Our extended stay in Illinois wasn’t all we might have hoped for, after all, it included a hospital stay for Jonathan (only overnight). After all the waiting for tests, the surgery itself went smoothly and he was home and sore the next day. Now, a week later, he is largely back to normal.
We were able to take advantage of the last week of our stay to see the Illuminations at Morton Arboretum, an event where sections of trees at the arboretum are lit with lights that change color, move, even flash to the beat of music.
Some of the intense colors were beautiful, and my favorite area was where selections from The Nutcracker Suite played while lights flashed in time to the music across the trees. The night was cold but not frigid and though many people said it would be prettier with snow, I was happy without it.
This was our last winter event. We took off early Monday morning for Lima and arrived ahead of schedule (!), at 9:25 pm. We stayed overnight at the Hotel Senorial, where we’ve been staying on our trips to Lima for the past 20 years. After some shopping and the annual handicrafts fair, Ruraq Maki, at the National Museum, we headed for Barranca. We watched the sunset on the longest night of the year. It wasn’t much of a sunset, but the furthest south that the sun will set for us.
A great pleasure of being retired is having the time to dabble. I am a great putterer and after beachcombing extensively in Italy, I wanted to make something of my finds. I took the plunge and bought a Dremel. For the uninitiated, this is a tool that can be used like a drill, a polisher, a small grindstone, and mini electric sander. Once I discovered how to use the diamond drill ends by watching Youtube, I made a bracelet. The stones in this bracelet are from the beaches of Sicily, especially Heraclea Minoa, where there were lots and lots of flat, oval pebbles.
The bracelet was such a success that I decided to make a necklace. I used what I had on hand to connect the stones. These were labeled head pins and had a small decorative end on a straight wire. I bent them to fit and coiled the ends.Beach glass was next, and I selected pieces that were generally triangular, though there are several irregular pieces. Once I drilled them all, I strung them on beading wire with tiny crimp bead as spacers.I used these because that’s what I had with me. (Notice the clasp consists of a hook and a fishing swivel.)
I’m going to continue collecting beach glass so that I can make more. I know that you can make “beach glass” in a rock tumbler, but I am happy to wait until I find the real thing.
The weather moderated for Thanksgiving. It was mild and pleasant, and we shared our feast with our friend Peggy and with Lyra, visiting from New York. You won’t see Lyra in any of the photos because she was sick on Thanksgiving Day, and we let her sit out the pictures.
I am thankful for my wonderful family and friends.
We are held captive by the winds of fate, and have settled for the month of November in Wheaton, IL, our former home. When we arrived here (11/3 and 11/8 respectively), we planned to stay for a week, visit doctors, stock up on odds and ends not readily available in Peru and leave for points south. We began our stay at the home of our friend Peggy. She has the best yard anywhere.
Even in November when her army of tiny Japanese maples have lost their brilliant red leaves, there is lots to see. A few brussels sprouts and some hardy kale hang on despite the bouts of cold weather that have already passed. Arches and walkways lead to hidden nooks. The sun lights the plants and makes the leaves translucent. It is a pleasure to visit and walk through. Somehow I relax just being there.
Peggy’s garden gives me a respite from worrying about test results, delayed flights, travel insurance, waivers of change fees, plans already made that have to be changed. There’s also our lack of winter clothing beyond coats. My fingers are crossed that it doesn’t snow too soon. I remember the year we remodeled our kitchen, tearing everything out the day after Thanksgiving and piling all the debris at the side of the driveway in anticipation of the arrival of a dumpster. Two feet of snow fell the next day and it took us until February to get it cleaned up. This year the days after Thanksgiving are mild and sunny, but I know it will change soon enough.
After ten days with Peggy we rented an apartment for the rest of the month, and another for the first two weeks of December. Are we moving back to the US? That’s not our plan, but we are waiting to get Jonathan a clear bill of health. Here’s our latest home base:
We are on the second floor, right side. The photo on the right is the view from our front door. I’ll add a few pictures of the interior the next time it is presentable.
The days are growing shorter and shorter just when we hoped to be switching hemispheres where the days are growing longer. The last time I noticed how low the sun was on the horizon, it was in Norway above the Arctic Circle in June 2016, and the sun dipped low over the horizon but never set. This is the opposite. The sun is low over the horizon until 11 and after 2pm. We have been traveling for three years and I seem to have forgotten about the short days of late fall. By 3:30 pm the afternoon is on its way out, and the sun has set by 4:30. Still, we’ve had a couple of lovely sunsets on these late afternoons.
