and the adventure continues...

Onward and upward !  After a wonderful time with Mike and Chelsea, we flew off into the wild blue yonder on American Airlines...a nice trip...even the food was pretty good (or else we were pretty hungry...).  We had some lovely wine with our meal, then told the flight attendant that it was our anniversary...she promptly went to First Class and brought back two glasses of champagne for us to toast each other...we're going to milk this anniversary thing ...again and again...for all it's worth !

We arrived in Milan at 8am local time (about 2am US time), and checked into the Sheraton at the airport...what a good idea !  The room was beautiful...we napped, showered, and relaxed for 5 hours (all for $38...what a deal !).  Then we caught the flight on EasyJet to Palermo and arrived about 7pm or so...picked up the rental car and drove to our first stop...a beautiful villa in Balestrate.  The caretaker, Rosanna, was there to greet us...she speaks NO ENGLISH ...so it was quite an adventure trying to understand how to turn the lights on, maintain the heat, run the washer, etc.  Needless-to-say that the minute we said we didn't speak Italian - in Italian - she began to rattle off everything about the villa in rapid Italian !  We told her we could understand if she spoke slowly, so we got about 2 sentences in "slow", and she was off and running again.  We obviously won't be fooling around with the heat or the washer !  She asked if we had eaten dinner yet, and when we replied "no", she herded us into her car and drove like a maniac through town showing us all the sights and dropping us in front of a restaurant...luckily it was close to the house, or we'd still be roaming about in our jet-lagged stupor !

Talk about a wonderful meal...we were, of course, the first customers (at about 8pm), and the owner met us and settled us at a table...he introduced himself as Stephano, but by the end of the evening, he was "Stefi" to us.  He shared a glass of wine with us. and we soon found that he speaks NO ENGLISH....hmmmmm.....somehow, it didn't matter.  Before the meal was over, we had met his Granddaughter, Clara ( 6 weeks old...), and learned about the rest of his family.   After dinner, he brought us two glasses of limoncello - on the house, of course - and asked if we wanted more, but we were exhausted.  He gave us his personal phone number and said to call him any time while we were in Balestrate over the next few days.  I think he kissed Joe more than he kissed me, but Stefi said that it's always that way...a sign of affection between men....It was certainly an evening to remember !

We got up this morning feeling a bit fuzzy around the edges, but went out for a walk around town and to shop for the essentials...unfortunately, all the store had was Diet Coke, but I'll make do.  We visited the bakery, the fruit and vegetable stalls, the fishmongers...everyone was amazingly friendly.  As we stood at an ATM, I felt someone touch my bag of Diet Coke - oh no, you don't !  Lo and behold, it was Stefi !!  He hugged and kissed us both and invited us for "un caffe" at the local bar...there was no refusing that offer...he laughed when I ordered diet coke instead of coffee - I wonder why ?

Chris and Stefi's new paisano