Sicily: Pics and Commentary

I'll be honest. Sicily was my least favorite part of the trip that Sean and I took. It started out promising.On the flight into Palermo, what I could see of the island was gorgeous.

Then we drove into Palermo and my mind was quickly changed. Previous to the trip I'd heard how crazy the traffice was in Palermo, but still I wasn't prepared for what it was actually like. Basically there are no rules, no lanes and anything goes. Italian drivers are pretty crazy anyway, here in Sicily they are insane. I'll give kudos to Sean though, because he didn't once lose his cool driving in the crazy traffic we encountered on the three days we stayed in Sicily.

Other than the driving, what I found most disappointing was the trash. I've never seen so much trash in my life. It was everywhere! Not only in the city, but in the countryside of Sicily. What could and should be a beautiful island is sadly marred by massive amounts of trash almost everywhere you look.

That aside there were good things about our visit to Sicily. We stayed in a nice Bed and Breakfast that I found on bedandbreakfast.comWe stayed with a young Sicilian couple and their little girl? boy? Honestly I couldn't tell. It was still a baby and didn't have any features or clothes that gave any clues to what gender it was. Anyway, our hostess prepared amazing breakfasts for us each morning with fresh coffee, juice, crepes with nutella and various pastries. So delish!

Our first full day in Sicily we decided to check out Mt. Etna. It took us about two hours to get there, since Mt. Etna was on the opposite side of the island, but I thought it was worth it.

On the way to Etna.

Driving up Etna was interesting. You could see smoke coming out the top of it and as we drove higher and higher the snow kept getting deeper. At one point I couldn't even look out the window of the car because we were above the clouds. Quite a freaky feeling.

As you can see the clouds are below us.

Me on the South Side of Etna. Note the smoke coming out the top and the fact people are skiing down the side of Etna. Yeah...not for me.

Sean thought it would be funny to throw snowballs at me

On this side of the island there were groves of orange trees everywhere. I finally convinced Sean to stop so I could take a picture of them.

This is the only picture I got of Etna that wasn't close-up. It's not the best or what I wanted to be my only far-away pic of Etna.

Back in Palermo, Sean and I decided to walk around the neighborhoods close to where we were staying. I didn't take my camera, as it was night and in that city I really didn't feel comfortable taking my camera out with me, but there were a couple of things I wish I'd gotten a picture of.

1. The giant swordfish that they had hanging up at the fish market
2. The rooster that was hanging outside the door of the Internet Cafe we checked our mail at. It was so random and so hilarious!

We also stopped in a pasticeria and bought a couple of delish goodies to snack on. My picks ended up tasting way better than Sean's. His had some sort of liquor in it that was overpowering.

The second full day we were in Sicily we opted to go on a trip to Agrigento to see the Greek temples that were built there. On the way we passed this Telecom phonebooth in the middle of nowhere, which made me think about the movie The American.

While we were in Agrigento the almond trees were blooming. It made for some very picturesque views among the temples.

This is the Temple of Concord, probably the best known out of the temples that are located in Agrigento.

This is the temple of Juno. Not as intact as the Temple of Concord, but still awesome to see.

Because we did road trips on the two full days we were there we missed out on seeing a couple of things I wanted to see in Palermo like the Capucin Crypt and Monreale, however we did drive over a ton of the island so I feel like I got to see a lot of what Sicily looks like. I'm just not sure I ever want to go back!