When Bill and I were in Sicily over the holidays, we saw a lot of wonderful things that we don't do here in the States. One was an incredible million course meal every night of the 12 days of Christmas. Yowza. How did I lose 20 pounds there? And some interesting travel snafus as well.
For example, we decided to spend New Year's Eve in Siracusa with our friend Bruno. We had a wonderful time, then hopped on the hydrofoil to Malta and spent a few days there. When we returned to Sicily, we went to the train station, expecting to be able to hop a train or even a bus back to Palermo. No way. The date was January 6. Ring a bell?
I was pretty puzzled. Why would all transportation stop because of my oldest sister's birthday? Which brings me back to the first paragraph - they really celebrate the 12 days of Christmas in Sicily and Epiphany is January 6. As a defunct Methodist, that was news to me. So to make a long story endless, we ended up calling a friend who took us to an obscure corner we never would have found to catch the bus to Palermo as no trains ran that day. Not only were we grateful for his kindness, it turned out that we had to switch buses in Modica, but that bus would have left 10 minutes before we got there. Our bus driver called Modica, talked to that bus driver, who said absolutely he would not wait as his buses were always on time (wait, this is Italy - who is he kidding?!). But he got a surly "okay" and when our bus pulled into Modica, there was a busful of people for Palermo patiently waiting for us. Bill flew off to buy tickets and I tried to thank the entire busload in my lame Italian - they were so gracious and laughed and clapped.
I love the Sicilians.
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