Sicily!

Me in Trapani, Sicily.

Sicily was a lot of fun. There were 8 of us (2 guys + 4 girls from Katie's arch class). We got up at 2:30am to meet at 3:00am for a 3:30am bus to Pisa. From Pisa we took a 30-45min flight to Trapani. We took a bus into town and then wandered around trying to find our hotel. It took a little while but we finally found it. We had two mini suites which was nice because we were able to cook for our self. It was so much cheaper that way too. I found out in general that the food was much cheaper here than in Florence. After finding some food for lunch/snacks/dinner we were off to find a nice beach to sleep on.

I've been to the Mediterranean area when I was 11 or 12 but I really don't remember seeing the ocean and how wonderful the colors were. This was amazing! It went from the clear light blue/green through all the colors in between and then switched to dark blue. It made me very very happy. The whole trip was well worth it just to see the water.

Katie and I on our way to the beach we stopped and slept at.

We ended up walking a lot further than we intended too but the beach wasn't very nice until much, much, further down the coast. We spent the afternoon lying on the beach mostly sleeping. At least half of our group fried themselves. I was, luckily, not one of them. We were all tired from little or no sleep from the night/morning so we laid down and pass out. We were able to cook our self a nice, cheap, pasta dinner before playing a fun game of charades.

Levonzo, Sicily the island we went to.

The next day we slept in and then went to find if we could take a day trip to one of the islands. The island people wanted to go to was too expensive and we wouldn't be able to get back... so we went to the closest island, Levonzo. Levonzo was amazing! It reminded me of Greece! White buildings with blue shudders. Right by the port we were looking in the water only to find some black floaty things... we found out that they were jelly fish! And there were thousands of them.

If you look half way across this picture in the water, close to shore, you will see a blackish area (you may need to click on the picture, it looks like a dot in the water) this is a huge clump of jelly fish!

The map we had said that there was a grotto that you could get to. After following the main road in the correct direction the path ended up getting smaller and smaller until finally we didn't have a path at all. The path started out being the a road that cars could drive on. We walked/hiked/climbed/scrambled for 3 + hours only to find out that the grotto wasn't a grotto (it was just a cave) and it was closed! Oh, and during part of this time, while we were scrambling over very pointy rocks, we had to stay as close to the sea as possible because we were walking right through where seagulls laid their eggs and if we got too close they would come swooping in on us! We finally found an establish trail and had to walk all the way to the top of the mountain to use a road to get back to town/port. We didn't think this through every well when we left and none of us had a lot of water. Luckily, we reached an area on our walk down the mountain that had a few houses and asked in broken Italian (the others did – I can only say thank you and excuse me), a man, if we could fill up our water bottles. The man took us into his home and he and his wife filled our water bottled. We were very happy to have something to drink! We said thank you very very much and walked back to town. I think we all decided that we had a great time, we were very tired, happy to get water when we did, and even happier to not have to goback the way we came.

This was our map. We went from the bottom port (where the houses are) to the left following the road and then following the coast and then the road again and back to the town on the road down the middle of the island. We then walked to the beach to the right of the town.

We spent the rest of the time by the water where a "beach" was suppose to be. The beach looked more like a boat launch to me and I still think that we didn't really find it. A few people went swimming. I decided that with the wind it was way too cold to jump in the water. At 8pm we took the ferry back to Trapani where we made dinner and went to bed. It was a very successful day and well worth it to go to the island.

Here I am before we climbed down to the white rocks. We walked all the way to the end of the coast you can see in this picture and then some!

This morning we got up at 5:15am to catch our 8:25am flight back to Pisa. From Pisa we took the train into Florence. Katie and I went and found my hostel . A week before I came Katie's roommates said that having an extra person in the apartment would be too much.

Now we are in the architecture studio. I am having fun playing on my computer while Katie is working hard on hers to finish up her project.

Our travel plans has changed quite and bit and we now have something a little more manageable in terms of money and time. On Saturday we will leave for Venice, then onto: Monaco/Nice, Paris, Munich, Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Berlin, and then visiting a friend in Kent, England before I go home and Katie will visit with family.

Watching Katie work on her project is fun and confirms that I have no desire to be an architect.