Jesus Christ, that’s a fucking rooster I hear. Fuck-a-fuck-a-you. Fuck-a-fuck-you. It’s still night, for Lord’s sake. Yesterday, at twilight, as we ate our sandwiches on the patio, bird insanity erupted in a tree a short distance away, hundreds of deranged creatures squawking for dear life. Birds are so annoying.

We’re on the west coast of the Northland now, in a cabin by a lovely, nevertheless unseen, lake. At breakfast we now have enough perspective to look objectively at yesterday’s hapless journey. There is this new invention called a ‘map’ that can provide truly amazing clarity.

“Look!” says Joss, pointing. “We went THAT way!”

“Well, it is diagonal, the shortest ‘crow-flies’ way.”

“Yeah, but look here. Roads are coded, there’s Limited Access Highway, then Major Route, then Main Road, then Minor Road, then Other Road, then … Other Dirt Road. We went down Other Dirt Road, Dad. If only we had this map then. It’s miraculous!”

“Let’s never be without one.”

While offering a surfeit of bird noises, the Wai Hou Oma Lodge stints on hot water. No showers this morning. Let’s go, then. In an hour we find ourselves at the Kauri Museum in Matakohe, noted in all guidebooks as ‘not to be missed.’ True. It could not be more spectacular. Every aspect of the kauri trade, from its fine-grained wood to its glowing fossilized amber called ‘gum’ to the communities that supported the industry, is exhaustively illuminated. New Zealand’s great kauri forests are gone now: all that remain are isolated groves. And these remaining are in terrible jeopardy from a soil borne ‘die-back’ disease. Enormous ghostly trees can be seen from the road. Sad sentinels.

In the early 20^th century, the Northland boomed as the ancient giants were chopped down and milled into lumber and fine furniture. Kauri gum, the byproduct of these conifers, was exploited as an ingredient in varnish and linoleum, as well in fine jewelry. We wander through room after room of large logs, large machinery, milled wood, hokey/eerie dioramas (see: dentist’s office), peculiar collections (the wall of 100 chainsaws, for example): all describing every detail of life in the Northland. We know these Northlanders intimately after two hours.

‘Not-to-be-missed’ within ‘not-to-be-missed’ is the Gum Room in the museum’s basement. It glows with a treasure room’s radiant light because it houses a dozen personal collections of this amber in all its forms, from big, brown, raw lumps to golden, fossilized chunks; and carved into all manner of things, from women’s fan combs to busts of Maori chieftains.

We’re back on the road at two o’clock with maybe five hours to go before we’d reach our destination, Whitianga on the Coromandel Peninsula. We will be obliged to traverse every type of road, with the exception of ‘Other Dirt’. Joss and I chatter and complain and hiccup along. Hopefully, it will rain and wash some of the perma-dust off the Focus. The trek is fucking endless. A long black to take-away at a café called Bugger Off helps a bit.

Coffee in New Zealand seems to be exclusively espresso. A long black is a double shot of espresso with a splash of hot water, not unlike an Americano. It is delicious and all business. A flat white is two shots of espresso topped with velvety milk froth, not foam. It is not a latte. It, too, is delicious and sometimes a necessary substitute for a long black when the wallop is too intense.

Bleary, but situated at last at the aimed-for terminus, we drop all pretense of intelligibility and focus on our next meal.

I wake before dawn and sit on the terrace watching color leach back into the world. I finish yesterday’s posting as the sun flares from behind one of the islands. Dan will bring us breakfast at eight o’clock, so I shower in order to be presentable. Just before he’s due, an email arrives announcing that yesterday’s reservation had been cancelled. What? I had double booked somehow, leaving us with no place to rest our heads tonight. I call the place at nine o’clock (Joss’ phone has a super duper international internet plan for navigation and communication purposes) and explain our predicament to a patient and good-natured woman. “I booked online months ago and I have big stubby fingers, apparently.” “Oh, you’re alright,” she says, “You booked two nights.” Double-double booked. Phew.

