...until you realize that you should only BUY as many groceries as you can CARRY the 8 blocks home, uphill. (Not like driving to Costco and loading up on 2 weeks' worth of gourmet goodies!) Getting by without a car is one of the largest adjustments we suburbanites have to make here.
...until you find yourself in a crisis, and all your carefully-learned Italian vocabulary goes *right* out of your memory, to be replaced by [!shudder!] German, which you learned first.
...until you're sitting in the chair in the Parrucchiere where their English is even worse than your Italian. And then you realize the woman with the scissors in her hand, inches from your head, has her *own* ideas about how you should do your hair....and they're nothing like yours (snip snip).
...until you get called into the Questura to be interviewed for your Permesso di Soggiorno (Permission to Remain in Country), and they take so many types of finger-prints, palm-prints, and (one suspects) bio-metric scans, you realize you're now in some Interpol Database. Forever. (Kind of like that ink, that's never going to come off no matter how many times you wash your hands.)
...until you run out of something crucial, like Tylenol PM, and find that you can't even buy it here in la Farmacia. But --cheer up!-- that you CAN buy things over-the-counter that would otherwise be carefully controlled in the dear old US of A...
In Segesta, Sicily
This 5th century BCE Greek temple is HUGE!
About Me
The American Academy in Rome: an 11-Acre compound for competitive artists & scholars
(founded by philanthropists like JP Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Jr, and Henry Clay Frick.)
Yes, that's a person standing on the ruins of Temple G at Selinunte!
In fact, it's Adam Chapman, from the American Academy (about 7 ' tall in his socks). John Hopkins, to the left, peeks over the top of the ruins. So: note the size of the DRUMS of those fallen columns!! The white thing carpeting the ground is Sweet Alyssum, which I pay big bucks for back in the garden-centers at home....
King William II's "La Cuba", a Summer Pavilion in the Muslim Style
(see description from Ibn Jubayr above). In recent centuries, the Palace has served as a plague hospital, an army barracks, and a police department structure. Imagine that weedy parking lot covered with water, the scent of jasmine from the gardens, and zitar music floating in from a distance....You can see why the Normans fell for Sicily in a very big way.
La Cuba, artist's reconstruction
William II's Inscription, in Arabic, announcing that he built the Cuba and why
Only in the 19th century was this terracotta inscription deciphered; before that, scholars thought the Cuba had been built by the Muslims before the Normans even arrived.
Looking up at Segesta, as the fog pours down over the mountain: what atmosphere!!
photo courtesy of John N. Hopkins
Greek Doric Temple, Syracusa; an early Christian Church literally enshrouded it
now the Doric columns decorate the inside of the Church's walls
Selinunte
Where the air smelled like honey from all the Sweet Alyssum carpeting the fields.
Salt fields at Trapani, en route to the island of Mozia (an old Carthaginian colony)
the white mounds in the background are salt; when it rains, they run out and cover the mounds with those stacks of terra-cotta tiles.
The Gulf of Palermo, from Monreale
From the Norman king, William II's, Royal Cathedral and monastery, high above the 'Conca d'Oro', the Valley of the Golden Shell (so named in the 12th century for its many orange groves, a Muslim territory.)
Golden mosaics in the Palatine Chapel, Palace of the Normans, Palermo
In reality, the chapel interior was shrouded in scaffolding, the mosaics being restored & cleaned. So I cheated: this is a photo of a photo. Picture the King's throne sitting on that dais, and all the court gathered 'round in spectacularly decorated costume.
Monreale Cathedral, first glimpse
An unrecognized flowering tree, blooming outside the Palazzo dei Normanni, Palermo
Monreale (waiting for the Cloister and Cathedral to reopen after lunch)
And keeping in mind that "lunch" in Sicily lasts from 1:00 to 4:00. These palms look Biblical, don't they?
Pranzo! The "fritto misto"
The Atlantes at Porta Nuova
Palermo's "new gate," built in 1583 to honor the Emperor Charles V
Pulling into the Gulf of Naples, our trip to Sicily ended. (But a nice shot of Vesuvius at dawn.)
Il Chiostro, at the Villa Rufolo, Ravello (Amalfi Coast)
The dark stone is volcanic lava stone, especially popular during the Norman period. We saw it all over Sicily (land of Aetna), as well as the region from Naples south to Salerno (all within Vesuvius' orbit). These flamboyant arabesques are the most fanciful and ornate I've seen so far.