Here we are, making the best of a new place. There are lots of places to take a walk. The neighborhood streets yield surprises. There is a path that connects two neighborhoods where the road does not. In a corner of the cul-de-sac on one side, beside the walking path to the next street, someone has decorated their back yard with chandeliers. The glass drops are tiny wind chimes when the wind blows, prisms sparkling when the sun is out, quirky and charming.At first glance, you may not notice the decorations in the trees. Perhaps the sound makes you look again and you see all the chandeliers.
It’s another place that can cheer you up just by being there. Who knows what else we may find as we continue to explore.
Wall Street with the spire of Trinity Church in the background.
I thought I knew about Manhattan, having visited quite a bit while growing up and having lived in couple of neighborhoods. I’ve ridden on the Staten Island Ferry and been to the Statue of Liberty. Both require you to go to the toe of Manhattan. What I skipped over until this trip was the neighborhood just inland from the Battery that includes Wall Street. Now that Lyra lives there, we stopped in for a visit and it is a very enjoyable part of the city.
We stayed at the Wall Street Inn (on S. William St.), a very comfortable small hotel with an excellent breakfast included. It’s also near subway stops, but its greatest asset is being located right around the corner from our daughter’s apartment, by Delmonico’s. (We did not eat there on this trip.) We did take in the sights nearby and there are many. We stopped in front of Federal Hall on Wall St. where George Washington was inaugurated as the first president of the US.
We saw historic Trinity Church and its churchyard.
Lady Liberty at the Museum of the American Indian
The former US Customs House, just down the street from Federal Hall, overlooks Bowling Green. Today it is a branch of the National Museum of the American Indian and holds the collections that were formerly the Heye Foundation. It was difficult to visit before moving to the Customs House, because the building was largely storage and had limited display of collections. The museum was located way off the beaten path on 155th St. and Broadway. Now the museum is at the Bowling Green subway stop and the new exhibits show the rich collection of materials from North, Central and South America. I particularly enjoyed seeing the pottery from Costa Rica and Panama that reminded me of the time I spent in Costa Rica while working on my dissertation and how much I admired archaeologist Olga Linares for her book on the imagery on Panamanian pottery, “Ecology and the Arts in Ancient Panama.”
A scary plate from Panama.
“The Thinker” as a rabbit, from Costa Rica
There is also the Wall Street Bull, though it was ass deep in tourists. The “Fearless Girl” statue facing the bull was put in place in March 2017 and was still there.
Just two blocks beyond is the shore, lined with a walkway that is used by strollers and joggers alike. Once you get beyond the area where visitors to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island congregate, it is a relatively peaceful and uncrowded part of the city. The view out over the water to Liberty herself and Ellis Island are sublime. It’s a great neighborhood.
It is impossible to generalize about Italy. Every region has its own customs, traditions, holidays, food, music, language. We’ve enjoyed our time in Italy this year, seeing many places that figure in the history and archaeology. The spectacular art in many museums has been wonderful to see.There is a cost to visiting Italy. All of its delights are not waiting for you with open arms. I will touch on three areas that have me puzzled, frustrated, angry, or laughing, depending on when I last sat down in a cafe.
The Third World?
Having spent a lot of the past 20 years in Peru, I think I know what the Third World looks like. Why does Italy look a lot like that? They may have some of the world’s oldest universities, and great art, but they have a puzzling ethic that boils down to “If it’s convenient for me, I’ll do it.” That explains parking as an afterthought, double and triple parking, trash on the beach, in the street and burning in the back yard, corruption, rudeness, smoking and a lot of other unattractive habits. Are other people perfect? No, no and no. Do people in Italy that I meet in the store or on the road sometimes drive me crazy with their “Why not? attitude. Yes.
The Environment
Italy is gorgeous. Tuscany has zoning laws to prevent its lovely hill towns from developing urban sprawl. It is clever to put warehouses and highways out of sight in the valleys. People in Italy love going to the beach, they love boating. They appreciate nature and good design.