During breakfast of fruit, toast, and coffee, I complain bitterly to Joss about the big honking Holden. “But we’ll be going through Auckland again, won’t we?” says she. “Take it back to the airport. Maybe you can exchange it.” Brilliant. The wheels are now in motion to shitcan the wheels. An internet search reveals nothing but inoperative Hertz phone numbers, however, the slipcover of the rental agreement indicates a Hertz location at the Kerikeri airport, maybe a dozen kilometers north. We can do this today.

With plan in hand, we head to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, New Zealand’s most historic place. In 1840 the Maori signed an agreement with the British recognizing that nation’s sovereignty over the North and South Islands, while guaranteeing the Maori unalienable rights to their land and its treasure as well as full British citizenship. For almost a hundred years the treaty was ignored, but slowly during the 20^th century, Maori resistance grew. They held up the Treaty to power, much the same way the barons held King John accountable. The subsequent changes in New Zealand society have been immense.

The grounds consist of a broad grassy plateau that slopes down to the bay. The world’s largest war canoe, 115 feet long, rests under a long shed. Every year on Waitangi Day, February 6^th, the canoe slips into the water manned by one hundred rowers. It must be magnificent.

At the crest of the great lawn sits the modest house of James Busby, the British Resident, chief magistrate for the Crown and one of the designers of the Treaty of Waitangi. Chiefs of many Maori tribes attended what was a convention to create a document establishing peace and order. A brand-new museum dramatizes the centuries of conflict and accommodation between the British and Maori before and after the Waitangi Treaty. It is a stirring drama. We leave humbled, as only people who learned an important lesson can be humbled.

The Kerikeri airport is Quonset hut small. That it has the capacity to furnish autos to tourists is remarkable. It seems the rent-a-car counter had just opened for business and it’s 1:30. Two kindly women listen to our story and offer a choice of two alternates to Holden, the Roadhog. We pick the red Ford Focus. Suddenly, the road seems hospitable. I have wiggle room.

Tane Mahuta, the Lord of the Forest, is an enormous Kauri tree, the largest of its kind, a species logged almost to extinction in the early 20^th century. I want to see it, the One Tree. Few stands of these giants remain and the Big One looks like it’s a straight shot from the Kerikeri airport. Then all of a sudden, the country road we’ve been traversing dissolves into gravel. And stays that way forever. We motor for at least two hours without seeing another fucking vehicle or even a person. Enigmatic signs alert us to ‘Dust and Children’. The variety of countryside could be mesmerizing to a less skillful driver. Grand vistas of grass-covered hill after hill dotted with cattle and/or sheep pass before us. We duck from pasture into forest primeval, only to turn a sharp corner and confront devastating clear cut. There appears to be a lot going on, yet nothing happening. Maybe because it’s Sunday.

Joss and I maintain a genial, if sporadic, animation for the balance of the journey until, at last, we find our way blocked by a locked gate that prevents us from fording a stream. Stunning reality. Oh yeah, we’re fucking lost. To fully absorb and acknowledge that fact, I get out of the car to photograph the warning sign attached to the gate. As we assess our predicament, what to our wondering eyes should appear but another car. They’re unlocking the gate. They pull up to us. “Are you lost?” “Yeah, we’re looking for this really big tree.” “GPS doesn’t work down here. It can’t get a fix on anything. Go back to State Highway 12, turn left, and maybe fifteen kilometers of squiggles later you’ll see signs.” We are too giddy to be mortified.

Well, hello, Big Guy. You’re a big anticlimatic tree, all right. It took us five hours to get here but, yeah, you fucking rock. Its trunk is a majestic, branchless cylinder, 50 feet around and rising 180 feet.

Back in the car, Joss offers me the ultimate compliment – “You’re a much better driver now.”

I will have the opportunity to prove my mettle behind the wheel today. We have a three-hour drive north to the Bay of Islands in the monster blue Holden (such a make of automobile exists). Why did I reserve such a huge fucking car? Jesus, I don’t even like driving on the right side of the road. My reflexes can be very casual and my stamina is diminished. These roads have no shoulders and only imaginary guardrails. They feel maliciously narrow and have an aversion to straight-aways. On a map of New Zealand, the shortest distance between two points looks like a plate of spaghetti.

