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 [...]

On a narrow, stair-stepped passage in the “centro storico” – historic district – of Taormina, there was a small shop that sets up fruits and vegetables outside. The lemons pulled me, looking like seventeenth-century Old Masters’ paintings. Some fruit was cut and drying at the edges, more thick-of-skin than there was flesh. Some was left [...]

In Italy, one can go 100 kilometers and find a very different food culture. There are dishes and combinations found in just one town, and certainly in one region, not others. What Americans think of as “Italian Food” is a tiny representation of what Italians eat. In planning to visit the south of the country [...]

Haven’t you always heard of “the straits of Messina”? Today I took a train from Taormina, about halfway down the east coast of Sicily, up to the northeastern point of the large island, at Messina. I wondered how this would work, since my train ticket included going up the northwest-facing shoreline of Italy. There was [...]

May 9 Journal Entry. Taormina. I need an attitude adjustment. I just don’t do “the tourist thing” and am feeling finished, ready to go home. Without someone to taste wine with at the enoteca, to share a filet of grilled swordfish or a plate of caponata, without someone to marvel with over the historic sites [...]

It’s the layering of history, so pervasive throughout Italy, that stuns me every time I make a turn and come upon some incredible, very old site/sight. It usually leaves me speechless. From Wikipedia entry: “The Ancient Theatre of Taormina (“Teatro Antico di Taormina” in italian language) is an ancient greek theatre, in Taormina, southern Italy, built early in the seventh [...]

Along the eastern shore of the large island of Sicily, south of Messina, in view of Mt. Etna to the west, lies Taormina high above the shore of the Ionian Sea. It offers ancient Greek history and contemporary souvenir shopping. Mediaeval stone buildings and current luxuries. Whether one walks behind the tour groups along the heavily-trod [...]

Sitting in a hotel lobby using the wifi network. Italian game show on the TV next to me. Don McClean singing “American Pie” on the sound system. I hear more American Pop music here than Italian, both oldies and contemporary. It always amuses me, but doesn’t introduce me to Italy’s sounds.

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, [...]