One last Italy trip! We fly back to Sicily and to the Il San Corrado di Noto Resort that we loved.
Lazy pool and beach days followed, with fabulous Italian meals interspersed. I whiz through Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, Intimacies by Katie Kitamura, Milkfed by Melissa Broder and Creative Quest by Questlove. The first three were great; Questlove inspired me at first and then kind of dragged.
We have a lovely seaside meal at Ristorante Cortile Arabo in Marzamemo. The fish is delicious and fresh. We enjoyed the sunset over the Mediterranean.
It’s been a wonderful year of travel, but my family’s tolerance for historic, religious and artistic sites is running low. In what will forever be known in our family as “Mom’s last fucking stand,” I drag the troops to two final amazing sites: The Villa Romana del Casale outside of Piazza Armerina and the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento.
We drove about three hours through the Sicilian countryside to the Villa Romana del Casale, a Roman villa built in the 4th Century AD with one of the largest and most well-preserved collections of Roman mosaics in the world.
The mosaics cover 3,500 square meters. The corridor with “The Great Hunt,” which depicts the capture and transportation of animals, was pretty spectacular. We talked about art and culture in the Roman world and the regression that followed in the Middle Ages. Could we be heading towards another collapse of civilization?
The Valley of the Temples, our next archeological site, includes the remains of seven Greek temples from the 5th Century BC. They are also incredible, but it is hot and a battle between teenage male and perimenopausal mom is brewing. Hormones rage on both sides. Matt and Jacob do their best to lessen the tension.
A three-hour drive home and we return to our safe space by the pool. We relax for a few hours, return to hormonal baselines and head to dinner at Manna in Noto.
Noto continues to charm. It is a hotspot on summer nights, with street musicians and outdoor restaurants.
Matt and I visit Ragusa, a hilltop city in the southeast with baroque buildings and the beautiful Duomo di San Giorgio. We have a good but slightly weird meal at the Michelin-starred Ristorante Duomo nearby.
Post-meal shenanigans follow and were, apparently, photographed.
We prepare to leave Sicily and part ways. Jacob and I are getting on a catamaran off of Croatia’s Dalmation Coast; Matt and Xander are heading to the Swiss Alps. But Covid strikes again. We get home to Basel and our Jacob develops cold symptoms and tests positive.
A heat-wave quarantine in Basel follows; Croatia will have to come another time. We are grateful for the Sicilian memories.
Swiss Family Lang-Newkirk 