Fall 2019 Day 33

Back to Catania, to a city we didn’t even recognized!  Our friends left for Rome and then home, while we stayed in Catania, where our Sicilian adventure began. We took the bus from the airport where we dropped off our rental car and it let us off right in front of our B&B. It’s not an Airbnb this time, just a B&B and it’s lovely. It’s on one of the nicest streets in Catania and we can’t even recognize this as the city we were at before. When we were here before, we spent our time by the Greek Theater. And while that was amazing, it’s not in as nice of a part of town. So our impression of Catania before was, beautiful ruins, gritty, not so pretty city. But, staying where we are now, by the Villa Bellini and Bellini Park is like a whole new world!!  Catania is lovely!  It has life and beautiful shops and lovely people and is a place I’d gladly come back to!  I don’t know if I would have said that before. On our way into town we had a perfect view of Mt Etna today and we even have a pretty good view of it from our balcony!  There is something so amazing about looking out your window and seeing a huge volcano that is still very much active and has smoke coming out of the top still!!!  I’m pretty sure we would be fine! LOL. I’m still fighting a cold so when we got into our place we napped. It was an early morning so it was necessary. We woke up, showered and explored this cool city. We are our first Arancini, a Sicilian specialty. A friend rice ball with cheese and tomato sauce in it. It was amazing. I can’t believe it took us this long to have one!  But, I have a feeling we will have more tomorrow. 😜 Then we went and walked around Bellini Park. Bellini is a famous Italian Opera Composer who is from Catania. It was a gorgeous park, we will have a lot more picture of it tomorrow in the light when it can really be appreciated!  Then we went to a restaurant that I found online. When I’m researching, I look for strange things sometimes and sometimes it really pays off!  For some reason, I looked up real Naples style pizza in Sicily. That’s where pizza came from and it’s virtually impossible to find the real deal outside of Naples. Well, in this article, I read about this place in Catania that has what this writes said was the best outside of Naples. I remembered that search today and looked it up. It happened to be right around the corner from our place. So, we went there!  They had burgers and fries and all sorts of yummy stuff. We tried a few things but then we got the pizza.  I can honestly say it was one of the very best pizzas I’ve ever had!  It was so good, we almost forgot to take a picture until there was only one piece left. So sorry for the lame picture of it. But, believe us, it was amazing!!!!  Then we got some gelato and a cannoli from the place that’s supposed to be the best in town!  It was!!!!  Another great day!!  Tomorrow Is our last day in Italy and really our last day of the trip because Sunday we head to Paris in the afternoon and we booked a hotel at the airport since it’s not worth going anywhere for less than half a day. So tomorrow is our last day of enjoyment and no travel 😔. We are ready to come home though. But we will make sure we enjoy the heck out of tomorrow!!!  Hope you enjoyed the day as much as we did and we will have a final flurry of fun for you tomorrow!!  Thanks for reading!!

Fall 2019 Day 32

Winding down!  Today we started with an olive producer that has won gold medals all over the world for the quality of their olive oil. It’s very unique and delicious!  We will be carrying bottles back with us from Sicily all the way to Charlevoix so we can share a part of our journey with all of our customers!  We are really excited because it’s really great stuff and he is a wonderful man!!!  His groves and estate are gorgeous and we had a lot of fun!  After that we went and explored the town of Agrigento. It’s a beautiful southern Sicilian town that overlooks the Valley of the Temples. It even has tons of Greek ruins buried underneath it that you can see in various spots. Unfortunately, because it’s offseason, we couldn’t get in to any of the places that have access to the ruins to see more, but oh well!  We saw the biggest and the best!  We walked around town, it’s a town like so many others in Europe and the world for that matter. Everyone wants to live in the big cities where they see an easier path at a future so these smaller towns are having trouble surviving. There were tons of property for sale all over town and a lot of it looks a bit run down, like it hasn’t been occupied for a while. Have you seen the towns in Italy offering 1 euro properties?  I can see that happening more and more. It’s a shame because it’s still possible to carve out a slice out of these towns to make a living and a difference and keep these ancient communities alive. We went to a place just like I’m saying. A bakery that is run by a father and his two younger sons. They work hard and have a gorgeous little shop. They make amazing stuff, sell gelato and even pipe and dip you cannolis to order. That was amazing!!!!  We left and went back to our villa and enjoyed our last night in Southern Sicily.  Our friends are leaving us today and we are very sad. We have had so much fun!  It’s been amazing. They have been amazing guides on our Sicilian adventure, and amazing playmates!  It’s been full of hysterical stories and memorable times that Emily and I will cherish. We don’t get to spend a lot of time with friends, mostly because we are so darn busy and most people have a hard time being friends on our terms. Which is, we don’t see you most of the year and then once it gets cold and nobody wants to leave their house, HERE WE ARE! LOL. Having Michael, Melissa and their adorable daughter Carmela with us has been so great for us. It really has filled a void that we don’t realize is there most of the time until you have these experiences and then you remember, oh yeah, friends!!  We kinda like those!  LOL We make a lot of sacrifices!  We don’t see our families enough, we don’t see our friends hardly at all, we are lucky we have each other, but it’s nice to have more. Especially because we work so hard. I know it seems very glamorous to be in Europe for 5 weeks and believe me, it’s amazing!  But Emily and I work hard all year!  We stay open through the winters and try as best as we can to give our community something that they will appreciate and that they need. We are always there, we work our business, we have high expectations and we try to only hire people who can meet those expectations, because our business is our life!  We are trying to take others on our experiences as a way to make the off season shorter for us and for everyone who has to deal with it. We are very lucky!  But, being able to have friends to share it with is an extra special thing to us!  So, basically, thanks Michael and Melissa for giving us an experience we will never forget!  It was really special!  We are going to spend the next two days back in Catania with no car and limited access to public transportation, so really, we won’t have much the next 2 days but we are looking forward to the wind down of things. Like I said, yes, we work hard, but we love it!  When you love your job it’s almost like not working at all!!  We can’t wait to get back and see everyone and hope you are all ready for the new things we are gonna be trying and playing with when we get back!  Thanks for reading one of the last blogs of the trip. I think there will be 3 maybe 4 more entries but it makes me sad because I really love doing it!  Anyway, keep reading and enjoying and we love you all!!