Sicily-better luck next time

Have I mentioned lately that I love road trips? The boys are just at a great age where road trips and fun and exciting. Give the boys a game to play, a video to watch, a book or two to read and a few snacks and they are happy as can be all day long. It is great! Needless to say, I was so super excited to spend this weekend road tripping again in Italy- this time to Sicily. It was with high hopes that we packed a lunch, loaded our bags in the car and headed out of town at 5 am Friday morning.

The trip from Naples to Sicily was supposed to take 7 hours 30 minutes but around 7 am it started snowing. YES, snowing! We were pretty perplexed as it doesn't really snow near the coast in Southern Italy. We thought it was a freak storm that would dump a little snow and blow over BUT it didn't. I snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed. And around 8:30 am we were told we could go no farther on the road we were traveling without chains on our tires. AAARRGGG- our snow chains were at home!

So we pulled out the map and found another route, right along the ocean. It took us more than an hour to get to the coastal road. Once we were there we started off for what was supposed to be only 50 K until we could get to another road. But the road was very narrow and winding and right on the cliffs edge and though it was beautiful (and better than driving in the snow) it took WAY longer than we were expecting it to. Then 2 K from the interchange we were looking for- the road closed because there had been a landslide. Mama Mia! We had to turn around and head back the way we had come.

More than four hours after the first detour we found the third and last road that headed the direction we needed to go. It was a one lane road and because of the weather our average speed was 34 miles per hours. It took forever to get the 230 K we still needed to go!

Around 5 pm (hours and hours later than we anticipated) we finally made it to the ferry terminal, got across the water and on the road again in Sicily. 15 1/2 hours after we started, we pulled into the Hotel tired but grateful for our safe journey.

Anyway, it is beautiful here and I am glad we came...But man, did our trip yesterday test our patience and faith! We are hoping and praying for better weather / driving conditions / luck on the way home!