Joss navigates us out of Auckland and onto Route One North, which is briefly a six-lane divided highway but quickly devolves into a two-lane country lane complete with a one-lane bridge, truly a fresh automotive hell. A couple of times, I fade to the left and the car’s wheels brush the curb. Joss hollers and splays herself across the passenger seat. I’m freaking her out. I hope my powers of concentration can prevail over the distracting inversions inherent in driving on the left hand side. Because the driver’s seat is switched, I can misplace the rearview mirror for a split second and end up sliding onto the non-shoulder or, god forbid, the slow lane before I get my bearings again. More than once, I set the windshield wipers to dancing rather than provide the folks behind me with the visible turn signal.

Our destination on the Bay of Islands, a B&B called Tarlton’s Lodge, is achieved. Friendly Dan, the host, shows us our rooms, which share a terrace overlooking the bay dotted with goddamn islands, while explaining many things that do not penetrate. Across the water is the town of Russell, New Zealand’s earliest European settlement. It is accessible conveniently by a ferry called ‘Happy’ and inconveniently by a long and winding road called ‘No Fucking Way’. We had stopped en route and had some delicious fish ‘n chips at roadside restaurant, so once we shake the automotive tension, we’re good for exploring. The Happy Ferry chugs across the Bay to Russell, whose original name, Kororareka, means ‘how sweet is the penguin’ in Maori. Russell was a sinful whaling port in the early 19^th century, ‘the Hell Hole of the Pacific’. Charles Darwin stopped there on one of his trips and was totally grossed out. Check out The Voyage of the Beagle: under his entry for Kororareka, he notes only – “ew”.

Russell is a tourist destination now with a number of historic buildings and a quirky local museum. One such structure, the Pompallier Mission, was the headquarters of the French Catholic mission in the Pacific in the mid-19^th century. Long derelict and now much restored, it tells the fascinating story of the Marist Fathers’ efforts to proselytize by translating Latin texts into Maori and then printing and binding tracts. The labor required boggles. Our guide, Lydia, delights in interspersing her descriptions with English catch phrases that come from the printing trade. ‘Mind your ps and qs.’ ‘Make a good first impression.’ ‘To be a dab hand.’ We hear someone playing guitar and singing Cat Stevens and from the second story window we look down at the wedding of Fiona and Matt in the garden below.

At last, ice cream, and we sit by the dock of the bay, licking. As we congregate to board ‘Happy’ we witness a badass woman weighing her huge tuna and posing with her catch.

The plan is to meet for breakfast between 8:30 and nine o’clock. I head down at 8:30 and Joss has been there for a half hour. We gather our wit (the one we trade back and forth) and attempt to restore a little caffeinated spring to our step. I slept okay. So did Joss. Maybe jetlag will not manifest.

Auckland is a humming metropolis where modernity condescends to its nineteenth century antecedents. Dwarfed by tacky gleaming towers, isolated and elegant Victorian municipal buildings suffer unimaginative mercantile reuse with all the aplomb of a cat in a dress. A walk along the esplanade starts at the Ferry building and leads to the Maritime Museum where Auckland demonstrates why it calls itself The City of Sails. The Museum has many nautical stories to tell, from the incredibly intrepid Polynesians, the last humans on the planet to discover uninhabited lands, to the doughty Brits and their tenacious seafaring ingenuity. It’s all capped by the glamour of recent America’s Cup combatants.

We make arrangements to spend an hour in the harbor aboard the Ted Ashby, a ketch-rigged scow, representative of the fleet of flat-bottomed freight haulers that plied the waters of the North Island carrying cargo on their decks. Twenty-five French teenagers are part of this crew. Joss is able to figure out that for most of the way they’re talking about Game of Thrones. Hodor in French is pronounced ‘Oh-dor’. The sail is breezy yet deliberate, for the scow was built for durability, not for speed.

Oysters for lunch. Mollusks have a compulsory appeal for the two of us. The waiter asks if we want a ‘creamy’ dozen. Creamy? That adjective does not apply to oysters, but we say ‘yes’. Yeah, they’re creamy, I guess. A certain fatty mouth feel. It cuts the brine and the sweetness, in fact, the ‘oyster-ness’ we’re used to. Anyway, the second dozen we order, we order ‘not the creamy kind’ and they satisfy.

