11.28.19 (Thanksgiving Day)
Several holidays have come and gone since we started our travels last February. Most of them were minor, but Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day are all American holidays and kind of represent the beginning, middle and end of summer. Since we’ve been “following the warm weather” we have been chasing summer, so the calendar is not our driver; our desires for warmth are. July 4th came and went as we were in Croatia and truthfully we have seen more fireworks this year than ever since many places celebrate all kinds of things with explosions! If you’d like to review my stay in Valencia, Spain, that is when we dealt with 30 DAYS of daily fireworks with Las Fallas. Boomer Café published an overview.
Here we are now, the “holiday season,” and today is Thanksgiving, followed quickly by Christmas, and of course, the New Year.
No turkey and stuffing in Sicily, but Christmas decorations are popping up in shops and on the street. Without the commercialism that you cannot escape in the US, it’s been great not hearing incessant ads for Black Friday and holiday shopping. We have no Walmart’s, Targets or chains like that, so things here are more moderate and intimate. Christmas Day is less than 30 days out and we will be spending it on the Greek island of Naxos, one of the Cyclades Islands and one that is known for mountain villages, ancient ruins and long sandy beaches, which I really have missed!
Naxos is only 163 sq miles, about 100,000 acres, so we aren’t expecting a big Christmas parade there! The population of the whole island is only 15,000 and the town where will be staying holds about 2000, so that’s almost a small housing tract in Southern California. We will have to appreciate the solitude and quiet since a week after that we will jump into one of the most congested cities in the world, Singapore, with 5.5 million people in a very small area. We will be there for a few days, then Bangkok with 9.5 million people over a larger geographical area, but because it’s so large it’s about half as congested as New York City.
Some closing thoughts about Sicily.
The island is not that large, about the size of the state of Maryland, and it is majestic and mountainous along with having some wonderful ruins and ancient sites. Being here in summer would be much different since this is not “beach weather” and we have seen some beautiful ones along the coast. Unfortunately the roads here were not designed for breathtaking views, unlike the Amalfi coast or the coast of Croatia, but it’s still gorgeous. I have great respect for the Italian architects, builders and workers who fit amazing structures on the sides of hills and at the very, very top of tall mountains. The effort and hard work must have been backbreaking.
The food here has not blown our minds, but we had a farmer’s market in town with great fresh fish, produce and fruit so we’ve eaten more at home than ever before. Palermo, the capital, is a city of chaos, but yet, it all works! Drivers, walkers, scooters move in and out of the city and seem to have a hive mindset since they work together so well.
In Syracuse we stayed at a lovely apartment across from the beach and hearing the ocean has been a blessing. We had a few challenges as we lost our wifi here for a few days and the house two doors down had a major internal collapse and caused construction outside to be intrusive. I’ll address that in another entry called “Rolling with it,” since sometimes, that’s all you can do!
