Pictures of our adventure driving in Sicily

First of all, anyone will tell you Sicily is not Italy. Both sides of the mainland agree. Second of all, road maps for Sicily are totally useless as the roads rarely have identification signs.

So, that said, Bob and I took off on Saturday morning to go to the beach...how hard can that be--we're on an island. No map mentioned a beach so we just headed toward Catania then planned to turn south on the road that skirted the water. Found Catania---did not find "beach road". After driving around for quite awhile not knowing where we were going, we decided to wait until someone could show us or tell us where to find a beach. So we headed back toward Motta. And we headed back. And we headed back. We soon learned that in this part of the country all roads lead to Catania.

Finally we found a sign that said Misterbianco with an arrow. We knew Misterbianco was close to Motta so we took that road. Found a beautiful, quiet little town with parks, wonderful people, great food and we tasted our first gelate. We were mesmerized. We stayed for a few hours then got in the car to continue on to Motta.

The sign going off the highway said Motta 3 km. (arrow off to right) so we went that way. Not long after turning off the road got a little rough. Bob said, "Are you sure this is a road?" Then it turned to dirt.

But.....we could see Motta in front of us so we continued. The road got rougher and rougher until we felt like we were in the middle of a desert---a desert with VERY BIG ruts in the road....and rivers. We were pretty much laughing hysterically when we saw the "lake" in the road around the bend.

This is how close we got to Motta before we gave up and went back the way we came. Can you see the road? The flat area is actually the road.

We went back to Misterbianco and got lost in the windy (pronounced with a long i), narrow streets for quite awhile before coming out onto a highway again. Problem was it went to......you probably can guess.......Catania. Finally found a road that said Paterno and we thought how can we be more lost. That road actually took us back to an area we recognized and we got back to the apartment none the worse for wear.