20/09
My Sicilian Adventure
Okay, it’s my turn. Though while I admit that Sicily might not sound like a place you’d have to be forced to travel to, I’d never been to Italy before, and so I wanted my first trip to be someplace like Tuscany, Rome, or Florence.
But like a trooper, I’m game for anything if it involves getting on a plane. And so a couple of years ago, I headed to Palermo, Sicily with a friend in tow who was heading there for a conference.
We arrive and get our first taste of the offensive driving credo that is Sicily. No rules of the road, scooters everywhere, defensive driving in Italy is an oxymoron. We arrive at the Villa Igiea, a hotel that resembles a medieval castle, right on the water, take a brief nap and then meet the bus to go to a dinner for all the conference speakers outside in the courtyard of a former insane asylum. That kind of sets the tone for the entire trip.
a typical street scene in Palermo
The conference takes place in the Teatro Massimo, an old elegant opera house; I overhear someone say that a great murder scene in Godfather 3 was filmed right there in the theatre. As the presentations proceed, I wonder what great tenors have performed on the same stage where the conference participants — all gynecologists — are now discussing the pros and cons of some complicated procedures.
In fact later, when we gather later to go hit one of the little mom-and-pop ristorantes down a narrow cobblestoned alley — lunch is an antipasti spread with clay jugs filled with crisp young Italian white wine — talk turns to a previous conference where the gynecologists reminisced about going to a strip club where they proceeded to critique the hysterectomy scars on some of the performers.
So it’s sometimes a good idea to be open not only to I’m Going Where? but also I’m Going With Who?
By Lisa Rogak
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