La Dolce Vita, Capisci? (Italy Part I)

Hello faithful (though perhaps at this point, nonexistent) readers!  It has been quite a month!  This is mostly because of my recent trip to Italy and the ensuing craziness that a certain Icelandic volcano caused.  The rest I don't remember much of but if you are still intrigued, please, read on....

Friday morning I left for Rome where I was to be staying with some family (no, friends, sadly the way we are related does not make me Italian.  Sigh...).  Since the French were once again on strike at just about the most inconvenient moment possible (little did we know, there were moments even more inconvenient looming...), it was pretty hectic as at 8:28 a worker at the train station told me my train was cancelled and I should jump on the 8:30.  After I got to Paris I stayed in the airport for a ridiculously annoying amount of time drinking coffee and doing homework for the paper on Vatican II I was writing but by that night I was in Rome eating pasta and calamari drenched in butter sauce.  A good start.

The next day Thom, my  now-Roman relative (though once he lived in the quaint northwest corner of Ohio, just like your's truly) thought it would be a good idea to take a hop-on/hop-off bus tour.  He was right!  The bus tour was a perfect way for a sadly uninformed me to get a good introduction to the city (by sight and by the audio history lessons in the bus).  Eventually we got off and spent a good half-day touring around the Colosseum, Forum, and Palatine Hill.

I stayed in Rome then until Tuesday afternoon when I left to check out Sicily for a few days after which I would return to Rome to finish out the trip.  In that time before leaving for Sicily, though, there was a lot to see and do in Rome (it's kind of big and important, you know) but I did my very best.  I gave about a half day to the Vatican (museums, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica/Square/grottos), saw the outside of the Castle of the Angels (but couldn't go in as it was closed), went on a driving tour with the family (Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona, Piazza del Popolo, more of the seven hills of Rome, etc.), and had a little cooking lesson with Marcela and Mariana (Thom's wife and daughter) where we made eggplant parmagiana and carbonara.  Mmmm--that makes me can't wait to get back to a kitchen even more!  I was also able to watch two documentaries that Thom had about the Vatican and gladiators in the Colosseum which were really helpful at putting everything in context.

Tuesday, then, I left for Sicily.  I met my friend Katie in Trapani where we took a bus ride to Palermo, just a few hours away.  The bus ride was gorgeous--Sicily is one of those places that if in the right place, you can look to one side and find the sea stretching out before you and then to the other side are mountains reaching up to the sky (this part reminded me of Hualien :).  Throw in some rustic windmills and little towns and houses tucked into the hills and if that's not scenic enough for you, then I don't know what is.  One thing Katie (who's mom, by the way, is Sicilian, hence her reason for coming) and I knew we were definitely looking forward to in Sicily was eating.  A LOT.  Eggplant, canoli, pasta, gelato--yummm.  One person I met at a dinner gathering in Rome even told me that she gained 4 kilos in 10 days on her own vacation to Sicily.  Thus, once we got to the hostel, we went out with our French roommate from Toulouse (French practice! Score!) in search of food.  We settled on a place with a set menu at a pretty fair price and ended up stuffing ourselves.  Throw in the free roses the waiter/other worker bestowed upon us and we called it a good night!

The next day was spent exploring all that Palermo had to offer: ornate churches, Godfather souvenirs, Modicana chocolate, beautiful pottery I regret not buying, and a fairly legit market in the morning (as in, less touristy).  We also ambled into some of the less prosperous parts of town.  Sicily is generally one of the poorer parts of Italy, and this was really evident in Palermo--even just one street off the main street, the contrast was pretty sharp.  It wasn't like it was a ghetto or anything of that nature, it was just poor.  I know some people who don't like to see this when travelling--for them, it should be beaches and nice drinks and the like.  But for me it's something really important to see.  A country and it's people aren't only those who live and work on the main roads, that speak English out of tourist-induced necessity, or that are easier on the eyes.  I'm not saying I don't enjoy the touristy or leisurely aspects of travel--touristy places are usually full of them for a reason and leisure lets you really enjoy yourself, but it's important to recognize all sides.  To ignore an entire part of where you have gone would be to deny a part of your host, a part that should never be thought of as having nothing to give.  But these are just thoughts...

That night we then found our way to another restaurant with standardly delicious Sicilian food.  Mussels in pasta, sun-dried tomatoes, cheese toppings...oh, and did I mention the aperatif and appetizer that was literally on the house?  Yeah, those Italians, we were beginning to discover, were as hospitable as they were good feeding us [Rigels, you're included in this, too :)].  Then we met up with Katie's friend who is living with her host sister in France as an Erasmus student but is originally from Palermo.  She took us to her favorite dessert place and, yes, we got to practice our French yet again and dine on some typical Sicilian desserts.  Yum!

The next day we had planned to go to the beach with Katie's friend but that didn't work because she had to study so instead we ambled around checking out some of the stuff we missed the first day (although Palermo isn't too big and we were kind of bummed we couldn't get a ticket back earlier to see my cousin Mariana sing so we didn't do a whole lot).  The weather, however, was for the most part wonderful and so we visited the botanical gardens and another ornate Sicilian church and, of course, at more pasta and gelato!

That night we headed back to Rome and the next day was spent attempting to help Katie see as much of Rome as possible in a half-day (with the bus tour idea, again, we did pretty well but with so many other people in Rome at the time the lines were probably too long for us to do much).  After that I got lost near the train station (I had been wondering if there were any places in Rome not swarming with tourists, well...I found it, lol), and then headed back to the house....

Italy Part II and the recent trip to the vinyard are coming soon, promise!