Yesterday was a day most Perfect, back in Taormina.
Wending through tight alleys, making some images, looking up at the stoney mountain I traipsed up and was surprised by the lady in shadows, not our lady of sorrows.
Ate at Nino's joint, a fine trattoria near the sea, and he insisted or strongly suggested we have a familyesque and trad Sicilian feast for the four of us. Out came the courses of fresh fishes, locally-grown vegetables, a sweet pea pod each for a taste refresher, vino, an apertif. All again just Perfect-perfetto.
On way to Nino's directions were asked to see if in sooth numero 37 was just up ahead on Via Pirandello. It and it were.
I strongly suggested to a man getting on his very stylish Italian motorbike that he give me a ride up around the bend to my luncheon.
He handed me his helmet, put down the passengerial footpegs and off we zoomed. I had a few moments of that travel wonderment (always solo) whilst standing on a stone wall overlooking the sea and down at greenery still unfamiliar - cactii, lush bouganvillea (Liz can send in corrections), camellia, et al.
Onwards.
Today was Mount Etna day.
Picked up loads of little lava rocks and lest You do not catch the joke here, so Euro, so geological, lava rocks are light you see for the magma that bursts forth as lava catches air when it is arrabiata up in the sky and after it has scorched the earth. Dried to sponge candy perfection.
(Luca is meandering behind me, hands crossed behind him so officially as he makes his way from lobby to kitchen, disappearing, as Julie the Cat would always like to do, into the cucina).
Mount Etna air is so crisp and the fog wraps around your face when the weather shifts.
Men in a Jeep show up looking all muddy about the knees and you can see in the back of the Jeep that there are provisions. From their dazed conditions you reckon they have peered into the crater. Or have been lost for days.
We more adventurous journeyers forge onwards and wonder at the chestnut trees, the endless rocks, the flora just awakening.
Onwards again.
Another twisting and turning of the bus to another hillock farm and vineyard owned by a Baron, Emanuele Scammacca del Murgo, who insisted upon meeting me and then images were made of the two of us together. He presented me with one of his books, as You see, he is also a photog. We photogs seek each other out. We talk or gesticulate moments, gadgets, glass, ops, chips, and the like.
He signed my book For Nancy Emanuele.
His wine was the best here yet, Murgo is the label.
Onwards to the pool where a nice glass of Asti awaits me.
I have new Etro shades and I may contact them to see if the corp would like to become my corporate sponsor.

Murgo, Etro, vino Love.

postscript for Literal Harold.
have some rather odd images quite appropriate for VH1, will send upon return to Middling City.

postscript for LH and all You others.
no postcards sent out by YT, they are all too hideous. Really.
You know I dig that oldschool tradition, they are really all too ugly, not a trace of irony upon them.