17 Weeks

I've been running in to a lot of people that I haven't seen in ages, and of course, the question asked is always "what's happening with you?" I am usually doing something related to our trip, so usually I answer that we're off to Italy in 17 weeks. Most people are astounded that it was nearly 5 years ago that we took our last trip. The next question they ask is whether or not D'arcy is coming with us. Of course she is!!!! Can you imagine leaving a 12 year old at home for 8 weeks?
It will be an interesting trip for D'arcy, whilst she remembers a lot from the 2005 visit, she was only 7. This time she has been much more involved in the planning process, and has made a couple of requests, for instance, she was completely unimpressed with the Last Supper in Milan, which David and I were amazed by. This time, she is really excited about it, after reading The DaVinci Code, wants to see it, so we're planning on taking the train from Florence and seeing it again.
She was too young to climb the Leaning Tower in Pisa, so that's another thing on our agenda.
She looks so young in this photo taken of us on the balcony of our hotel in Positano, these days she's taller than I am, so this photo would look very different if taken this year.

This is a photo I took late last year of my Dad. I will have to find some of him when he was younger, he was pretty good looking :)
So I spoke to him about where to go and what we should see when we are visiting Sicily with him and Mum. Turns out, he didn't wander very far from home as a boy. He really only went to the town his Mum's family were from, Cerda, and into Palermo for work, so seeing different towns around the island will be a bit of an eye opener for him as well.
He has organised our accommodations in Sicily as well. I'm not really sure where we're staying, or whether we'll all be sharing a bunk bed, but it should be interesting ;)

Seventeen weeks and 2 days

Thanks to those of you who let me know you're going to follow my silly little blog, and thanks to those of you who dissed me too. You know who you are!!!!! :)
We are travelling to Italy, primarily, because my parents, Guy and Barbara decided they wanted to visit my Dad's home town in Sicily again.
He left Termini Imerese, in Sicily's North as a young man, and has only been back once, in the 1970's. I remember his trip back very well. I was annoyed that he had gone away and not taken me too!!!!!
He did, however, bring me back the most beautiful walking, talking doll :)
I have been annoying him for decades about taking my Mum back to where he grew up so that she might get a bit more of an understanding of what makes him tick.
All my life I had heard about "home" from my Dad, about how beautiful it was. How the food, pastries, gelato were the best in the world. That the history of Sicily was fascinating and the terrain breathtaking.
To be perfectly honest, I took his stories with a grain of salt, believing them to be a rather rose coloured view of a place he hadn't lived in for so long that he had managed to turn it into a Utopia of sorts.
David, D'arcy and I managed a fleeting visit to Termini Imerese on our last trip in October 2005. It was on arrival from Rome, that we flew over the Island and were dumbfounded by it's beauty.
Everything my Dad had told me was right.
Sicily is just a glorious place.
The way the mountains rose from the beaches was so picturesque, so unusual, that I couldn't stop taking photographs.
My Dad's town is not considered a beautiful spot, but I found it enchanting. From the tiny streets, with washing lines strung across verandahs, to the retired gentlemen playing cards on tables on the footpath, it was like stepping back in time, and seeing the world through the eyes of my teenage father. It was a light bulb moment for me. I finally got where he came from.
We will be spending 12 days in Sicily with my parents as our first stop in Italy. I haven't lived with them for over 20 years, so it should be interesting, for them as well as me :)
This time, we are hoping to see a lot more of the island than just Termini Imerese. I plan on dragging my parents around to Erice, and Cefalu, as well as trying to get to the Aeolian Islands as well.
It should be interesting :)