At the same time, they appear unable to corral their trash. On the beach, people just ignore the empty bottles around them, dropping papers and bottle caps as they go. The result is that even beaches that don’t have many visitors have rafts of empty water bottles, jerry cans, styrofoam, plastic cups, silverware, and plates. There are glass bottles, too, but mostly plastic, every kind of container you can imagine. It seems that people become hardened to what is all around them. We did some great beach combing, collecting beautiful bits of polished beach glass, on beaches that were really unsightly, yet they had plenty of visitors.
Recycling seems like part of the answer, but it is underdeveloped. There are collection points, but there is confusion and people ignore the labels on bins, and mess ensues. Worst is yard waste. It’s not recycled/composted, even in agricultural areas. People burn trash and yard waste in the open, creating smog that covers Sicily. At any time of day, you can usually see two or three fires on the horizon. Smog over Palermo is noticeable, not to mention Naples and every other city. Wouldn’t composting all those clippings from grapes, olives and citrus trees be a goal that could be achieved?
Driving In Italy
This should be easy. They drive on the same side as in the US, the major car companies are there, no problem, right?
Wrong.
Before you decide to drive in Italy for more than a single outing, consider a few things. How much driving will you actually be doing? You may spoil your trip if you do a lot of driving in cities where you need to find parking as well as finding your way. The countryside may not be a lot more forgiving, as roads can be narrow, in poor repair, lacking signs, steep and full of curves. How many hours a day of this can you survive with your good spirits intact?
What about those famous Italian autostradas? They have multiple lanes and high speed limits. Not so. Apparently there are so many groups competing for the income from traffic tickets issued by cameras that they are planted all over the place. Speed limits go up and down constantly and in general there is no way to tell what the speed limit really might be. If you actually followed the posted speed limit over most of Italy, you would drive at 50 kilometers (30 miles per hour) 80% of the time.. Literally NO ONE drives the posted speed limit (except farm tractors). Even the agent at the car rental said “Oh, I have sooo many tickets!” What? It turns out that if you drive in Italy you will have tickets. You won’t know when because they come in the mail about three months after the supposed infraction. They can only be challenged if you are in Italy and I have no idea how Italians cope with the situation. As I noted in a previous post (Life in Campania), most Italians drive at least carelessly if not dangerously. That’s how its done. If you do drive, expect to have at least one accident and it matters not who was to blame.
We should never have let him get away.
My recommendation is: Don’t drive if you can possibly avoid it. Stay in one place, enjoy what’s around you and go on excursions driven by others. That rules out some activities like our trip to a bird sanctuary yesterday where we saw a red tailed kite, coots and huge gray herons. I would miss that, but not the driving. You have to be ready for the inevitable accident, too. We had a blowout on the way to the beach and when I called the roadside service the woman said we were not authorized to drive on small roads (that would include the exit ramp from the airport and our driveway…). We were told to drive to a numbered road, call back, and “Don’t say you were on a small road.” A passer-by helped us get to a gas station on a nearby numbered road. Hertz eventually sent someone to tow the car but left us stranded. We had to get to an airport 90 minutes drive away on our own on Saturday afternoon in rural Italy at a cost of 220 Euros (20 Euros less if we did not want a receipt, so the driver did not have to declare the ride on his taxes.)
That was before the fish delivery truck drove into the back of our car. The guy tried to get away and when we stopped him, he said “It was the guy behind me!” (There was no one behind him.)
Basta! Enough about driving! Don’t get me started on parking!
Other things about Italy
We used the train in Salerno, tram in Florence, vaporetto in Venice and subway and buses in Rome. They worked, except when there were strikes (only in Rome and only on two days).
Phone service is good except where geography gets in the way. Naturally service was poor where we had our flat tire, but in general our cell phones with Italian SIM cards (Vodafone) worked well and were not expensive.
Food is good and inexpensive to expensive depending on your location. We ate as many cannoli as possible in Sicily. Fresh ricotta in the south and fresh mozzarella in the Naples area were really delicious. We had great inexpensive wine, and tried a lot of wine made from grapes we had not run into before, like grillo, and inzolia (white), and nero d’avola and nero mascalese (red). It was fun to experiment.
The weather cooperated. I went swimming until the very end of October. The expected two days of rain per week in Sicily in October only materialized the first week. After that we had sun and wind. It was glorious.
