Day 16 - Get Me Out of This Van!

Well……. that was a really really long day!! We left the hotel at 9am this morning and didn’t get to the hotel in Sicily until 8:30 at night. We still haven’t eaten any dinner, so we’re walking down the street to a local restaurant now.

The drive, although very, very long, was spectacular! The last hour on mainland Italy was along the cliffs with a view of the Mediterranean Sea. Once we got down to the tip of the boot, we took a ferry to Sicily where we enjoyed a lovely 30 minute ride on the top deck. I ordered a humongous arranccini ball stuffed with meat and cheese, a regular coke (it tasted so damn good!) and took in the salt air. Once in Sicily we still had 3 more hours to drive and the traffic really slowed us down.

The Sicilian countryside is so varied. We drove through mountains and plains, along the coast and through farmland. The soil changes from reddy brown to black as you get closer to the volcano. It was pretty clear, so we got a good view of Mt. Etna. I know it’s an active volcano, but it still surprised me to see the smoke billowing out of the top!

We only made 1 producer stop on our drive today, at a pasta company called La Porta. We toured their facility, you can check out our amazing outfits below, then went to a local restaurant for lunch. We had 3 pasta courses, some really tasty wine, a big spread of charcuterie, cheese and olives and a big plate of cookies.

The owner of the company was a stickler for the al dente pasta and kept going into the kitchen to make sure they didn’t over cook it. They use these special rough molds to cut the pasta, which gives the finished product a wonderful texture and really holds the sauce on.

Well, I’m off to dinner! Tomorrow, onions and chocolate (not at the same time, don’t worry!)

Ciao,

Megan

**Unfortunately my free time here is extremely limited, so I do apologize for any misspellings or grammatical errors. Also, I just want to say thank you for all of your comments and support. It has been nice to hear from everyone back home!!

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