Ever since Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark out there, Americans have been making their way to the Pacific Northwest. This corner of the country evokes images of rugged rocky beaches, lush rain-soaked forests, and snow-covered mountains. But the landscape…
July is always a great month, not just because it's the month of my birth, but also because it's the time when Island Fever sweeps the country and happy people everywhere head to that friendly place North of the Tension…
We would be leaving Sicily on an early flight out of Falcone Borsellino Airport, west of Palermo. Since that's located several hours from Santo Stephano di Camastra, we decided to move closer to the airport the day before. We took…
As I've mentioned before, Santo Stefano di Camastra is a relatively small town. And yet, it is one of three Sicilian towns celebrated for their ceramics, the other two being Caltagirone and Sciacca. According to an article in Italy Magazine,…
We ate a quiet breakfast, packed our bags, and prepared to leave Palermo and the rest of the Road Scholar Treasures of Sicily participants. When we had first met two weeks before, the Group Leader, Enrico Nucci, asked each of…
Saturday morning -- a great time for a walk through one of Palermo's boisterous street markets. We headed over to the Ballarò Market, the oldest, most authentic and largest of the markets in Palermo. This market originated in the 10th century…
It's about 73 miles by road from Palermo to Erice (EH-ree-cheh), but some of it's a hilly winding road so it takes about a couple of hours to drive there. That's long enough to make a rest stop along the…
After two temple-touring days, we left the Greeks behind and made our way to Palermo, the capitol of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the city's surrounding metropolitan province. The Greeks never conquered Palermo and it only began to…
From the garden behind our hotel in Agrigento, we could see a Greek temple, the Temple of Concordia. This was the first of many temples we would see over the next two days. The Temple of Concordia Valley of the…