Sicily 2021 #29 - Reflections, The Great Navel Gazing Post

 Wonderful to Travel Again

It was totally fearful in the beginning because it had been so long since we had last done a big international trip (I don’t count the trips to Ghana because those are for work). After our last trip in 2019, we had been in the process of scaling back because of physical capability issues. Despite the initial awkwardness of this trip, we were reminded of just how much travel (at least the way we do it) contributes to our overall wellbeing and happiness

Why Travel Is So Important to Wife and I

A lot of people, particularly when they read these blog posts, ask, “Why are your putting yourselves out like this. It seems crazy. Why don’t you do tours or cruises so things are taken care of for you.

But the point of our style of travel is it puts us into an environment where we have to use all of our physical and mental resources. Our life at home doesn’t do that. You do the same things, the same way. You are on autopilot much of the time. When we travel every aspect of daily life (shopping, driving, eating, etc.) is stimulating us through the new experiences. That, in turn, exercises every aspect of us, our powers of observation, our attention to our surroundings, our physical reactions, our critical thinking, and more.

When we come back from one of these trips, I find myself more alert, more aware, more in control, than when I left.

On Covid Risk Assessment

Of course, today, everything, especially travel, is colored by the pandemic. Our philosophy is fairly simple. Live but don’t be stupid.

People are always asking me if I am afraid of getting Covid by doing this travel. To that I can only answer that I have come up with a personally acceptable means of evaluating risk. This involves looking at levels of infection, trend of infection rates, vaccination rates, and mandates on things like mask and vaccination requirements. Based upon that, I determine if I am comfortable making the trip.

Once there I try to be very aware and careful of environments I am in. For example, when we were doing our first day on Ortigia in Siracusa, there were groups off a cruise ship. Many were not wearing masks. And they were together walking, talking loudly. To me that is a major risk point. So I moved myself away and put on my mask even though we were outdoors.

The Experience of Readjusting to the Traveling Life

It was not an easy transition back into travel mode. The first two and half weeks were tough. It was like exercising muscles that had long been unused. We remembered all the issues we’d had with things like beds and chairs, how when they were not comfortable, it influenced the total enjoyment.

Yes Our Physical Capability Issues Are Real and Must Be Accounted for

Which leads to the acknowledgment that our lessons from 2019 were not false. We our physical limitations are increasing. This was, for me personally, most noticeable with the physical exertion associated with moving in and out. There were a couple of times when the combination of a long day of driving, plus many stairs for carrying our belongings in led to a feeling of real exhaustion.

We have learned that we must limit the number of hours we stay on our feet. And depending on how hard we stayed out and on our feet, we recognized the need for  days doing nothing. And we actually followed that!

Housing Experience Trajectory

The first three places sucked and the last three were great. Our whole feeling about the trip mirrored how we felt about where we were staying. There are two lessons from this. One needs to pay a lot more attention to the listings. Things that seem one way in a listing can be a very different when you arrive unless you are very careful when you read the original listing. My conclusion is we need to be prepared to spend the money necessary to get the kind of environment we need.

Yes We Are Jaded

It is tough to look in the mirror and realize you are an asshole. But damn it, we have seen so many examples of various things (churches, temples, theaters, Greek, Roman, Gothic, Baroque, etc.) that we have a critical eye. If something is not as good as what we’ve seen elsewhere we can’t fake liking it.

But damn, how bad is it to be saying, “Oh, this is nowhere near as good as the one we saw in Ephesus”

I am sure there is a special ring in Hell for me

But Damn It, I Still Love Byzantine Mosaics

Having said that can I admit that I am a like a kid in a candy store with an unlimited budget when it comes to seeing high quality Byzantine Mosaics? They still blow my mind. The Palantine Chapel was truly a high point of our trip because of that. My one regret was not getting to Monreale, which was the other great exemplar of the art.

The Disappointment of Sicilian Food

As you all know de-I prides himself as the great gastronome. And every trip to Italy up until this one had been on great gastronomic experience after another. So, it was a major disappoint here with the food being erratic throughout. We would have some good dishes at a restaurant but others would be blah. The service would be erratic. And it got to be somewhat very monotonous with the core flavors being repeated again and again no matter where we were on the island.

But Not the Wine!

I didn’t do much purchasing of wine by the bottle. Mostly it was a glass of the house wine at our lunch meetings. Honestly, I can’t think of a single one that wasn’t at a minimum decent and frequently really enjoyable. In particular, I enjoyed the whites (odd since I prefer red wine) which had great flavor and acidity, went well with the food, and had relatively low alcohol levels which made it easier for my driving.

Driving – Did I Really Get Turned On to the Insanity of Sicilian Driving?

This was one of the truly strange experiences of the trip. All through the last years of our travel pre-Covid, I was getting more and more tired and frustrated from driving. We were conjecturing that we would be limited to city living and visiting because the diminished capabilities. Yet practically from the time I navigated us out of the twisting isles of the rental car facility at Catania Airport, I was strangely sanguine about driving. I totally got into the ‘fluid dynamic’ aspects of driving in this area where there are few if any stop lights or signs. And the narrowness didn’t seem as terrifying. I mean don’t get me wrong, it was there, I understood tightness of things, but somehow I was just much more calm about dealing with them. Very strange.

Was Our Cefalú Apartment Experience the Harbinger of Our Future?

One of the major objectives of this trip was to try ‘living in a town’ as opposed to our more typical out-of-town location with a view. We wanted to see if we would enjoy an environment where it was easy to walk to places like shopping and eating. Cefalú and our apartment there met all those criteria.  Virtually any service we wanted was in our reach walking. Seriously, if Cefalú were not in Sicily, we would seriously consider it as a locale for our proposed longer stay.

Where Next?

This trip has reconfirmed our desire to try a longer stay in one place where we can get more of the experience of living in a country rather than visiting it. It has reconfirmed the importance of travel in our life as an activity that keeps us mentally and physically more alive and active. Covid doesn’t look like it is going anywhere anytime soon. So we will just have to continue to use our risk assessment capabilities and get out and travel as much as can.