Wandering, we try to follow the guidebook’s fragmentary goddamn maps. My short-term memory is on the fritz, so we have to stop every hundred meters in order to reconnoiter through the narrow streets of cafés and boutiques. Joss finds a pair of pants that look great and make a splendid birthday present. Now the map suggests we cross this park, which turns out to be alpine steep. At the top is the Gaudi-meets-Gothic clocktower of Auckland University. We venture inside, marvel at the airy, columnar space, several floors of fluted balconies, arched windows, and offices all bathed in a watery light, and find the bathroom.

Our search of ice cream is epically futile. This would not happen in NY. There’d be places to fatten up on every other corner. So, we end up back at hotel. Pfeh. The ascent up Queen Street is long and trudgy, but I’m acclimating, it seems. Though I perspire like a stuck pig, I didn’t feel on the verge of a coronary today. A couple hours downtime is spent soaking in the tub and writing at the desk provided.

I have picked out a couple places for dinner. The decided-upon Asian fusion place is down towards the harbor, yet another trek, but we’re in training for our hike across Mordor next week. We have tickets to the late show of Briefs, a boylesque/acrobatic extravaganza that’s part of Auckland’s Pride Week shenanigans. It’s as close to a burlesque show as I could find. They’ve set it up café-style on the stage of one of Auckland’s newer theaters. The energy these fellows expend is astonishing, very gymnastic and very, very gay.

We learn a useful gesture for establishing dominance. Say you have an adversary. Raise your open hand palm out, close the fan of your fingers in cascading order, and hiss – Jealous. To submit, all one needs to do turn one’s palm inward. The word jealous sounds more muted. But not defeated; resigned.

One of the performers hails from NYC. His name is Evil Hate Monkey. Joss knows him; that’s showbiz for you. The show has been ridiculous and fun, mostly lighter than air with just a few clunky parts. We meet Mr. Monkey afterwards and I think he is delighted to see a colleague.

We’re aloft on the first leg of our antipodal journey, the JFK to LAX stretch. Some earlier observations – 1) Joss beat me to the airport, 2) Her suitcase was seventeen pounds lighter than mine, and 3) Her delight in Delta Sky Club (Iced tea! But, oh, sad carrots.) made me grin. Then, the following message from Alice appeared electronically almost causing me to aspirate a wasabi pea: Have fun returning the One Ring!!! Eat lembas and befriend dwarves. Stay the fuck away from Sean Bean.

LAX is confusing (see: endless blue corridor) and we are uncertain. Have our bags been checked through or do they spin on a carrousel somewhere in the netherbowels of this place? Which of these seven or eight terminals could be headquarters for Air New Zealand? Joss tosses her head and commences with some fast walking. “For a New Yorker, you walk awfully slow.” I tag along, keeping my mouth shut. We have plenty of time to resolve the mysteries and we do. My groovy Amex card gets us into the VIP lounge where snacks abound.

My job, while airborne, had been to write thirty invitations to the party I want to throw myself in April. I don’t have the presence of mind to inquire about a mailbox until we get to the lounge. The guy at the desk drops his chin and tells me that there are no mailboxes in the airport. Security, you know. I explain they’re just party invitations and show him the box. “Twenty bucks,” I say. He gives me the look that tells me I’m being persuasive and offers to mail them despite the risk to his job should this transgression be sussed out by the powers. He didn’t take the money.

The flight across the Pacific takes twelve hours, but first, there’s the requisite tarmac-sitting. The cause for this delay, it is eventually revealed, is a plumbing problem – aircraft-wide toilet malfunction. We sit. There’s an update. We sit for another half hour. Update. Sit. Good to go. The plane taxis a perplexing distance that could for all intents and purposes have taken us to San Diego, and then lifts into the air. Time stands still. Or hiccups. We hurtle from Tuesday, February 16^th to Thursday, February 18^th in half a day with all the turbulencia that crossing the International Dateline entails.

Happy Birthday, Dear Jocelyn. Happy Birthday To You!

