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…