Family came to visit us

We were so thrilled to have Mike and Chris and Micha come see us that I'm afraid we wore them out. Trying to fit so many things into one short trip. Some people come to Sicily and see poverty, crowded conditions and trash. We came to Sicily and saw beautiful people, interesting history, and a wonderful story. Reading their blog, I'm glad Mike and Chris saw the same.

The visit wouldn't be complete without their meeting Giuseppi and Mima. What great neighbors. BTW Mima says Micha is a "bambina bellisima!" (beautiful baby girl) Of course she is and I love Mima all the more for saying that.

Mike and I our shared photos from the trip so I don't have any new ones that you can't go see on their flicker account but I want to put up a couple of my favorites. Actually, the one they put on their blog of Micha leaning against the wall might be my all time favorite.

We're going to be staying close to home for the next couple of weeks so I'll try to get in to blog more. Be patient.

Buona Pascuale (Happy Easter)

We got back from our trip today and wanted to call to say Happy Easter, then realized everyone would be at church so we'll just use our friendly "blogger" to say we hope you've had a great day and the weather is nice for you.

The village of San Biagio Platani (don't even try to pronounce it) has a traditional procession on Easter and we were privileged to be there today. Each year during Holy Week the men put up structures made of bamboo which are amazing in themselves. These things have to be about five stories tall and are put together every year along the street in front of the church. They run about four blocks on either side of the church front. Besides being made of bamboo, every corner and important line is covered (really covered) with fresh bay leaves. Millions of bay leaves. Anything green you see in this photo is bay leaves. On each end of the structure the lower section of the archways are covered with rosemary leaves. I think it's amazing that they can even make something like that.

Then, the women of the village spend the week making fancy sculptures, paintings, pieces of art using bread. We can't put many photos of them on so tomorrow we will put them on flicker. Click there tomorrow 'cause we really want you to see the fancy things they do. We took pictures of just a few of the many pieces they had displayed. I can't even make a loaf round on the top so I can't imagine making any of these. Now I know you're asking, "what about that first picture on your blog?" yep---all of bread. The swans, the trees, the tablet and flowers, even the almost-life-sized people and the fence around them all----all made of bread and bay leaves.

On Easter Sunday they have a processional in which a statue of Mary is paraded around the town. The band plays meloncholy music and the whole town follows Mary through the streets under the structure made by the men and women of the village. This is to represent the sadness Mary felt when Jesus had been killed on the cross. After a couple of rounds through the town a statue of Jesus joins Mary and the band strikes up happy music representing Mary seeing that Jesus has risen and is alive. The atmosphere of the day is festive and, as is usual whenever any town in Sicily has a festival, there are street vendors everywhere.

Note to our kids: This is spring break week so we're going to be bouncing here and there on the island. If I miss calling someone, please forgive, we'll call anytime we can. Or we may have to call with cell phones and have shortened conversations this week.

When we went to San Stefano di Camastra and Pollina

Another tour Saturday took us to the northern town of San Stefano... We had been there once before, about a week after we got to Sicily, and were too overwhelmed to appreciate its beauty, too new to just wander the town, and too ignorant of the Sicilian pottery to make any intelligent decisions on things to buy.

Usually on these tours we are dropped off in a town for and hour of "shopping" during the Sicilian reposo. That's the time when all shops close and the shopworkers have a long lunch and time for relaxing before opening back up for the evening trade. So, needless to say, we don't get much shopping done. This time, though, we were given three hours during the actual work day then visited the other sights (castle tower and amphitheater) more appropriately when the shops were closed.

We did buy a few things to use when we have dinner guests which seems to be at least once a week.

San Stefano is noted for it's ceramics much like Caltegirone about which we've written before. Since we hadn't planned to buy much, and were given so much time, we had time to wander. The town sits on the shores of the Tyrannian Sea (a northern extension of the Mediterranean) and has beautiful walled walkways from which to view the water. The walkway you see in this picture is made of hand carved stone (not formed concrete) with ceramic tiles covering the top and sides. It's beautiful-----(and the guy in the photo is cute, too).

