Shannon and I were fortunate to have many visitors in the last 6 weeks. Our friends from the States came to Sicily to visit and we had a great time showing them the things we have learned about our Sicilian home. 
Christina and Kelly came in late August when Sicily is still very hot. We took the girls out in Aci Trezza on their first night and introduced them to our favorite pizzeria and to some of the places to get a beer. We took them to Pontile which is a bar on a platform built over the volcanic rocks on the shore. The sea comes right up under the platform where you sit and it makes for some nice views. Then we took the girls over to Mario's bar where Antonio taught them a new drinking game. The next day the girls went on a day of the beach and shopping, thankfully they left me behind. They started off at Taormina to do some shopping and then went down the hill to Isola Bella beach.
However after the beach they were headed up the mountain to do a wine tasting and the car died. Shannon called me and I was able to get my friend Chris to come and help. Chris is a mechanic but he was unable to get the car started so he was nice enough to tow the car all the way back to Aci Trezza. Later that night we took the girls out to a seafood dinner in Aci Trezza where we got them the Misti appetizer which comes with different food every time we go there. Some of the things they tried were whole small fishes, octopus, urchin and calamari all caught in the waters off Aci Trezza. That night we were seated at the table next to the mayor and he must have been taken by the three ladies because he bought them all another shellfish delicacy. 
The next day we took the girls down to Syracuse to take in a little bit of ancient Sicily. We saw the ruins and the church and had a nice day in the town. We took them to Shannon's favorite Sicilian restaurant for dinner where they tried some of their famous pistachio pasta. That night we had a real treat for our visitors. Our friend Derrick was having a party on his rooftop. The theme for the party was a "white trash party" so people were supposed to dress up like they might be white trash. The ladies did not dress up but I did. The party was a whole lot of fun. The party was so much fun the next day was necessarily a day of recovery and was spent at the lido sunning platform down in town. In the evening we took them to Cafe del Mar which has a pool party every Sunday night and then we went out to dinner with a big group of our friends. They left early the next morning.
The next weekend our friends Matt and Christa came to visit. Matt and Christa were going to spend over a week in Sicily and do some touring around the island besides the area Shannon and I live in.
On the first night we showed them around the town introducing them to some of our Sicilian friends and later we bumped into a bunch of our American friends over at Mario's bar. The next day we all went over to Agrigento. Agrigento is on the other side of the island and Shannon and I had not visited the site yet. Agrigento used to be the site of the ancient city of Akragas which was established around 582 B.C. There are three temples to explore and two of them are in very good shape.
There is also a field of ruins to walk around in and a museum with artifacts found at the site. That night we took Matt and Christa over to Monika's house because she was having a Monte Carlo themed party. Monika is from Germany so she there were many of her German friends there and also people from Sicily, France, Russia, England and a bunch of our American friends. It was cool to show Matt and Christa all the people we hang out with and Matt even won some money at the end of the night. The next morning we rented some kayaks and paddled around the waters of Aci Trezza and Aci Castello. 
We took them from one end of the cape to the other which is a tour that takes you to a Norman castle and around the Ciclope islands. We pulled the kayaks up on one of the islands and did some swimming in the Tyrrhenian Sea and Matt and I did a little bit of climbing and jumping off the islands. After cleaning up at home we all went up on the mountain and did a wine tasting at the Gambino Winery. Gambino is on the slopes of Mt. Etna and offers great views of the the surrounding terrain and the sea. The next day Matt and Christa took a ferry to the Aoliean islands off the north coast of Sicily. While there they would climb an active volcano and view lava spurting into the air.
Two weeks later our friend Sara would come visit with her friend Sarah. The girls were on a month long tour of Europe and made Sicily a part of their trip. I picked the girls up at the airport and took them into Aci Trezza for a granita treat. After showing them our home I took them down to Syracuse for a tour of the city and its ancient sites. The previous stop on the girls' trip was Rome so they had already seen a lot of churches but I think they liked the Duomo in Syracuse. The Duomo started off as a Greek temple and was subsequently turned into a Christian Church, a Mosque and back to a Christian Church. The cool part about the church is that you can see evidence of each one of these stages. 
After Syracuse I took them to San Gregorio to pick up some wine. A few months ago Monika showed Shannon and I this store in San Gregorio where you can buy wine. If you didn't know it was there you would never be able to find it because it looks like an alley. The store has 6 Sicilian wines to choose from- each in a barrel 10 feet in diameter. I told the girls that were were going to buy two wines and the man who runs the store let them taste them all to decide. They chose the Nero d'Avola and an Etna wine. You bring your own vessels to fill up and he charges by the liter. 
After leaving the wine store Shannon called and asked us to pick up some calamari on the way home. We went to the fish market down in Aci Trezza and picked up the calamari we wanted and had the guy clean it for us. By the time we got home Shannon had a very nice spread of appetizers for us so we started the evening drinking prosecco and snacking on the terrace. That night we took them into town where we met up with about 6 of our friends for some pizza. We proceeded to Mario's bar and then to an after party at a friend's house. The next day we had an unsuccessful attempt at kayaking in the harbor, in the two weeks that had passed since we went kayaking with Matt and Christa the weather had changed a lot and the seas were too rough to have any success kayaking.
That night we took the girls into Catania. We walked around the Piazza Duomo and saw the church and the elephant statue in the main square. Then we took them to the ruins of the Roman Amphitheater and on to dinner on the only hip street in Catania, Via Santa Filomena. The next day we took the girls shopping for some famous Sicilian ceramics and then up to the beach at Isola Bella and to Taormina. That night we took them to Reitana restaurant which makes the best pastas we have been able to find so far in Sicily. The next morning the girls had to catch a plane back to the mainland.
Shannon and I enjoyed having so many visitors. It is fun to see the sights of Sicily and I enjoy introducing people who we have known for many years with our friends in Sicily. We have lived here for more than a year now so we are pretty settled and used to life on a Mediterranean island. For visitors we have many ideas about what to show people when they come and perhaps more importantly we know how to get there without getting lost. 
