I
n the spirit of full disclosure, for anyone who might get the impression that all of our travels go off without a hitch like a well-oiled Swiss clock....this particular trip had more than its fair share of hiccups at the start (hopefully only at the start but only time - clock analogy pun unintended - will tell).
That first day getting to Monreale outside of Palermo....our trusty research and our local B&B host both assured us (that means me) that it was easy peasy to catch the local bus to the duomo. True to a point. But I didn’t check and no one mentioned that said bus only runs every 75 minutes. So, of course, we arrived five minutes after a departure. After an uneventful (boring) 70 minutes on a park bench we were finadlly off.
Thirty minutes later, arriving at the duomo, we thought we had better grab a quick drink, an arancini, and a bathroom before going in. Only to find that this particular duomo closes for lunch. Yes, the church closes for lunch. That was a new one. ....and of course it closed ten minutes before we walked across the piazza hoping to enter. So.....we “enjoyed” yet another rest on a park bench.
The next morning, we went down for breakfast and I asked the receptionist to call us a cab so we could check out and pick up our hertz rental car. I wrote down the information to avoid any confusion. Hertz @ Via Messina 7A. Nice neat block letters. I hear her give the information over the phone...sette A. The taxi comes. Off we go. Great. Still just enough time to pick the car up in our 29 minute reservation hold window....and there we were in the middle of god knows where at Via Messina 70...an abandoned warehouse. Talk about a panic. We finally worked it out and got to correct location and still got the car (in spite of an hour wait in line)...it was a miracle, for sure.
Finally, driving from Agrigento to Ragusa, google maps offered up the fastest route specifically noting that we were avoiding road closures. Thank you, google maps. Beautiful, modern highway. Whizzing along. Then exactly as predicted, we came upon the road closure (dotted red lines), and the detour....and off we went. Clearly the correct diversion. Plenty of signs and reflective temporary fencing, and other cars coming along with us....yup right up ahead we will merge back onto the highway....except....wham...pylons blocking the path. Turn around on little path.....rerouting, rerouting, no not that way....rerouting, rerouting, maybe this way....lost signal...rerouting....ah, finally, here we are.....
And sometimes little things can be good.....like:
Hundreds of thousand of wildflowers you see on that unexpected detour through the countryside
Or the bazillions bits required to create the mosaics at Monreale
Or the mosaics at Villa Romana del Casale in Piazza Armerina
(Michael picked that one)
Or all the cuts and pieces that it took to make the columns of a temple.
All the million little details (easy or difficult, positive and negative, planned and serendipitous) that go into making a memorable vacation.
