Christmas in Sicily — Musings From the Road

Merry Christmas from Sicily.

It's a beautiful Christmas day in Sicily.

Today we went to a couple places after our little Christmas.

The extent of our decorations. A dressed Santa Cecilia bottle, a plate of cookies, some lights and Rachel's present bag.

Rae showing off her Sicilia apron gift.

The first, the Basilica of San Calogero, on top of Monte Kronio, Cathy, I, Tom, Jackie and Lyle have been to but Rachel had not.

The Basilica. Started in 1530, consecrated in 1644. There is a monastery associated with it.

Sciacca from Monte Kronio

The coast east of Sciacca

A peregrine falcon hovering in the wind above the mountain

Then we drove to Realmonte, about 25 km east of here, to see the Scala de Turchi, the Turkish Steps. It's a soft marble rock formation on the coast. We climbed up the broad face on the left hand side of this photo which put us about 70 feet above the Mediterranean coast line and beach. When we hit the crest the wind wanted to blow us off. The rock had protected us from the full force of the Sirocco till we got to the top.

The beach leading to the Scala

We headed for the broad bench on the Scala just above Cathy's head in this photo. You can see some people up there.

On the broad "bench" of the Scala

This gives you an idea of the slope. It's like climbing up Columbia between First and Third in Seattle.

Views from the top of the broad bench.

This could be real slippery if it gets wet

Rachel on the front edge

We had taken a picnic lunch of prosciutto, salami, cheeses, bread, biscotti, cookie fichi and some Mandarossa Nero D'Avola with us. I'm glad we left it in the car. There was no way we could have eaten it up on the Steps with the wind that was blowing. Once we got back to the car we headed off to Secca Grande to picnic on the beach front of that small town.

Tomorrow we leave Sciacca for a couple weeks. We fly out of Palermo on Tuesday for Venice. Cathy and I will be there till the 5th when we leave for Florence. Rachel leaves on the 30th to meet her friends from Malta in Iceland. This is the year they go home to Canada to see their families so she's meeting them on their return trips. She'll be heading home around the 2nd or 3rd. We return to Sciacca on the 10th and spend the next five weeks down here with maybe a trip to Malta.

I'm not taking the laptop to northern Italy. I don't want deal with the weight. I'll write some posts using my iPad but photos will be limited since I don't have the attachment to load photos from the SD card. I'll be doing a lot of editing to add photos once we get back to Verdetecnica.

So, Ciao for now...