Sicily Day 1 11/6/08

We both woke up real early today and not sure if our clocks are messed up or we are just excited to get going to Sicily. We turned on the TV today at 6:00am and saw Obama’s acceptance speech first thing. Every channel was carrying the news and they were showing shots from around the world of all the people celebrating! It was amazing to see how many people had already heard the news as the new day was dawning here. Every newspaper had 3” high bold headlines and everywhere we went today people were talking about it. We were glad to be here on such a historic day.

We checked out of the hotel and walked to the airport to catch our flight to Sicily. The flight took about 1 ½ hours and we saw some beautiful coast line of Italy. Shortly after takeoff we saw the Isle of Capri and remembered being there only two years ago. And as we came into Catania, Sicily we flew over lots of olive groves and vineyards. The picture I’m inserting is of an olive grove. The island is beautiful so far as we have seen. The ocean is emerald green. After landing and getting out of the airport it felt like being in the Carribean! Warm, tropical and balmy but a much different look with all the old buildings. The traffic isn’t as bad as Rome but none the less it is still crazy!! We walked across the street and picked up our rental car, got a GPS and got everything loaded in the car only to find out that the power to the GPS didn’t work in that car! We had to change everything over to a different car and then it worked. We started out and first thing we looked up and cars and motorscooters are coming at us from every direction! Even the GPS started speaking in English AND Italian!! HaHa We only had a short 4 to 5 mile drive to our hotel. It was a little confusing at first but Tony got the hang of it. We checked into the Grand Hotel Baia Verde. If you want to see where we are staying go to www.baiaverde.it We have an oceanside room and with both doors open we can see and hear the waves crashing on the volcanic rock cliffs below us. It is truly amazing and very relaxing. The smell of the salt air and the perfect temperature is more than we could have hoped for. After we walked around and took some pictures we got back in the car and found what they call a super market. It looks like a old Woolworths but it did have what we needed to get a few snacks and drinks for our room. We planned on eating in the dining room here this evening but the resturant didn’t open until 8:00pm so we just came back to the room and snacked and started working on the pictures and journal. Thanks Bill for the help today, sorry I called you at work, but I think we finally have the process down on how to upload all this stuff to the web. We are having a great time and can’t wait until tomorrow to see what it brings. We don’t have a clue where we are headed or what we will see. Stay tuned…