I’ve looked at lots of blogs in the course of putting this one together and wanted to keep this on a more serious note partly because I’m also in the midst of teaching two art history classes and am excited to share as much with my students as I can since I can’t have them here with me.  But there are some things that just don’t fit into that “serious” thing so this post will cover those other things. Hope you’ve enjoyed this little journey- we certainly did.

For the car we rented, we wished we had a bumper sticker that said “Avis made us rent this car.”  It was twice the size of any other car on the road and now that you’ve seen how narrow some of the streets in these towns are you can see what a disadvantage that is.  We figure here in Sicily perhaps this car makes us appear to be part of that group that you are not supposed to mention (you know the one that sparked a TV show about “singers” in the opera).  It’a a good rationalization for the looks we get from passersby.  We turned it in filthy, from road dust, lots of bird poop from parking under trees, and plenty of scratches but don’t worry we never met insurance we didn’t feel we had to buy.  A man we met at the AVIS counter asked Jeff how he enjoyed the car as I guess it’s considered a “luxury” model and Jeff’s response was just get all the insurance.

About the cats, it truly makes us feel we were in a Mediterranean country, and one more tied to the Middle East since the British brought cats to Israel and Egypt when they were part of their empire to take care of the rats.  Since the British were probably the only ones who were not in Sicily (except maybe during WWII) we can blame the French or anyone else you like.  Anyway, they are only annoying if you have food otherwise they have virtually no interest in you.  Saw very few stray dogs but they haven’t got the pooper scooper thing yet so in addition to being sure we didn’t sprain something by stepping into a hole we had to watch out for that as well.

For those who are reading this blog and are Jewish you know that we are in the midst of a whole season of continuous holidays.  Sukkot (the one we are in now) is one of my favorites and probably the one I miss not celebrating at home the most.  So, we were delighted to find a “sukkah” restaurant in Ragusa.  The food has been very good though the beef is nor very high quality and there is no chicken on the menu in Sicily so if you are not a seafood eater you are probably a vegetarian by now.  We are having no problem in that department though finally figured out that we were eating too much and are ordering much less.  Hard to imagine that people can eat an appetizer, a first course (pasta), a main course, and dessert.

So last night we were in our last hotel, and I dreamt that the hotel had a section of floor that was from the 3rd century.  We of course went in search of it (in my dream) and did find it in some out of the way corridor and were the only ones “looking” at it.  Kind of a funny dream but made me think about how we had, as one of my students put it, “stood in the temples” and I am amazed to think that we spent so much time immersed in ancient history that is still with us today though who knows for how long.  We are happy to come home to one of the places people go on vacation instead of vice versa.  By tomorrow it will probably seem like we never left.