Recreating Sicily

We returned last week from exploring Sicily. Greg's still working on photo editing, but here are some impressions:

• Driving: we rented a VW Golf and drove over the whole island on 1.5 tanks of gas. Greg was our brave driver. Sicily is really that small (and the fuel consumption on the car was that good). In the area south of Catania, drivers were really aggressive--passing buses and trucks while in the opposing lane, and then flashing our car even though they were in the wrong lane.
• Parking: in many towns we visited, parking was a free-for-all as no tickets are really given. If you can park at least two wheels on the sidewalk, your car has a good spot.
• Food: was incredible. Lots of fresh fish, salad, stone oven pizza, and pasta. My favorites were Sicilian breakfasts in Marsala and Siracusa, where the fruit and pastries were abundant. There's one Italian pastry I'm trying to recreate, a sort of lemon tart with almonds and powdered sugar--divine! One of my favorite meals was in Siracusa--we ate on the main square watched the kids play in front of the church while their parents chatted. Another was on the beach at Taormina--we shared a lasagna, salad and homemade tiramisu at this beachfront restaurant.
  
• Favorites:
  

1. Seeing lots of lemon trees, vineyards and olives being harvested (for olives, the locals put a tarp on the ground and then shake the tree).
   
2. Taormina's amphitheater with a killer view of Mt. Etna and the great beach that we swam on.
3. Piazza Armerina's mosaics from a 300 A.D. villa.
   
4. Agrigento's Grecian temples. These look like small versions of the Parthenon in Athens.
   
5. Erice's views from the castle (after a thrilling, nearly-vertical drive up the mountain).
   
6. In Cefalu, we hiked "La Rocca" the mountain on top of the town and then looked down to see the sea and the tiny town below. We loved that the town had its own access--via streets with porticos--to the beach.
   
7. In Marsala, our hotel room had a balcony that overlooked the main cathedral square and the sea-really special! We saw the same picture that we had taken from our balcony on the cover of their advertising magazine.