Hello, Auckland. Watch me now drive on the wrong side of the road. The trip from the airport car rental to the hotel involves numerous encounters with rumble strips and a side trip up a dead end, where a man in very small shorts balefully witnesses me back the fuck up into traffic. Our rooms aren’t ready, a downside of arriving mid-morning. Let’s have some coffee and contemplate semi-productive ways to kill time. We order a pair of micro-muffins and I blurt out my terrible hygiene confession. “God, Joss, I just feel gummy. The next stupid thing I say, when I slap my forehead, my hand’ll stick. Let’s take them up on the offer of a shower in the spa.” We are renewed and on a roll. I suggest Joss visit the nail salon while I find a barber. We shall be beautiful and ready for lunch.

Adjoining rooms. Can we nap? Not really. More time-killing. I’ve made a 7pm reservation for Joss’ birthday dinner at a French bistro on Queen Street, but it’s only 4:30. A walk could while away a couple hours, so we let gravity draw us toward the harbor, only to distracted by sights along the way. Look, there’s a pop-up Globe Theater, sided in corrugated metal and featuring six plays from the Shakespearian canon in repertory. And it’s rush hour, so all Auckland is heading home. This is quite a cosmopolitan city, as diverse as some of the big northern hemisphere cities.

Jocelyn pays for her birthday dinner. Last month, she and her boyfriend, Jared, invited me to an Egyptian restaurant in Astoria for my belated birthday and I had to pay. We have a new tradition – Buy your own fucking birthday dinner.

Sleep.

The night before last I went to the Xmas Show of a Brit named Daniel Kitson. It was the 10pm show, which is past my bedtime. I heard I was going to be read to, so I rationalized it would be a bedtime story. Mr. Kitson is a friendly, if bossy, unprepossessing type. He first makes sure everyone knows that getting up to pee during the performance will be disturbing to all assembled, then he goes up onto the stage and rearranges a clump of six vaguely illuminated christmas trees into a semicircle, revealing a school desk. He changes from schlubby street clothes into a shirt and tie and leather shoes and an uncool wool cap, bantering all the while in a tone that walks a fine line between jolly and facetious. It is a walking tone, all right.

Once upon a time, the Mediterranean Sea was believed to be the very center of the world. Though it was sometimes a barrier, sometimes a portal, and sometimes a crucible, it was always the center of attention for the brave and the curious. And at the middle of the Mediterranean lay the island of Sicily.

For 2,500 years, civilization after civilization swept over Sicily, then receded – Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, the Angevins, the kingdoms of Aragon, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire, and finally, the Bourbons as rulers of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Gradually, the world turned its gaze toward other, farther horizons and Sicily slipped into obscurity. It received its first governing assembly since Norman rule in 1947.

What a place to roam. I applied to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in Sicily in part to satisfy my curiosity about the island. I would meet other writers, sure, and I hoped to shake off the fecklessness that had affected my writing since my dad died in early April. I wanted to give my imagination something to work with. After the conference I would explore for two weeks, savor Sicily’s paradoxes, discover old beauties, feel the sun. Get the fuck out of New York City.

My friends, John and Greta, were eager to join me, but then their plans changed. I had booked two rooms in at least eight places, so rather than spend a day reorganizing the trip, I asked my daughter, Alice, if she had the time and inclination. Together, we could go on a big adventure. I could write and she could sketch and maybe something would develop. Say yes.

Seventy-four tunnels carve a coastal highway between Siracusa and Palermo. The road flows from light into darkness and back. Like a thread, it stitches together the blues and greens, the grays and golds of landscape onto the skirt of the Mediterranean. Like a thread, it twines through the labyrinth of history. Alice and I covered tremendous ground. No lesson is learned without exertion. What a great time we had.

The last leg. I decide we will take the long way along the coast via Messina rather than the inland way via Enna. Once we’re underway, our spirits lighten. It’s autostrada all the way. As we approach Catania, Mount Etna appears in the distance, purple and partly wrapped in clouds. It’s the largest active volcano in Europe. The closer we get the more its slopes swell, its vastness increasing in width, not height. Subsidiary cones stride up the incline. The mountain is a great rock fact. A few minutes on, I nudge Alice to point out Italy. Across the Strait of Messina, just three kilometers, lies the continent of Europe. Then we bear sharply to the west and proceed toward along the Tyrrhenian Sea to Palermo.

