It has been very busy here for a week with the long awaited arrival of Sean. Dinner the first night was a riot. Oscar toasted Sean's arrival, Leo toasted all of the good times we were to have, I toasted Sean's arrival, and Coco announced "Daddy has a big penis." The kids were absolutely thrilled to have Sean back and clamored relentlessly for his attention.
Dinner was excellent. We started with Giuseppe's mother's Sicilian specialty which was gnocci shaped pasta in a pomodoro and cipolla sauce sprinkled with fresh dill from the herb garden. In and of itself this was delicious but surprisingly he sprinkled whole wheat bread crumbs over it in the same way that one would sprinkle parmesean. It was an interesting texture and overall a fabulous taste. This was followed by a green salad and steak Florentine which is a slab of cow soaked in red wine, flash grilled and drizzled in olive oil. All of the carnivores had a taste, while Sean savoured the bulk of the cow.
The next day, Sean wanted to see the town right away and I wanted to showoff my driving prowess in the bus so we all piled in, (dogs included) and headed into Scicli. It is a 2.5km drive past a couple of dilapidated villas, an olive orchard and wildflower meadows. Fennel, which grows to be about 7-8 feet on a stalk that is about 4inches wide, and with clusters of yellow flowers. They look like a cross between a sumac and goldenrod) grows like a weed here and there are literally thousands of plants. Every day I see a person here or there harvesting it. (I can't figure out this freaking wifi uploader I have that is supposed to get the pictures off of my big camera and onto this blog otherwise I would show you pictures of all of the above. In two weeks I will have my reliable equipment from Toronto - then the images will come in droves)!
We reached the end of the summit and headed down into the valley.
Scicli is at the bottom of four mountains. You plunge from lush meadows straight into a rock canyon. Its just rock rock rock all the windy way down. I tell you, even the kids are typically silent during this magnificent descent.
At the bottom, is the main town of Scicli. We took Sean on what Serena and I refer to as our "flirt route" and includes all of the various places we need to go to get the goods to live. We honk and wave at the general store father and son, then the fruit guy, then the vegetable lady, the pharmacy women, and finally the gas guy. The gas guy only has eyes for Serena. I think it happened the day we were stuck circling Scicli for four hours while the bike race was on. We must have passed him a hundred times. Leo told us that Cupid must have "stabbed" them each with an arrow. It is quite a scene with the big bus barrelling down streets built in the 1850's, arms and legs flailing about inside, lots of hooting and shouting, dogs sliding from side to side in the way back as corners are bumped into and pedoni are narrowly missed. Sean got right into it.
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