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 :)