After my first week in Milan, I toured the south of Italy for two weeks, and then have spent the subsequent week writing about it and prepping photos! (I shot 2400.) What an amazing time. I met tremendously dear people and saw rich details. Indeed, as I’ve always heard, the south of Italy is very different [...]

“The essential is invisible to the eyes.” Painted graffiti on a wall in Palermo.  

Palermo is renowned for its old street markets, some of which have been in the same spot as early as the 10th century! As far as I know, each one is open every day (except Sunday). Some vendors have enclosed shop spaces. Others set up and take down every day. La Vucciría – the most [...]

“Contrasts”. That word describes Palermo best of all. (Probably in more ways than I’ve yet discovered.) Contrasts in style, in degree of polish and repair, in level of “refinement”. The juxtapositions are jarring at times in Palermo. The “Quattro Canti“, the Four Corners were “laid out on the orders of the Viceroy the Duke of Maqueda between 1608-1620 [...]

In short, I love Palermo, and look forward another visit. It offers plenty of dazzling sights to wow any visitor. But it remains “unpolished” (to my eye). It is genuine and without pretense, as were the people I was fortunate to chat with. I traveled in the south of Italy having heard many comments about [...]

Traveling here in Sicily, I’ve most enjoyed Palermo because of the people I’ve met, “just plain folks” going about their days. They’ve been open, expressive, engaging, willing to get into conversation about work and life. Cerainly, there’s Riccardo, the owner of the B&B Kemonia who was so helpful and friendly that I changed my stay [...]

Veal guts were caught in my teeth. Coming back from a day trip up the hill to Monreale, I got off the bus at Piazza Indipendenza and started walking home to my B&B. Off on a low side road, I saw smoke and smelled grilling meat. “Milza“? (Sicilian, cooked organ meats.) No. It was skewered [...]

In pushing myself to “pack light, pack light, pack light”… in wanting to ease any worry about leaving my laptop behind in my hotel room while out exploring for the day… and in urging myself to go as “unplugged and off-the-grid” as I can stand, I left my laptop with a friend in Milan and [...]

Journal entry from my lunch table: “In piccolo Trattoria Tira Casciuni a Palermo. Stare qui in Sicilia, in Italia, e veramente una droga che mi sento in tutto il mio corpo. E perche no? Perche non prendere questa droga?” In the little Trattoria Tira Casciuni in Palermo. To be here in Sicily, in Italy, is [...]

Stepping outside the doors at the airport in Palermo, Sicily, I smelled the salty, sea air. Riding a bus from the airport into Palermo, the Mar Tirreno – Tyrrhenian Sea – was on our left, and this rocky mount on our right.

Always an exercise in “packing light”, I keep removing things from my one-and-only carry-on bag for two weeks in the south of “The Boot”. After a week in Milano, I’m heading to south to wander around. First, I’ll explore Sicilia for a week. Then I’ll take a train along the “sole of the boot”, to Puglia, [...]