No Más! Well, Almost

We get here every trip: that's it. No más. No more museums. No more pizza. No more sweets. No more shopping. No more beautiful views. History Shmistory. No más no más no más.

It usually has to do with feeling sick: Ducknik has a sore throat, I have a slightly wacked stomach. And: we are SO happy you dedicated a church to Jesus when lava covered your village, but, you know.

And thanks so much for the guidebook section about how Jews used to live in this neighborhood, before you, well.

Tired. Tired of Germans in shorts. Tired of Americans talking about business. Tired of smoking Italians. Tired of pushy French. Tired of English matrons. Tired of ourselves.

Tired of nothing ever being open.

Tired of (Lord, I am going to say this) Italian food. No, I mean ONLY Italian food, because there is nothing else.

Tired of this radial truck tire around my middle.

Tired of accordions. REALLY tired of mafia-themed t-shirts.

Not tired of Greek or Roman anything. The picture on top of this page is the Greek Theater in Taormina, that we posted yesterday, but in this one you see it from the top of the mountain in Castelmola, the town above it.

Not tired of the sunny nature of Sicily and Sicilians. The guy who jerry-built take-home containers so I could bring Ducknik some hot minestrone. The woman at the pharmacy who kept smiling despite being screamed at by sniffling tourists. All the people who have listened patiently to my Italian, even on the phone. 

The Italian language. Prettier than Spanish. The Sicilian language, which sounds exactly like what we used to hear on Mulberry Street. Thank you, Lord, for giving Sicilians hands or they would not be able to say a word.

Gorgeous dark-eyed women. Gorgeous wavy-haired men. Cats, about the same as home, only more of them.

Cannoli: on the fence. We had one great one, in Palermo, and several since then that tasted mass-produced.

What a great trip needs is at least one really cool thing -- we had ours in Gangivecchio -- every week or ten days. But you don't know 'til you get there, so these things are hard to plan.

Tomorrow, we fly to Rome and the weather seems to be changing. Rome is one of the world's great cities, right behind Watsonville. But Brooklyn is coming up behind that, and somebody is having a birthday.

BZ left Atlanta for a week in Madrid today. Turns out, you can buy some neat stuff out of lava when you are near Mt. Etna.

Oh, and I lied. The home-made pasta last night, with eggplant, sun-dried tomatoes and pistachios, was great. And the hazelnut granita walking home? On to the Top Ten.

And that gorgeous choir yesterday in the tiny church, where afterwards the people paraded through the street on their way to the cemetery?

Grazzie mille. Ciao Bella.