Arrivederci

I have been back from Italy for one week, so I figured it is time to document the final leg of the journey.  I think writing as I travel is a good idea, which is amply demonstrated by the trio of gems immediately preceding this post.

We spent four nights in Florence. Our host Stefano was a great guy, and we did well to follow his restaurant recommendations. We obviously ate a lot of pasta, but we went upscale one night. I can’t remember the name of the joint, but it doubled as a flower shop. The service and food were what you’d expect at a top-flight SF place.

A highlight of our time there were the two tours we got from Tatiana. She showed us both Florence and Siena, where she lives with her husband and nine-year old son. Fortunately, I was able to keep up the pace on both tours.  They called me a trooper.  I got to be a pooper in Sicily.  I did get a break one day in Florence when the other three went to the Mercato Centrale.  I didn’t miss anything.  TCG described it as a combo of a mall food court and a swap meet.

Tatiana is originally from Lithuania.  She speaks Lithuanian, Russian, German, English and Italian.  Her son speaks Italian and Russian, so he can talk to the grandparents. Tatiana enlivened both tours by not just showing us the important spots but elaborating on key people and the history of the region. She also got us some great gelato and an excellent lunch spot in Florence right over the Ponte Vecchio.

We had a winery tour one day. The wine and food they served were good, but the heavy sales pitch was not appreciated. “This course is paired with X, which is #3 on your wine list”. Gimme a break!

As we left Florence, Stefano made sure we ordered our taxi to a good pick-up spot and escorted us there.  If you ever need a place in Florence, we have one for you. We flew to Catania and then drove our rental to Taormina. We had to do a couple laps on the ancient, winding narrow roads before we could offload the luggage and have them valet the car. Our quaint hotel was a family business and was centrally located. The restaurant food was good, but we were expecting more fish options in Sicily. The white wine was damn good. I did not see a ton of Taormina because this leg was my rest period. I have no complaints.

One of the nights we wandered over to the Four Seasons Hotel, where they filmed White Lotus.  We thought we’d have a cocktail there. I imagine many other folks have had a similar idea, which is probably the reason they have a 50 euro per person minimum in the bar. We took a hike.

After Taormina, we were on the road to Palermo.  We made a stop in Cefalu because that is where they filmed the beach scenes for White Lotus. If White Lotus had a scene where people jumped off a bridge, we’d likely have done that too. We shared a tasty cheap pizza in Cefalu and then headed to the outskirts of Palermo to turn the car in. We had yet another gas station episode there. We pulled in and got out, but the guy told us to go to the pumps at the other end of the building.  We went there and they sent us back to the first place. I told the original guy, in sterling Italian, “you sent us there, they sent us here”, but once I mentioned diesel, we were cool.  He then said “pieno”, which means “full” in Italian.  I heard “lleno”, which means full in Spanish, so I said “Si, lleno”. He filled it up.

After dumping the car, we got a taxi to Villa Olimpio in Mondello Beach.  The driver gave me a card, so we were all set for transportation for the rest of the trip.  Villa Olimpio was not really a villa, but it was nice enough.  The wife and I had an add-on room by the pool. This last phase of the trip was down time for everyone. We spent two days on the beach and nights in downtown Palermo. On the first one, we had gotten a restaurant recommendation from the guy running our hotel.  It did not disappoint, as it was a place for locals with good food and great service from a wait staff that had an average age of 20. Prior to dinner we went to a joint that had artisanal cocktails, which I believe was mentioned in the NY Times.

On our last night we had a food tour with Marco, with about eight other tourists. We had a lot of good local grub and details about the origins of it, along with some Sicilian history thrown in. At one stop the featured dish was a spleen sandwich, to which I gave a big IXNAY. Later on, Marco explained that it really was a combination of spleen and lung.  If I had known lung was involved, I might have given it a shot.

So that is a wrap on the Italy trip. I’m back in the big FC doing my thing, including ten torrid laps at the posh club this morning. The wife has an early evening appointment today and I need to have dinner ready early, so I better get prepping.