Picture it, Sicily 2019

I’ll jump right to it, going back to the “old country” was one of the coolest things I’ve been able to do since earning my wings.

My dad is a proud Sicilian and very much into family history and lineage. His side of the family is relatively new to America, just a few generations, and he’s been able to follow the family tree back to Sicily. And so when he started planning a trip to Sicily to continue his research as well as see the island, I knew I had to join.

To get there, I flew direct Miami to Milan on American, then hopped onto AirItaly to Palermo where I met Dad. From there we do what we do best and drove clear across the island to Ragusa. The center of Sicily is pretty much how The Godfather shows it; desert, palm trees, cactui. It’s very similar to the western U.S. and very different than mainland Italy.

We stayed at the Locanda Don Serafino, a beautiful, albeit small, boutique hotel. The spiral staircase is steep and narrow, made of stone, leading up to the guestrooms. The lobby and breakfast room also have stone walls and ceiling giving it a cellar/cave feeling. The room was tiny, but manageable considering most of our day was spent exploring the city.

Also at breakfast, there’s dessert. True, literal cake right next to the eggs and yogurt. It was heaven.

Ragusa is the capitol city of the province of the same name. The city resides on the side of a hill in the southern part of the island. The city is also split in two sections: Ibla and Superiore. Ragusa Superiore, as you may have guessed, implies the higher section of town while Ibla is the southern, newer part.

Dad and I explored the north section first, weaving our way through the tightly packed “streets”, some of which are barely wide enough for a donkey to pass through. Up steps, down steps, circling back because we got lost, Dad and I walked all over that town. We took a break at the “Italy in Africa” museum. The guide didn’t speak English but we tried combining our limited Italian and her limited English and kind of made it work.

After a quick lunch of salad, pizza, and of course arancino, or rice ball, we walked back to the hotel in the middle of the city and continued down to Ibla. This part of town is noticeably newer with wider streets, not so many doors and homes stacked on top of the each other, and much more easy to navigate.

We did our shopping in this part of town, which included Dad buying an old Italian man hat and it’s the most authentic I’ve ever seen him. Of course we stopped for a mid-afternoon cannolo and beer.

When it was finally dinner time, we walked to the hotel’s two-Michelin star restaurant. Keeping with the decor, the restaurant is essentially one large wine cellar, all stone and even a little humid. Dad ordered a 1998 Cabernet that made me say, “It tastes like drinking butter.” The best, best, smoothest wine I’ve ever tasted. Our first dish was shaved steak and burrata cheese. The steak was so thin and tender. The second dish was risotto with lobster and goat cheese, which, in my opinion, may be the best combination of three foods in the world. Dessert was an extravagant affair featuring four dishes: chocolate, lemon, raspberry, and one that was eaten so fast I can’t recall what flavor it was.

The next day, after rolling home from dinner, we drove from Ragusa to Mt. Etna, then on to Catania. We happened to be in Catania the same weekend as a festival that had little kids – and adults – wearing crowns and sashs, a stage with dancers, and probably the coolest thing there, a tambourine volleyball tournament.

In continuing with our eating-tour-of-the-island, we had a pre-dinner snack of gelato and pizza and then took to scoping out a dinner spot for our final night in the old country. We didn’t want anything fancy, just some basic pasta. We found Via Santa Filomena, which is more or less an alley lined on either side with restaurants and bars and white twinkling lights strung across the buildings. After scouring the different menus, we finally picked one with cacio e pepe, what I had been searching for the entire trip. Of course, we had to get dessert, and decided on “Little Angels”, fried dough drizzled with Nutella and powdered sugar. They were heavenly little angels.

My last day on the island was a simple breakfast, a walk along the coast, and back to the airport. Of course, we had one last Sicilian (aka, square) slice before I boarded my flight back to Milan, and then Miami.

Sicily was amazing, and so different than I imagined. But spending four days traveling through the very island my family is from, four days with my dad eating and talking and learning and discovering, it was perfect.