Island Life

 A new day, a new location. Wondering where we are? We’re now on the island of Sicily!

This portion of the trip is the whole reason we even started planning Europe (instead of just talking about it). My brother is in the Navy and is stationed here, so we came to see him, his wife and their two adorable boys.

We actually arrived last night and Jimmy & Gin picked us up from the airport. We just had a few minutes to relax and chat before heading to bed.

This morning we woke up to hear that the oldest nephew, Randal, was up puking in the middle of the night. Sadly, he had to stay home while we went out today and had fun. But Alden, who is 10, got to spend the day exploring with us. Yay!

We first headed to the little island of Ortigia, where we walked the little town of Siracusa. An interesting experience happened when parking the car though. Jimmy pulled into a public parking lot and a random guy was standing there and directed him to park in a non-parking spot. Jimmy explained that these local characters were making money and you just followed along if you wanted to park in the lot. Jimmy paid him a Euro when we parked and gave him another Euro or two (plus our leftover sandwich we hadn't touched) when we came back to the car with no parking ticket. Just a reminder that life is a little different everywhere you go.

We took off across the bridge and into the town center. Along our walk they took us to this little piece of beach where there is some amazing sea glass. We collected pieces we will be sending back to display in our home. Jimmy explained to us that most of the sea glass actually comes from bottles that the residents and visitors throw into the water.  There were also pieces of tile and marble that had been rounded out. It was pretty cool. 

At one end of the island is a castle and we stopped to take a few pictures. It was closed so we couldn’t go inside but it was beautiful.

We walked the city streets and loved what a different experience this was from home, especially because only residents can drive their cars on the island. 

We found the piazza in the center of the city and there was a big, beautiful church (duomo). We decided to visit and it was amazing! The outside pillars of this duomo are Roman and 2,500 years old. The inside was gorgeous with a great big chapel and several different prayer rooms. Gin is great at telling us all about the different patron saints that each town celebrates and the Saint from Ortigia had a very interesting story that helps explain why she holds a cup with eyes in it and had a sword piercing her throat.

The duomo was amazing and started a love of visiting churches for us. You'll see plenty more later in the trip.

Next up was what Jimmy called “the sandwich guy”. He describes it as the local version of the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld. You tell him what kind of meat you want and he puts whatever he wants in the sandwich.

Yesterday, Jimmy had told me about how everything they put into their food is very intentional and meant to develop a balanced flavor, so we just went for it. I ordered salami and Jimmy ordered mortadella. It came with a whole bunch of stuff on it - at least two cheeses, this potato spread, and some other things I wasn’t looking too closely at it for fear I would psych myself out and not want to eat them (including some sort of pickled peppers and dried tomatoes). But I sucked it up and tried it all together and it was delicious. There was such a huge slab of smoked buffalo mozzarella on it that kept trying to fall apart, but I held it together and got through about 2/3 of the sandwich. Yum! We also ordered a meat and cheese board and I loved most of them. The salami was delicious and I liked the fresh ricotta a lot, but my fave (by far) was the young pecorino. Sooooo good!

After lunch we poked around for a bit and then headed back for the car. Right next to the car was a gelato shop and Alden really wanted gelato. I tried a few and got mandarino (mandarin orange... such amazing flavor because it’s mandarin season) and bacio (chocolate and hazelnut). Brian got straciotella, a vanilla with chocolate flakes in it. Our first gelato in Italy... DELICIOUS!

Up next was a drive to a little nature reserve on the east side of the island of Sicily. The water was an amazing array of blues and the pictures can’t do it justice. We took off our shoes and dipped our toes in the Mediterranean for the first time. It’s not much warmer than the Oregon beach water right now, but they said in summer it feels like bath water.

Afterwards we took a minute of fun with Alden and played with pano mode on the phone so we could be in the picture multiple times.

From there, we hiked in search of a nearby pond. Why a pond? Because of the flamingos! The flamingos arrive as white starting in February, but while in the brackish water they feed on shrimp that turn their feathers pink. It was a little early so there were only a few dozen we could see and we couldn’t get super close, but the ones we saw were just starting to get tipped in pink. It was really awesome!

This was one of those times that I missed having my DSLR. I wouldn't have wanted to carrying it throughout the whole trip, but the photos would have been so much better if I could have zoomed in!

Since Randal wasn’t feeling well, we headed home but not before stopping to get pane condito, an Italian bread with salt, pepper and olive oil on it. Jimmy made me go in and order it in Italian. Of course, I couldn’t understand or respond to the follow up questions so he helped out. 🙂 Gin made pasta and sausage for dinner with a special pasta only available during Carnevale and we enjoyed the delicious bread with it.

We are now hanging out together and relaxing this evening before heading out for a day full of Carnevale fun tomorrow!