggested several trattorias in the central area of the city. We struck out on all the eateries suggested in the tour books, as well as some of the local establishments that the locals had suggested. At this point, we were starting to make contingency plans, after all, there’s always the McDonald’s where we had lunch. Not exactly Sicilian cuisine, but at least it’s food (more or less) in the belly. We ended up in a night market, where the fruit, vegetable, seafood stands are still open. We ended up buying a variety seafood (fresh tuna, octopus, and fish fillets) and had a grilling vendor cook our dinner in front of us. It was perhaps one of the best fresh seafood that we’ve had since arriving in Italy. To top it all, we were able to have some fresh seared tuna, something we’ve not had since leaving San Diego. YUMMY!!! It was a great end to the first day of our journey.
We took our train to Taormina on Thursday morning, the whole trip took about 3.5 hours and all along the coast, the scenery was truly beautiful. Taormina sits up high on the hillside, with gorgeous views of the Ionia Sea (basically the Mediterranean). Patrick used increasingly improving bargaining skills and lowered our hotel cost from €98 per night to €80 (saved us enough to have a good dinner). Taormina has lots of arts (ceramic and oil paintings), wine shops, and high-end stores, all geared towards the tourists.
Friday morning we took the intercity bus to the next town over to Naxos, the first Sicilian town that was settled by the Greeks. We saw the ruins where archaeological excavations are still in progress. It’s amazing that we were allowed to wonder all over the archaeological sites without supervision.
All good things must come to an end; Saturday we began our long journey back to Palermo to catch our flight back to Napoli. We took the interbus from Taormina to the Taormina train station, waited for about 1.5 hours for our train to Messina (a major seaport town on the northeast coast), changed trains at Messina to Palermo central station. A side note: trains are usually on time, except this time, where our train was delayed for over an hour. From Palermo central station, we took another train to Punta Raisi where the airport is located. Altogether it took us over 10 hours to travel back on train from the east coast back to the west coast of the island. I would not recommend anyone to go the route that we did (as Patrick had repeated reminded me throughout the day). Sicilia is deceptively larger than first appears and going from one coast to the next when you have tight timeline adds unnecessary stress. So back to our journey, by the time our train pulled up to the airport, we had 25 minutes to catch our flight. One minor problem, the gate closes 30 minutes before the plane takes off, so by the time we got there, the gate was already closed and the airport looked almost completely deserted. I hadn’t worry too much throughout our trip back to the airport because I figured that our flight would probably be delayed because the winds are once again gusting. What luck! The flight was about ready to take off as the airline personnel took pity on us to check us in at 9:05 p.m. The gate agent called the pilot and asked him to hold the plane and told us to RUN to the gate to catch the flight. At the end, we made it through security, took a shuttle bus, and made it on the plane at 9:25 p.m. as the door was literally closing for the on time-scheduled take off. Living and traveling in Italy is always full of adventures, and this one was no exception. Check Sicilia off, now onto the next destination.
# posted by Antipasta @ 6:14 PM 