There were so many great photo places that I'll just have to refer you to our "flicker" site so you can see how neat the area is.

As usually happens when we begin to wander outside of the main street and through the less traveled areas of a town, we found a trattoria (family-owned restaurant) where we were the only non-Sicilian and the food was amazing. The menu was written on a board as we walked in and we ordered from it. What did we order? We don't know but it was great. Bob's was a ravioli filled with ground prosciutto, covered with a sauce (sugo) of freshly cooked artichoke, tomatoes and ham. Mine was linguini with cooked fresh tomatoes and the meat of some kind of shellfish. I have never liked a mixture of fish and pasta or tomatoes and fish but this was very good.

Later we went to the town of Pollina up at the top of a mountain (as are many, many of the towns). It was so high that from the bottom of the mountain we could see the town consumed by clouds. When we got to the town, sure enough, we could look down on the clouds. The bus had to stop at the edge of town because there was no way for the driver to turn the bus around if he went up into the streets of the village.

We walked up the street (up being the operative word here) and stepped into a couple of churches that were open on our way. I really can't begin to describe what we saw. The outside of the churches looked like old, dead, decaying rock buildings but once we stepped inside the beauty was astounding. Solid marble statues with inlaid marble designs around them, murals and paintings--all having been there for hundreds of years. One church had beautiful sculptures and designs but only 8 chairs for parishiners. What a statement.

As we passed a little store our tour guide (who by this time only was guiding Bob, me and one other lady, all others had gone ahead) said she had something special to show us. She opened a door to a little shop about the size of our bathroom. In the small interior sat a beautiful old lady with her feet on an open-fire stove for warmth, cracking pistachios with a small hammer and putting them in a container probably to sell later.

The store was filled with everything you could possibly need from pins and needles to milk. But with only one or two of each item, the store was packed full. With our guide as an interpreter, this lady told us she is 86 years old and works every day in the store to keep busy. She said her daughter wants her to move to Palermo and live with the family but she is sure she would die there....................................This is the Sicily we came to see.

A few home things

I'm going to try to put on several pictures and a couple of blogs this morning. There's just so much to say and see here that I want to share.



First of all I have a couple of things that are just from home. The other day we were walking in light jackets from the post office on base to our car on the other side of "Midtown", a walk equivalent to a football field or a little more. When we got about a third of the way it started to sprinkle. Expecting rain, we had brought our umbrella and so got it out and huddled under it as the sprinkle began to develop into rain. Going a little farther we noticed the rain was getting rather heavy with larger drops. About twenty yards from the car it was really pelting down and something was added to it. We began to run and when we got in the car I looked at my sleeve and it was covered with pellets--not of hail but actually snow pellets. (And here I thought we lived in the tropics.) I took a photo but you can hardly tell on the windshield--I should have taken a photo of my arm. A few days later we had a hail storm. It woke us up about 11:30 hailing very hard and was still on the ground, sometimes in two to four inch drifts, as we went into work the next morning. Funny thing is, though, other than during those times, we still are comfortable in long sleeves or sweaters. Seldom need even a jacket during the day.





I think I mentioned a long time ago the beautiful table top we got on a trip north. Well, we finally have the finished product. A local artisan has made the support for the table and has just finished chairs to match. It's all handcrafted heavy iron. Notice the tulips he added to the center of the table bottom and to the backs of the chairs that match the design on the table top. We are really happy with it. I think this is our one big money item we will take away from Italy.










And, finally, we have conceded that this dog is probably ours and have given him the name of Bullet. It seems to fit because he "shoots" out of his crate in the morning, shoots around the house to the front whenever he hears the door open, and puts holes in everything he's near.

And for those of us who are REALLY old, he even looks kind of like Roy Rogers' dog.


Actually he's very intelligent and once he got the idea that I wanted to take his picture he seemed to be posing for me. I took several but this is his best pose.