Gray's Academy

If there is to be one word to describe the people of Sicily, I suggest the word be kindness – gentilezza (genteelEZa) – go ahead and try to pronounce it. Kind – gentile (genteelay). No, the word has nothing to do with Jews and Christian’s!

There is no question that this island could use a few coats of paint. I look out of a beautiful vista, snap a picture and what jumps out of that picture is the lack of polish on a structure. The vistas are always beautiful. It is the details of the buildings that reveal, not grittiness, or even lack of maintenance, but age.

Hey, that sounds like me!

I still have the weekend to explore. I didn’t want to travel all the way to Ragusa so I am taking a train to the small coastal towns of Riposte and Giarre. I booked a B and B so I can stay the night. Riposte is one of the small towns in Sicily that are begging for ex-pats. In all of the south of Italy, an American like me, lets say an American who is fed up with all the crap in the U.S, can live in one of these small towns for a wing and a prayer.

I have yet to visit one of these small towns so today will be interesting for me. I booked my room using Deep Translate. This is an app that everyone in Italy uses to communicate with those of us who no matter how much we want to speak the language, in a word stumble. Communication is all the more challenging because there is a reason Italians drink so much espresso. First of all they don’t call it espresso – its caffe. The watered down version we drink in most of America is called caffe americano – watered down espresso.

Italian is spoken at a rate of about ten words a second. It’s gotta be the espresso. When I booked the room using Deep translate and IChat I secure the room with a text. There is no reserving with my credit card information. It’s my word that tells Anna that I will be there today. She told, not asked, me to arrive at noon. I will arrive at noon with euros in hand and I know my room will be ready.

It’s a short 20 minute train ride. I was at the train station last Saturday to visit Messina. Messina is a port town – no charm at all. It is the gateway to the mainland so I suppose if you are in Messina you can make a quick getaway?

So, as usual, I am awake and ready to start my day early in the morning. Hmmmm, what will I do until my train at 11:08? I know I will want to arrive at the train station so I can sit in the little cafe and have a cappuccino and cornetta – that’s Italian for croissant – not to be confused with the pastry that has a similar name in the U.S.

Questa fine settimana andro’ a Riposte e Giarre. (This weekend I am going to Riposte and Giarre.)

Ciao, amici miei.