Tunnel after tunnel after tunnel, around the next curve another goddamn tunnel. Some are barely more than underpasses. Some are disturbingly long and dark. One awful one has stretches of dripping walls, stalactites, wet pavement, and no illumination save the retreating red lights of the cars ahead. “Uh-oh,” I say, “Smell that? That’s definitely sulfur. This could spell our doom.”

We burst into the light. The Mediterranean to our right sings perfect scales of blue: there’s surf, too. To our left, green mountains and limestone promontories lean forward and back. “I love this,” says Alice.

Our gas gauge has slipped into the red. Few things are as intense to me as running on empty. Blessedly, a service area appears. That gives me an idea. “Let’s take the car back this afternoon. It will save us hassling with getting in and out of Palermo, especially tomorrow morning at the crack.” Dad is brilliant. Dad never wants to see the Fiat again. Except there’s a traffic jam as we skirt Palermo. A fucking maintenance crew trimming greenery blocks two lanes. At rush hour.

We settle into our third hotel in Palermo, the Centrale Palace. I book a cab to the airport for six o’clock in the morning and reserve a table at the rooftop restaurant. Alice knocks at my door at five to eight, and there she is in a dress. This has been the best trip ever.

windsock

Our hotel is on the island of Ortygia, where Neolithic remains have been found, marking the first settlement as thousands of years ago. Two bridges link the island to Siracusa proper. A number of very early Greek temple ruins are scattered throughout. Later Greek and Roman works can be found on the mainland in the Neapolis Archeological Park, a large theater and a sacrificial alter built by Greeks, a great amphitheater constructed around the time of Christ by the Romans, and fascinating quarries from which all the stone to build the city was drawn.

Today feels like it’s going to be a grunt. Still, I enjoy my ridiculous shower. It won’t matter: the sun’s ablaze. Alice and I have been working this traveler thing so hard, our nerve and our stamina are a little on the frayed side. Electing to drive to Neapolis means electing to find parking there. Therein lies the bitches’ quandary. Park where, wiseguy? Where do we drop the fucking Fiat? It turns out there’s a dude with a beard providing guidance to those opting for a roadside slot.

As has been typical of many of these archeological sites, nothing is what it seems. The ticket booth has been moved to a dusty patch of nowhere at the far end of  the pavilion of sixty-five bazillion trinkets. This dislocation does not bode well. They don’t ask for this ticket until you’re well within the park. The Greek theater is enormous. It dates from the 5^th century BCE, though much restored and rebuilt over successive millennia, for example the ruins of the stageworks date from Roman times. A terrace dedicated to the Muses rings the top seats and a noisy torrent called La Grotta del Ninfeo spills from a cavity. The gush drowns out a wildly gesticulating tour guide, standing before a group of frying Germans. We don’t exactly know what we’re looking at half the time, but I have a reserve of guidebook factoids at my disposal and I’m not afraid to toss them around.

Alice and I wander the site, dodging into pockets of shades, while perspiring with reckless abandon. The quarries make for a cool-ish and otherworldly environment, sheer limestone walls, lush greenery, befuddled tourists. The most intriguing feature of this sunken area is called Orecchio di Dionisio, The Ear of Dionysius, so named by Caravaggio himself for its peculiar echoes. As we enter there’s a hubbub and we hear repeated calls of “Achtung” mit corresponding echo as a guide attempts to get her group’s attention.

After many cul-de-sacs and pointless exploratories, Alice and I find ourselves consuming adequate pizza and wondering how the fuck we would locate the antiquities museum four blocks away. This means finding another fucking parking space. But at least there’s a landmark to guide us. The Santuario Madonna delle Lacrime.

In 1953, a plaster bas-relief plaque of Our Lady of Fatima given to a young Siracusan couple as wedding present began to shed tears. A great to-do ensued. After much ecclesiastical scrutiny, the miracle was deemed genuine enough that a huge church was constructed. It is shaped much like a tepee and is visible for miles. I didn’t set foot inside the thing, but, man, do I have a lot to say.

Antiquities ‘R Us. The ingresso to this treasure house is obscure, hidden by trees and underbrush, not the shiny ticket booth, but the plywood one, and how about a front door, is that too much to ask for? Inside is a trove of shards and TMI in Italian. Case after case of what the two of us have come to call ‘action figures’; little goddess figurines used as votive offerings to the real goddess. There was some lovely statuary, a beautiful, unidealized Venus in particular, a Roman copy of a Greek original and a small but mesmerizing bronze athlete. The collection contains many wonderful things, but is way too cluttered. An editor would help and a little curatorial self-esteem.

