As some of you know I have mostly been commuting on a boring transcon trip on UA IAD-SFO back and forth over the past year. I have tried to make some of my trip reports interesting. In reality, the trips have been very interesting for many reasons other than the travel, but after a while I have run out of scintillating comments.

So I am very excited about my first leisure trip this year of any length of time, a trip to Sicily.

My wife and I will be driving all over Sicily for about 11 days.

We are connecting through IAD-PHL-ROM-CAT (Catania). We will drive to Taormina and stay in a resort. Then we will recuperate a bit and drive around. Eventually we will end up in Palermo from where we will fly back home.

We have some accommodations planned, but others we are going to figure out when we are there. I have studied Italian quite intensively over the past few months and I am looking forward to speaking the language.

What attracts me about Sicily is:

1. the history. Phoenicians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Spanish, just incredible history.

2. the food. I love Italian food and Sicily supposedly has great food, range fed meat, wonderful vegetables, great cooking.

3. the remoteness. The interior especially is very remote. Many Sicilians do not even speak Italian in the interior. It is as far from my day to day work as I can reasonably get without making huge sacrifices in creature comforts.

4. the language.

I am going to take careful notes and write about the trip.