The Gift

Day before yesterday I read this book. It was a cute story about second chances. It was not her best work but it was an enjoyable afternoon.

This was one of the books that I ordered from Amazon France. Almost of of the books came in a few days. They were delivered by courier and not sent through the Italian poste.

I still have a few books that haven't been shipped yet.

A Sunday Night Out

Last night we went out to Donna Rosa. It 's a restaurant/pizzeria in our town. Read this blog post about it. http://respiridivita.blogspot.com/2007/02/friday-feature.html

Litle P was invited to a birthday party. Her first one since we moved. She made a card on the computer because I have yet to see a card shop anywhere!

I told The King we could get some pizza while the party is going on.

This is the second time we ate there. It's the second time we even went out for food. Going to a restaurant is totally different here. In the US it's rush, rush, rush, When I was a waitress, you had to get to a table in 3 minutes after the customers sat down.

We sat down at 7 pm. We were the only people in the place besides the kids at the party. We ordered 2 beers - Birra Messina. It's good. (Photo from the internet from Chris.JP)

The King ordered 2 plates of fried calamari. We waited quite awhile which was ok. We were watching calcio (soccer) on the TV and watching the guys making pizza in the stone pizza oven. Ater a bit the waitress came over and said they were waiting for the oil to heat up and she gave us a plate of fried dough. It's pizza dough cut into strips and fried, then salted. It is good! If it had sugar on it instead, it would have tasted like a sopapilla.

After eating those I was getting full. Then our calamari came. Wow it was a lot! We ordered 2 more beers. I had no room for pizza. But I did order a salad.

I don't know how these people put the food away and still are thin. I can't do it!

It was the first time (if I am remembering correctly) that The King and I had dinner out alone in almost 20 years. Our oldest turns 20 in one month from today. It was really nice. Litle P had a great time at the party. It was over when we were ready to leave.

More trip photos

This landscape reminds me so much of the hill country in Texas. Green and rocky and kinda scrubby looking! The King was going up the hill to investigate some running water. It tasted really good. I happened to have an empty water bottle in the car (I'm lazy!) Next time we go driving we are taking a bunch of water bottles with us to fill up for free!!

There is a bunch of cattle hanging out here. Oh baby you can smell 'em! More great looking mountains. It was a beautiful day and very warm too!

Here's a peek! Mount Etna. Doesn't look like a scary volcano, does it? It looks majestic!

Bagpipes in Sicily

The past few weeks have been a blur so i cannot remember what day this happened, it must have been before Christmas. We were coming back to town after going somewhere. We seem to drive around a lot! The King's family thinks we're strange (in a good way) for doing this.
We saw Mico (The King's oldest niece's husband). He was out riding their bike. He said the Babbo Natale was on our street handing out candy to the children. He gave a few pieces to Litle P. So of couse we had to check it out but by the time we got there they were out of candy. It was 2 young guys dressed as Santa and another guy with a sheepskin that looked like bagpipes. wish I would have gotten a photo!
This morning I am reading the blogs and sites I read and I saw this post. http://www.italiannotebook.com/local-interest/zampognari/ They were bagpipes!

Trip - Part 2

After we passed through Novara we drove through some breathtaking scenery. There were goats and sheep everywhere. Look at these...better be careful or you will fall! It's amazing where they would stand and eat. Did you notice the beautiful rock wall? These were all along the road, holding the hillside up.

I wonder why these trees are swaying? Isn't that bizarre? There are pines everywhere here.

Here's a shot of one of the rocky peaks. Still we haven't caught sight of Mt. Etna. We know it's there somewhere!

On our trip we passed a solar panel farm near Mazzarrà. A sign there said it supplies enough electricity for 150 homes for a year. Cool.
Then we noticed that a driveway was cut out on the side of the road. What was going on? A sign said that they are building a windmill farm. Very cool! We had passed some windmills on our way from the airport the day we arrived in Sicily.

I had read somewhere that Sicilians are far behind the rest of the world, like still living in the 80's but I do not see that. They are getting green here!

Looking for familiar things

We have been here about 2 1/2 months. There are certain things that I have not been able to find here. Some of it is just convenience items like a normal everday trash can. In America, we use larger trash cans in the kitchen. Here the only cans we have found are for the bathroom and not even 12 inches high. People use the bags from the grocery stores for their trash.

The toilets are different too. That's another story.

Litle P loves pancakes but I haven't found pancake syrup. I need to investigate grocery stores in Messina to see if they sell American items.

Other items I haven't come across:

pecans (I knew I wouldn't find them)

brazil nuts

corn tortillas

elbow macaroni

horseradish

frozen corn - There isn't alot of frozen food here but it seems to be the same items from 10 different brands. Only veg I have seen is green beans, peas and spinach. I did get a bag of frozen stuff to make minestrone.

pickles

ground cloves - found whole ones, though

food coloring

In the US we bought a pasta called orzo. It looks kinda like rice. But here orzo is barley...strange!

I can't think of anything else right now...

But I did find this...

Corn nuts...here they are called mais, tostato e salato. I was shocked!

Boy, are they good too! Best snack food I have found here...

Maybe these are more familiar to some of you packaged this way. I grew up eating these in Texas but I think I only found a few bags in Pennsylvania.

I was surprised to find French's mustard, BBQ sauce, avocados, mangoes, taco shells, flour tortillas and other Mexican foods, worchestershire sauce, soy sauce and Asian foods.

Trouble with the Internet..

We had the internet for ONE week. Then we woke up Wednesday 2 weeks ago and we didn't. You know it's Italy...anyway we figured it out w/o Telecom!

Back to our goings on...

Last Thursday, we decided to drive out to try to get closer to Mt. Etna. Armed with only a (not very good) map, we started out. We wove in and out and through the mountains, not seeing it but knowing it was there. We can see it from the A20 in Barcellona. We didn't really drive through that many towns. But there was this one town called Novara di Sicilia. It is beautiful. Here's a few photos.

This is a photo as we approach the town. They have 2 churches. I don't know if they older one is in use. (On the right side of the photo).

Look at the street. You don't get a smooth ride but it is amazing! When we went through the town on our way to the volcano, we had to weave through the parked cars and cars coming in the other direction. You can see the street is not very wide. I was sure we wouldn't make it a few times. But when we were on our trip home, the streets were clear (like this photo) because everyone was at home for lunch or getting there!

Beautiful architecture...I love seeing all the balconies....Look at the arches over the doors on the ground floor. See the plaster work around the balcony doors on the primo piano (first floor, second to us Americans!) Bella! Bella!

Stop by tomorrow for more of our trip!