We had parked in a strange limbo zone and stood around cluelessly, then almost got sucked into a poor German woman’s search for catacombs. She dithered and we bolted. When we return, the Fiat remains stalwart in its solitude. Back at the Hotel Livingston, footsore and crabby, the only thing that could possibly restore us is gelato. The Concierge points us in a direction. We pass by the Fontana di Artemide, Ortygia’s hub, and easily find delicious ice cream. “Hey, Alice, I think the Duomo is a mere block or two that way. Let’s go find it. It’s a Norman church built around the columns of the Temple of Athena.”

Here is a nuanced, yet factual, tidbit from its auto-translated Wiki page. During the terrible 1693 earthquake that leveled several towns in eastern Sicily, including much of Syracuse, the Duomo but remained standing, and despite its Norman façade was destroyed, its internal structure, including columns of the temple greek, remained Hello.

It is altogether fitting that our last sight is a spectacular amalgam of Greek and Norman with a Baroque façade. This is exactly what Sicily is about. On this island, history has many overlays, many variations. We will be forever enchanted.

I’m up at dawn’s crack and inspired to explore Noto in the early morning sun, camera in hand. The glow is magic. Few people are about, the old men beginning to cluster to gossip and smoke and the buskers beginning to hawk their ugly inflated pigs and tennis balls on elastic.

The beautiful buildings on Noto’s main avenue, which has three names in the course of a single kilometer, stand suffused with golden light and uninfested by midday’s dithery tourists. The grand staircase to the Duomo is empty. Most intriguing to me is the theater, a 300-seat hall built around the time of the Unification. It will open at ten o’clock. I pass a vintage store with a couple of captivating baubles in the window. When I get back to the hotel, there’s a message from Ali saying she needs a couple more hours’ sleep.

That gives me plenty of time to caffeinate at my leisure and noodle with the website. It’s nice to push off slowly. I’m all packed. The hotel will let us deposit our luggage in a corner of the breakfast room, where I then sit watching Italian pop music videos. The most memorable one involves a young woman dressed in tin foil wandering around an empty hospital while a creepy hipster dude sings into the camera. Alice appears. We drink coffee on the terrace that looks over the roofs of Noto to the hills beyond. She smokes. And off we go, to Teatro Tina di Lorenzo. It is small and it is grand, with a red velvet curtain in a gold proscenium, 72 red plush orchestra seats, three tiers of boxes, and a peanut gallery. Trompe l’oeil plasterwork covers the ceiling. Only a few theaters in Sicily run a full season of programming: Teatro Lorenzo in one.

Though it’s grown pretty steamy, Alice and I opt for déjeuner sous ficus benjamina, hoping for a wee breeze. We both order pizzas, and when they come, lean back in our chairs, groaning, “Oh, this is too much.” Too much, indeed. We clean our plates.

Our directions are straightforward, but, once off the highway and pointed into Siracusa, the hoops necessary to jump through in order to reach our hotel are medieval. If I make a misstep, the plan gets thrown into the digital hopper and we’re in ‘recalibration’ limbo. The Testy Travelers finally arrive.

A grumpy, late-afternoon exploration of Siracusa is undertaken after a quasi-restorative nap and shower in this bizarro Jacuzzi orgasmatron thing, a glass person-size cylinder with nozzles everywhere and a digital fucking dashboard. . We locate the remaining stones of the temple of Apollo and the amazing freshwater spring, mythologically ascribed to the nymph Arethusa who made the mistake of bathing in the wrong river god’s river. To avoid his aggressive attentions, she dove into the Ionian Sea, resurfacing in Sicily. The smitten deity stalked her, whereupon the goddess Artemis turned her into a spring. The spring is right at the seawall, where it gushes into the sea from a pool of papyrus and koi. Lord Nelson, whose Sicilian adventures mostly involved courting Lady Hamilton, supplied his fleet there before the Battle of the Nile in 1798.

Dinner at the Hotel Livingston is not good, but not having to make a decision was.