Sicily 2021 #9 - Trial Day And The Villa Romana

 #3 and 3A went to Sicily over a decade ago for their honeymoon. Their happy memories of that trip along with our desire to be in as southern a part of Europe as possible and in a country with as good a current Covid case rate as possible led to our decision to come to Sicily. One of the major attractions they did not get to see during that trip was the Villa Romana because it was closed for renovations. The Villa Romana is one of the best preserved and most extensive examples of Ancient Roman mosaic art in existence. As it is now open, it was on #3's 'must see list' even though it is a good two hours drive from where we are staying. 

In order to understand the day, I should give you some background on our experience at this first rental property of the trip. We chose it not so much because it was the one we liked best, but because it was one of the few that had an acceptable cancellation policy given the uncertainties of the Covid environment (most we looked at had cancellation for only a day after you made the reservation! Really!). It has turned out to be one of the worst vacation rentals we have experienced ranking right up there with the Annapolis rental for our family reunion. Among the issues we've had are:

• No hot water
• Insufficient hot water once on...virtually no one had a hot shower during the week
• Electrical power outages (two)
• Water outage (one)
• A front door lock that was so finicky that we had a key stuck in and had to leave the the door unlocked one day we left.
• An internet router that crashed virtually every day and often didn't work at all (we finally forced them to replace it!)

So with that as the backdrop, off we went...and immediately ran into heavy rain on the route. Not a good omen. We reached our destination, a restaurant very close to the entrance to the site with only a minimum of GPS error rerouting. We had a fairly good meal (pasta was good, the mains just okay). But while we were in the restaurant the skies opened up and the rain poured down. Everyone in the restaurant (it was packed) was looking out with the same look on their face...'How the heck are we going to get to our car and not get soaked?' Our thoughts exactly. 

Now it should be mentioned that Wife and I are a bit rusty not having traveled for a while and the thought that maybe, just maybe we should count on periods of rain for the almost five weeks we are going to be gone, didn't quite enter into our thinking. But the #3's live in always raining Amsterdam, and they didn't have even an umbrella with them (Wife and I did - Ha!). Well we all just made a dash for the cars once the rain let up a bit and headed up to the Villa. Not far on the road, there is the great wash of water coming down the hill, covering the road to a quite a depth and in the middle of it is a stalled car. What the heck are we supposed to do? It is right in the middle of the road and not enough room on either side (forgetting the water depth) to get around it. The car in the water some how gets started again and manages to drive through the water downhill. We note that the outside area is less deep and angle our vehicles there and make it through. Much stress, but we are through.

We get to the parking lot and it is a LONG walk, in the rain, to get to the site. And then a LONG walk, in the rain, to get to the site itself. Then once we are in the site, we have to wear our masks because of the Covid protocols. This is a problem for me because it causes my glasses to fog up. I mean Really Fog Up as in condensed water dripping down the inside. For most of the visit, I am barely seeing things and constantly trying to clean off the glasses. I will say that compared to the Antiquities Park in Siracusa, the signage and explanations here were first class.

 Once we are done, it is back to the cars. The rain has let up a little. We head back. Our tribulations are over. But NO! The road down the mountain is blocked off by the police. It is closed because of some weather related damage. The 'detour' is the police waving in a direction speaking in Italian (you would not BELIEVE the number of people who basically only speak Italian in Italy!). We just follow the guy in front of us who seems to need to go in the same direction. We go up, up, up this narrow winding road that is just wide enough for two cars if one goes off on the very narrow shoulder for a bit. The road isn't showing up on our GPS. But at least there are cars coming the other direction so we feel we are on the right route. At last we make it to the main road. The rest of the drive is uneventful.

We get back to our rental house thankfully...and find our key won't go in the door and we are locked out! The #3's arrive. Thank goodness. Now we will get in. But No. Their key doesn't work either. We need to call the house people and their handy person comes (yet again) to get us in the house. To add insult to injury, when I wake up in the morning there is NO RUNNING WATER. THERE IS NO POWER. I am freaking out but it was just a circuit breaker that flipped.

Despite all that, the mosaics were really great. I wish we could have come during a time when the light had been better and the circumstances such that we could have really focused on them rather than our discomfort. Some background. The Villa is HUGE. I was thinking, this is really gigantic for even a wealthy person's home. But it was the villa of an Emperor during the 3rd Century AD which explains why it was so grandiose. The mosaics as you will see below were really impressive. But long time readers know that de-I is quite the amateur aficionado of mosaics. So I encourage you the observe the difference between the sophistication of the art during the height of the classic Roman Empire and how the art had developed 300 to 400 years later during the beginning of the Byzantine era by going to this post I did in 2017 at Ravenna Italy and pay particular note to the change in sophistication of use of color, facial expressions, emotion via the portrayal of eyes.

First I want you to get an idea of the size and scale of the entire villa

And now looking at the works in more detail

One of the things I noted as I reviewed my pictures was how some of the sections had much more sophisticated detail than others. I suspect in a project of this magnitude, the 'masters' did certain areas while the 'lesser talented' apprentices did much of the rest.