Planes, Trains and Orthotics: A Middle-Age Woman's Guide to Travel

  I love Rome.   You can come here 1000 times and see something new every time, particularly since there are more than 900 churches, 1000 fountains and much to my chagrin, about a million gelaterias.   When we drove into the city however, I thought of two things: I didn’t bring any scarves.  In Sicily, I really didn’t feel too badly looking like I did…middle-aged.  While the Sicilians are known for their food, they will never be considered slaves to fashion.  Even with my various shades of grey and green Eddie Bauer attire, I more or less didn’t look any worst than the average Sicilian woman.  Not here in Rome.  Every Roman woman, and frankly, most of the Roman men, know how to put together an outfit.  With a simple jacket, a sweater intricately wrapped around one or both shoulders, and yes, a scarf, all look fabulous.  Even the older women wear sensible but beautiful shoes, tasteful ensembles and seem to have the ability to work a sc...

  Understandably, international airline travel, post 9/11, has not been for the faint of heart. Adding recent COVID restrictions into the mix has been nothing short of exhausting.   I am a worrier ny nature, and my anxieties—often without reason—are reflected in the type of airline traveler I have become. For example, I like to check every three to four minutes as to whether my passport is still in the location I stored it.  I know in my mind that it can’t jump out of my purse and walk away….but you never know.  Now add the COVID factor.  First, there is the testing.  Right now, regardless of whether or not you are vaccinated, a traveler must have had a negative COVID test 72 hours before an international flight. I had had a false positive COVID test prior to leaving for Sicily, and for the last few days I have been very anxious about taking the test to return to the United States. What if it’s positive?  I have a lunch-time presentation and a dinn...

  We are having a wonderful time in Sicily.   The people on our Backroads trip and our two guides couldn’t be better. We have seen all types of beauty this land has to offer, from the sea, to forests and even “Mama Etna,” the beloved nickname of the island’s main volcano! But the mountains, are killing me.   I don’t know if it’s because I’m two years older than our last hiking trip or we didn’t pay attention to the difficulty of the daily climbs, but I’ve spent a lot of the last four days sucking wind.   It could be the language difference. When our guide says “gentle incline,” I’m thinking it’s like walking up a small ramp into a store. To date, this has not been the case. I have now learned that “gentle incline,” at least in Sicily, means that I will be walking up a steep hill with my head down for an extended period of time…and most of that time, breathing in a way that sounds like it could be part of an obscene phone call.  Plus, there are a lot of rocks...

  For the last two days, I have been thinking two things: I have to stop eating and I have to buy a pasta machine as soon as I get home. There is so much history and culture on this island, but when I think back on our time in Sicily, I think it will be be about the sure magic of the food.   I am no slouch when it comes to Italian cuisine. My Italian grandmothers and my mother were wonderful cooks and since having my own family, I have tried to continue those traditions in my own kitchen. We have also visited Italy’s mainland many times and frankly, never had a bad meal.  But in Sicily, food preparation and its  consumption seem to be part of every native’s DNA.   We have been on the island for five days, and I still can’t stop thinking about my first dinner here, “Pasta Fresca con Sarde.  The simple sauce ladled on fresh pasta included sardines (cooked down so you couldn’t see them), fennel, including the leaves, garlic, onion, pine nuts, parsley, brea...

I  am exhausted.   We started Day 1 of our hiking trip by driving east along the Tyrrhenian Sea to a small coastal town called Cefalu, which is known for its beauty and a very big rock a.k.a. “La Rocca,” located within its borders. There are seven other Americans with us, along with our Backroads guides Giovanni  (no relations to yesterday’s driver) and Ania.  While the town is absolutely gorgeous, our first hike could not be described as a “warm-up.” Besides the town’s beauty, we apparently came for the big rock.  The hike descriptions we receive each day always look good on paper. Today, we had three hiking options, with the longest being about eight miles which promised at the end, beautiful views of the town and the sea. Since we had walked 11 miles on our first day in Palermo, we thought, “How hard could it be?”  We clearly didn’t look close enough at the height of that rock because too big a chunk of that eight miles was uphill with too many small...

  Today we travelled south to the Mediterranean town of Agrigento, the home of the Greek ruins,   known as the “The Valley of the Temples” and the famous Turkish Steps, a white step-like stone formation that looks like it ends in the sea.   The 2 1/2 hour ride each way was well worth it because our driver, Giovanni, from Viator was probably the best guide we ever had…and he never left the car!   During our drive together, I learned so much about Sicily, including the difference between the polizia and the carabinieri, why it is better to stump olive trees rather than let them grow tall, how to cure black olives (green olives are apparently more complicated and we probably would have needed a longer ride to learn how) that the town Frank Sinatra’s parents were from has an annual “My Way” Festival (pre-COVID, of course), that the film, “The Godfather” was not filmed in Corleone, because it is not a very pretty town and that apparently for two generations, my family and...

  After a very long journey, we arrived safely in beautiful Palermo-but it wasn’t without its glitches.   After an eight hour flight to Rome and a five hour layover in its airport, needless to say, we were exhausted upon our arrival in Sicily.   The Palermo Airport is about 40 minutes from center-city and we needed to decide how best to get to our hotel. We saw a sign for an airport bus that would get us to the city in only 30 minutes, for six euros each. We saw a similar sign for a taxi, which would have cost 38 euros.   We decided it was worth getting a bit more information about the bus.   Due to our exhaustion however, we didn’t realize that our goals for this commercial transaction were different than that of the young girl selling us the tickets.  She, who probably had a good night’s sleep, did understand our differences and played us like two fiddles.  With only three hours sleep, two of which comprised of me sleeping on my tray table on the p...

  It’s been a long time.   After 19 months, we are finally embarking on another traveling adventure. It does feel great to start another journey, even when it begins being packed like sardines in Coach.  Clearly, even a pandemic can’t change this situation for that long.  We are headed to Sicily to see a few million things on our itinerary and then hike to see a few million more. We have never been to this southern Italian island and have been looking forward to all of its history, its Greek ruins, its food and of course, the cannoli, where it all began... at least as per Stanley Tucci. My training to hike for five days was a bit altered this time around. It wasn’t that I took advantage of long walks in the great outdoors or regularly (if ever) used our pandemic purchased Peloton to make sure my body was fit enough to take on the terrain of Sicily. I couldn’t do any of those things because I was too busy going to physical therapy.  My first injury embarr...