Sicily

 We had an early start for the day boarding our big bus (yea for getting to spread out!) for our journey to Siricusa.  We stopped in Cefalu, a small ocean front town, to roam the streets, visit the church and have a pleasant lunch.  The streets were ancient stone, almost alleyways, that wind down towards the ocean.  This town is where the beach scenes were filmed for the latest White Lotus season.  We had plenty of time to explore before going to a lovely lunch at Galleria.  We definitely have not starved on this trip! After lunch, we were back aboard our bus for our trip to Siricusa.  It took longer than anticipated because of the road construction along the way.  I think most of us took advantage of the time and grabbed a nap.  We finally got to our hotel, Ortigian Marriott a little after six which gave us a few minutes to unload our bags before meeting for tuk-tuk rides to our group dinner at Alfeo Restaurant by the water.   It was a ...

 Sicily has a great tradition of puppet making and puppet shows.  Today we had the opportunity to visit a five generation family that does both.  Franco Cuticchio's Puppet Shop hand carves large (36" or more) puppets that they use in their shows.  We first watched one of their shows in their little theatre where Franco, his daughter and granddaughter helped stage the show.  Franco is the voice for all the characters while his daughter manipulates the characters stage left and Franco stage right.  The granddaughter hand cranks the little antique piano that provides the music for the staging.  It had it all, from love scenes to fight scenes where some of the puppets actually had body parts cut off by the swords of the 'good guys'.  It was actually very entertaining. We then broke into groups to take photos in the workshop, the theatre, and portraits in the alleyway of the theatre.  Franco's 92 year old father posed for us in the workshop demons...

 We skipped breakfast this morning because our first shoot of the day was at a bakery where we would be sampling some of their treats after having a chance to photograph them making the goods sold in their store.  Santa Caterina Baker  is housed in a former nunnery where at one time the novices would live and work making baked goods.  Today it is privately owned and operated and is one of the more popular bakeries in the city. We broke into groups to take photos of the items being made for the store.  We had two different areas to work in, one for the filled baked goods and the other where a chef was forming marzipan fruit and painting it in realistic, edible colors.  They work very quickly but slowed down for our group to take pictures.   After the shoot we got to choose items to sample before we left.  Some of our group toured the adjoining church while a few of us visited to old kitchen and the giant nativity.  The kitchen was up some back...

 We usually arrive at least a day early for the workshops so that we have time to catch up on sleep and have a little buffer built in for airline problems.  Since our travel went well, we had all day in Palermo before our meeting this evening. The hotel had a fabulous buffet for breakfast.  Any place that has an entire table of desserts at breakfast Is fine with me.  The also had food you might typical     think of as lunch such as arancini.  And let me just say, we’re being cheated at home on strawberries because the ones here are so flavorful and juicy. Five of us caught a cab to Montreal, an area that overlooked the city, to visit the Cattedral di Montreale .  Built in 1172, it is one of the greatest examples of Norman architecture and contains beautiful examples of glass mosaic work on the walls and floors.  Gold fills the church on both walls and ceilings.  We thought 2 hours would be plenty to tour it but we could have easily have ...