Three years

I'm going to celebrate the end of three years for this blog by posting again pictures of my most favorite place in the world, Sicily and my most favorite place in Sicily, the very quirky Villa Palagonia in Bagheria, a little town 20 minutes by train from Palermo. It's been a lot of hard work and a lot of fun. I've been taking 2 trips a year to Europe the past 8 years and have collected innumerable stories and of them all, I, return time and again to memories of my 2 trips to Sicily. It is a lot of hard work, traveling as an independent traveler but a lot of fun. I remember the day we were caught in a huge downpour in Erice, a little town outside of Trapani in the western part of Sicily. We couldn't find our way back to the bus station because we couldn't see through the deluge of water coming down and a nice Sicilian in a new BMW gave us a ride to the bus station and we still have to wait an hour inside a smelly public toilet for the city bus. We saw other tourists coming and going in their tour buses and for a very brief moment I did feel a ping of envy, wishing that we had a tour bus waiting for us....only a very brief second. Other than that we've been really happy, wandering around the world on our own.
Traveling, as in life, is hard, 'life is hard' - M Scott Peck said. Knowing that then makes life easy. Independent traveling is hard and knowing that then makes it easy.

This is the entrance but when we first arrived, we came from the rear which was locked. I remember yelling, 'hello, hello, is anybody there?' No one answered, so we decided to walk around the property and then came upon the entrance and after paying an 8 euro fee, was inside the grounds. I love Villa Palagonia. We walked the 30 minutes from the train station to get there, asking people all the way, 'dove Villa Palagonia'. Each time they answered, 'quoi' or over there till we finally found it.

This little dog was chained outside in the property. I stopped and patted him.

I love the gorgeous staircases of Baroque buildings.

I look forward to the fourth year of this blog. Over the course of the three years, it has evolved, I remember, reading about blogging in a newspaper and decided to try it. Blogger.com made it so easy and over the past three years I've learnt about widgets, videos and all sorts of things and it has been a lot of fun.

Another thing about blogging, one gets lens envy. If not for blogging I would never have bought an expensive DSLR but I'm glad. Every now and then I view other blogs for inspiration, they do all inspire me.