Lori and Troy do Europe 2025

Today is 67 and overcast with a chance of rain. There was a pretty nasty thunderstorm last night after my shorts went missing. I woke up and immediately went to the balcony to look for them. I stood on the patio in my skivvies as I needed to know their location! I scanned the ground, tops of cars, balconies below us and there they were. Laying on a lower roof completely out of reach and clothes pins still attached. I began to scan the area for a way up there but could not see one. The only thing left was to look on the bright side. 1. My suitcase would be a little lighter on the way home. 2. At least this happened at the end of the trip. 3. Well there was a rip in the crotch that I needed to fix anyway. 4. There was a chocolate stain on the front from and candy bar a few days ago. And 5, maybe I didn’t get the rear end stain out. It is amazing how you can justify stupidity when you need to.

We are not real motivated today. The trip is winding down, I have a bag of cookies and some work to do. I was able to get most of it finished before the internet went out. Now we have no Netflix and it is raining off and on.

We finally decided to get up of our lazy arses and walk into town. The climb is high and tiring but we need food. Lori has a restaurant picked out already. We walked through the Main Street of town and saw Zach from last night. We gave him a wave a he excitedly waved back. We continued down the street and arrived at a restaurant right next to the one that she wanted and were sucked in. As a courtesy we checked out the menu. It looked ok but our landlord recommended the restaurant next to this one. We moved over to the next door menu only to find that it doesn’t open until 6:30pm. The first one was already open and Lori was starving. We decided to give it a try. I ordered fried squid and Lori ordered grilled swordfish. Both turned actually pretty good.

Afterwards we thought about visiting Zach for a last night drink and saw a small bar on the way. What the heck, let’s give it a try. There were little kids in costumes running around and visiting each business looking for a treat. This place was no different. We sat down at one of the tables and ordered some wine. We watched as a little boy (10 years old maybe) walked in and then get shooed out by the owner. As if he was a rodent. We thought he had given him a treat and then jokingly shooed him out. It wasn’t until a few glasses of wine later that some little witches stopped in for a treat. I unexpectedly encouraged them to enter. They also were shooed out the door. I’ll admit it was funny to watch but then the owner stopped by our table and started trying to converse with us. He was actually a pretty fun guy and was the owner. We conversed for about an hour through google translate. It turns out that he had an Aunt that lives in Rochester, NY. Next thing we knew he had her on the phone and handed the phone to Lori. Lori had a real nice conversation with her that lasted about 30 min. He also told us that his wife was in Toronto working on a TV series with Patrick Dempsey as a costume designer. He was just another example of the kindness (to adults, I guess) we have found in Sicily. I think we may come back to one of these cities and spend a month immersing ourselves and trying to learn the language.

Afterward we went to visit Zach one last time. We already stayed too long at the last place drinking wine. Then we saw Zach who insisted that we come in for a complementary drink. We could not resist which added to our already unsteady gate. He would not let us pay so we left a nice tip for him. He gave us a present in a bag and told us to open it when we got home. Lori could not wait and found a mini tambourine. I’m not sure what that means but we were pretty excited about it.

We walked back to the original place where we wanted to eat at and bought a take away pizza. This will be our breakfast in the morning, if it makes it through the night. We still have not toured the city so I guess we will have to return. We started the enjoyable walk down hill to our apartment with pizza in hand. We passed by another cafe that we checked out last night. That young band from the bar near our hotel was setting up there.

As I sit here writing this I can clearly hear them playing. We are right in the middle of both locations from last night and tonight. This time I have the window open and am just accepting the Italian version of Ghost Busters, Guns and Roses and several other versions of American music.

Tomorrow we are headed for Cefalu. This is about a 1:40 min drive from here. My sister in law, Gina’s family is from there. This will be a one night stay before we head to Palermo and then fly to Amsterdam.