Italian people are hospitable and warm if you know them or have been introduced or have some kind of connection. If you are going to Italy, see if you can get an introduction to your friend’s cousin or your neighbor’s uncle in Italy. Friends of professional colleagues might be enjoyable to meet. We had great conversations with our various landlords of our Airbnb rentals, with archaeologists working at sites we visited, even the eye doctors I had to see. A personal connection paves the way for really enjoyable interactions. However, without some kind of connection you may have trouble meeting people who are friendly. It seemed to me that friendliness is viewed as a limited good in Italy, not to be wasted on random, unknown tourists. (Perhaps because there are so many of us.) BUT, a friend of a friend is still a friend and deserves a welcome. Once you’re on their radar, you will see the hospitality that Italy is known for. I hope you have as good a visit as we have had.
The official name of the airport is Fiumicino – Aeroporto Internazionale Leonardo da Vinci though most people call it the Fiumicino or Rome airport. It’s 21 miles from the center of Rome, about a €40 cab ride. There are also train and bus links to the city. We were connecting from Palermo so we stayed overnight at the Hilton Garden Inn at Fiumicino whose redeeming quality is being the only hotel on the airport staff shuttle. It’s a bit confusing until you understand that it is not a hotel shuttle, its he Staff Shuttle, but it works and runs frequently. The hotel also had surprisingly good food that night.
Our flight to New York didn’t leave until 11:25 am, so we planned to do some last minute souvenir shopping with the remainder of our euros. We wanted a book about Italy with lots of photos, among other things. That’s when we discovered that the airport is not really Rome. It’s not really even Italy. It’s “International Airport,” where the only things for sale are high end jewelry and clothing, duty free shops, and restaurants. Further, the shops are all the same whether you are in Rome, New York, or Lima, Peru. This shift has been coming for a few years but really hit me on this trip.
There is a fold-up paper map of the airport showing the location of stores but no signs that show “You are here,” bathrooms, or airport lounges. You’re intended to wander aimlessly and shop. We stopped at several information desks where we were given vague directions. We were told at one desk that there is no bookstore in the airport any more. We passed three shops selling books after that. We were given directions to the Alitalia preflight lounge by three different people and hunted all along the terminal, finding only one sign for the lounge–outside the door. There are a few convenience stores that sell overpriced souvenirs, so we were able to get a couple of things, but be sure to do your shopping before you get to the airport unless you want a new Swatch, a Montblanc pen, or Tumi luggage.
On the bright side, if you have a layover at Fiiumicino for two hours or more, there is a free shuttle from the airport to the entrance of the Ostia Antica archaeological park, just a few minutes away. We had a wonderful day trip to Ostia from Rome. It would be a good use of a few hours to visit from Fiumicino, closer to the site than Rome itself.
It’s often breezy at the beach. We got out of the car and crossed the fringe of dunes, arriving at the shore to see small waves crashing and the wind rushing east along the sand. Walking into the wind, we started our beach combing, finding smooth oval pebbles and beach glass.
Ow, ow, ow!It wasn’t sand flies or hot feet, but the sand stinging our ankles, whipped along by stronger wind than we had felt before. I only remember the bite of the first gusts, though the wind kept up so strongly I almost lost my footing a couple of times. The sun was as bright as ever, and the water felt warmer than usual. We could feel the seasons changing.
The light is more slanting as fall comes on. Morning and evening shadows are long and last longer every day, as though the sun is resisting Apollo’s horses dragging it upward. One evening I said, “You didn’t need to close the shutters so early”… then realized that they were open and it was already dark.The wind was still blowing in the change of seasons at Morgantina the next day. I had to give up on wearing my hat or it would have flown miles away. Morgantina is another of the mammoth ancient sites in Sicily that had a long and varied history before being sacked by the Romans in 221 BC. Though it continued to be occupied, the city never regained prominence. It’s been a couple thousand years since then and Morgantina is still sitting on its hilltop out of the mainstream.
Heating pipes of a Greek bath house
In the bath house
A large kiln
The wind blew away most of the visitors. We saw a busload of students from a distance and after they disappeared we saw only one or two other visitors at this vast site. (It is 30 minutes each way from the Palermo-Catania highway, and not close to either Catania or Palermo, a bit out of the way.)
