ah... salt water

May 10

After the Aosta valley, we drove to Ravenna, where we camped on the Adriatic. It's been a long time since we've seen salt water! After Ravenna, we drove to San Marino, one of those "novelty" countries (their economy seems to be driven by selling coins and toy guns), and to Naples where we caught an overnight ferry to Sicily. The ferry company, SNAV, seemed to be the least organized of the lot (although they had a pretty good website*), and following the signs to their loading dock deep in the Port of Naples proved a bit challenging. It was impressive, though, watching them load a dockful of semi trucks and trailers onto the boat. I think it took the better part of the day. The bonus of taking the ferry meant that we had free parking for the camper in Naples, so we could wander around the town for a bit in the afternoon.

The other bonus of taking the ferry is that we got to Palermo at 8:00 in the morning, which meant we could find parking there too! We might not have even come to Palermo otherwise, which would have been a shame, since it is so far one of our favorite cities. All in all, we are really enjoying Sicily -- everyone should come here! And May seems to be the perfect time to visit... The island is green (it turns brown in the summer), the wildflowers are blooming, and it is not yet too hot or overrun with tourists. Surprisingly, there are very few individual tourists here... the major sights are dominated by guided groups. If you come, bring guidebooks with lots of information about the sites, most are light on interpretation, even if you can read Italian.

-SK
a Sicilia

*Note: Getting onto the internet in Italy is an adventure in itself. It is fairly easy to find, actually easier than in France, but to use the "Internet Point" we had to show a passport, which they photocopied, and get registered into a some sort of (anti-terrorism, I suspect) database. We were technically supposed to furnish an address in Italy as well.