Excellent!

Mrs. Onedog and I were in Northern Italy for two weeks in June. Your posts make me want to hurry and visit southern Italy.

After seeing the traffic in Rome with all the scooters and nightmare gridlock, I would be too afraid to rent a car and drive though.

Thanks, 'toad. Do you think that Southern Italy and Sicily are very similar?

Erice - the city of science and the trap of tourists
Erice is definitely worth visiting. It lies on the north west part of Sicily, and you drive through Marsala to get there. On the way you also can go to Selinunte (sp?) which I hear is worth seeing but we didn't have time. Marsala is a big town with its famous wine and ancient salt evaporation operations that you drive along as you have the ocean on your left.

You get to Trapani, and you look up, way up, and you see a very high cliff and that is where you are told Erice is. Then you begin your long, long ascent up hairpin curves and narrow streets and finally a new world of Erice is revealed to you, a world invisible from the lowlands.

As soon as I entered the narrow cobblestoned streets of Erice I knew I had made a mistake. The streets are so incredibly narrow. We were staying at the Hotel Elimo, and I could see it but couldn't get to it, without getting the car stuck. I didn't want to scratch it, and I didn't know what to do.

A kindly German fellow helped me get the car out, and I moved forward a little more and got the car stuck again, between two buildings where they meet in a "corner." This time I knew I was in for it. I walked along the street and asked a laborer working in someone's house for help. I gave him the keys and he expertly maneuvered the car out somehow, using combinations of clutch, brake and second gear I can only guess at and have never seen. He refused to accept a single lire for his efforts.

I found almost everyone in Sicily incredibly nice and friendly, but I will always be grateful to him.

Erice has a 12th century Norman castle that you should visit. It overlooks the valley where you can see Trapani and a bit of Marsala in the distance. It is an awe inspiring achievement, this castle, the fact that it was built at all, and the fact that people lived in this dark, windswept, cold place.

I would not stay in Erice. It is very over priced and not many people actually live there. They come up from Trapani instead.

I recommend you buy some things in Trapani to eat and then take a day trip up to Erice. Erice is a total tourist trap. The first room in our hotel stank, and they didn't apologize when they gave us the second room. The owners sat in the lobby, played cards and smoked and were generally obnoxious, the only experience like this we had. But the room like all the rooms we had there was neat and clean and comfortable.


Palermo, Palermo
The drive to Palermo was very fast, with speeds of 140 - 150km/hour all the way. As soon as we reached the outskirts, it was panic time. The driving is so atrocious and difficult, I tired of it quickly and finally parked the car somewhere and hailed a cab who took us to our hotel on Villa Liberta, the Excelsior Palace.

Palermo has four historical quarters. Villa Liberta is in a newer part of Palermo, but the street is a straight shot for the historical interesting areas. Excelsior is an old, art deco hotel with satisfactory service and nice rooms.

But very rumorosa! (Noisy). All night, anywhere you go in Palermo, you hear the shouting and horns beeping of the Sicilian drivers. You can't get away from noise in Palermo. It is also quite crowded and there is some crime here so you want to be careful. Women were always seen holding on to their handbag straps for instance. We were told not to keep anything of value in a handbag. Crime is not a problem in other places in Sicily but it is in Palermo. But we had no problems and felt relatively safe the entire time.

The marketplace, the Vucciria (sp?) is fascinating, virtual alleys strung out over blocks and blocks with fish vendors, olive vendors, greengrocers, ubiquitous cheap watches belts and shirts, and much more.

A fabulous site is the parliament building, where the Sicilian parliament meets. It is in the monument quarter, with a Norman church that is absolutely spectacular. There was a magnificent pipe organ that a gentleman was playing. We sat down and listened, it was incredible playing and the acoustics are marvelous.

Connected was the "treasury." We bought tickets from two young people and walked into this room with ancient bejeweled crowns inlaid with rubies, diamonds, gold and silver, and priceless artifacts. There were no guards anywhere around even though these are obviously quite valuable. Is there no fear that anyone would steal priceless artifacts from a church? We walked into many churches with priceless paintings and never a guard, but in this case it was quite a surprise given the value of what is in here.

Then we descended into the crypt. Here, old Greek and Roman and later era crypts were co-opted by the later Normans and used for burial. It is a spooky feeling to walk through these galleries of old crypts, way underground.

Two nights in a row we ate at Regine, off Villa Liberta and Trapani. You have to ring the bell because they keep the door discretely locked. Service was impeccable. This restaurant is for locals mostly. Even though it is relatively formal, people went with their kids and babies. I wish we had a restaurant like this in Washington DC area. I had fish (they show you the fish you are going to get and then they cook it), and veal, and wine, and wonderful dessert. Cost ranged around 110,000 lire for two, which is reasonable for a high end restaurant. Everything about this restaurant is outstanding, from the service to the freshness of the dishes to the bend-over-backwards courtesy to the reasonable prices. We had a bottle of wine but couldn't finish it, so they kept it for us until the next night.

There is a lot to see in Palermo. We did not get to see the Kalsa, the old Arab quarter. We would have liked to spend more time, but we had to get back.

At 5:00 am on the last day of our trip, we took a cab to our car and the car to the airport in Palermo. The hotel forgot our wake-up call, but thanks to a barking dog and my wife's new $5 watch, we woke up in time.

This airport is much larger than Catania. We circled a few times and found the rental car return. You drop off your car and then proceed up a ramp to the terminal where you go down to the rental car area and leave the keys.

We had to board on a bus that went from the gate to the Alitalia MD-82. They made us board through the tail stairs. The unruly mob surged up those stairs and it was the usual chaos. People don't like to stand in line (queues).

Later another bus was sent over to the plane and these folks got to board up front. There was no rhyme or reason to boarding in the front or back relative to where your seat was. Ahhh, that's Alitalia. The flight to Rome was uneventful.

US Airways shares a lounge with a zillion other airlines in the airport, airlines too small to have their own lounge. The facility was pretty poor although there was a bar and a resting area. The showers seemed unavailable.

Once at the gate, the situation improved. US Airways has a marvelous gate facility and we boarded through a separate jetway (one for the Envoy/First and one for coach).

The flight back was fantastic, with great service and good food. It took about 9.7 hours but the time went by quickly. The in-flight entertainment system had a Microsoft error of some kind and they had to restart it about three times, but eventually it started to work and we could watch movies and shows using the on-demand system.

They served a decent lunch, snacks, another snack, plenty of beverages. We arrived about 3:30pm in PHL and effortlessly cleared immigration and customs. I took a plane to SFO, and my wife went on to BWI.

--end of reports and *thanks* for listening!--

Again, great stuff, Richard!

I never did make it to Sicily; but from what I hear from folks that did, they are similar in culture and food.

I'm planning on attending a reunion in San Vito next summer. Hopefully Sicily I can fit Sicily into the itinerary somewhere.

Cheers,

'toad