The fall scenery is spectacular, silver-brown furrows in the recently plowed fields that curve and dip across the rounded landscape. Mt. Etna sits in the far distance, volcanic ash like snow on the upper slopes and clouds covering the peak. The wind blew clouds overhead, creating patches of light and dark that changed constantly, shifting a hill into sunlight then into shadow as we watched. It was a captivating landscape, half New Mexico’s stony ridges, half midwestern farmland, and definitely its own thing.
Sicily was the largest colony established by Greece. What that actually means sinks in about the third time you visit a vast, partially excavated archaeological site and find a temple, or several, that appear to be transplanted straight from the Acropolis in Athens.
AgrigentoSelinunteSegesta
The temples may the most impressive sights, but there are lots of other features. Like a big amphitheater at Segesta.
Amphitheater, Segesta
Huge roof supports shaped like gods (telamon):
The Greeks were supplanted by the Romans, and then Arabs, then Normans, then others. The Romans left paved main streets (Decumani), like this one in Lilybaeum (Marsala)and elaborate mosaic floors at Villa Romana de Casala (Piazza Armerina), see the previous post for these.
Off topic but interesting: This recent article tells about a New York City resident and art dealer who had a section of mosaic from a ship that belonged to Caligula (Roman emperor 37-41 AD), It was finally repatriated to Italy this week after spending about 40 years as a coffee table.
As if all this were not enough, we’re off to Morgantina, another great pre-Roman site in Sicily, followed by Syracuse (the one in Sicily). I’ll add more from those stops. However, I can say without a doubt that the Greeks were everywhere in Sicily, and in many ways they are still here.
We didn’t know much about Piazza Armerina until we looked for archaeological sites to visit within driving distance of us in Sicily. The guidebook indicated interesting mosaics at the Villa Romana de Casale near the town of Piazza Armerina. The mosaic floors of this villa, owner unknown but possibly the Emperor Maximian (250-310 AD), are wonderfully detailed. We’ve never seen anything like them in all our Italian travels. Why isn’t this site better known? OK, there were ten tour buses parked at the site when we left at 3:30 pm. But seriously, I had heard very little about this particular site and the mosaics are unparalleled.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Hunting is a major theme, especially in the Great Corridor where a scene over 200 ft long shows the capture of exotic African animals that were shipped to Rome. There is detail in the shapes and colors of the animals, the individuals capturing the animals, and their transport (the elephant is wrapped in a net). Within the long scene are vignettes that accompany the tale. A slave is whipped, a tiger’s cub is stolen while she is distracted by a reflection. It is remarkable.
One of the most interesting rooms in the Villa Romana shows women competing in sports and being awarded prizes (crown, olive branch) for running and other games. I have not seen another depiction of woman in a palestra (gymnasium) or competition. Nicknamed “the bikini room”, this is popular even though the Blue Guide notes it is of “inferior artistic quality compared with the others.” I think it’s great.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Other mosaics include various ways of hunting (nets, clubs), cherubs fishing, boats, children riding animal-drawn carts, children being chased by the animals they were pursuing, and the legend of Anios, who won a music contest in Sicily, was robbed by sailors on his trip home and thrown overboard only to be saved by a dolphin. Areas that were closed during our visit show people getting a massage in the bath complex, and the twelve labors of Hercules in a large atrium.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Here are a few details. There are over 4,000 sq meters of mosaic floors in the Villa Romana. Some mosaics are so fine that they average 36,000 tesserae (pieces) per sq meter. The mosaics at the Villa Romana are considered to be Romano-African in style, and some may have been made in sections in north Africa (Libya, where there were large Roman colonies, for example) and shipped by boat to Sicily. The putative owner of the villa, Maximian, was known as a soldier and hunter rather than a statesman, interests that the mosaics support.
Another piece of evidence that is used to associate the structure with an emperor is the decoration of the room called “The Circus”. It depicts horse races around a track from the perspective of the emperor’s box at the end of the arena, where nobles look on from the sides.
After all the waiting for tests, the surgery itself went smoothly and he was home and sore the next day. Now, a week later, he is largely back to normal.
We were able to take advantage of the last week of our stay to see the Illuminations at Morton Arboretum, an event where sections of trees at the arboretum are lit with lights that change color, move, even flash to the beat of music.
Llywindatravels 2025 