Looking for Signs

In the modern era it is possible to travel to ancient sites without making a wrong turn. But during our recent Italian road trip, we traveled more days without GPS than with this marvelous convenience because, frankly, we were looking for a little inconvenience.

In Taormina, considered to be the first resort town of ancient times on what is now the island of Sicily, we searched at length for “Teatro Antico di Taormina” — the Greek theater built in the 3rd Century BC and remodeled by the Romans in the 1st Century AD. It is one of the largest ancient venues of its kind in Europe, and it’s still used for productions today. Yet — for two hours — we couldn’t find it!

We circled and criss-crossed the vibrant town of Taormina for nearly two hours, drove up and down its hillside roads, and stopped to ask a variety of locals for directions; but we never saw a sign for this big attraction until we finally approached the theater, on foot, just 50 yards from its entrance. The blessing of our bungling was that we saw far more of this famous and prospering town than most people do….and certainly more of it than we had planned.

In contrast and on the opposite side of Sicily — the southwest corner — we had no trouble finding a working farm we had booked for a night’s stay.  Hand-painted signs  on fence-posts pointed the turn-off from the busy paved highway, and continued to mark the way down three miles of rocky two-track paths through weedless vineyards to a farm which has been in the same family for three generations and once made wine from the grapes it still grows.

Modern technology has moved the winemaking to another location, and the facility is now a bed-and-breakfast style inn.  We dined next to eight-foot diameter casks and antique wine-making tools in a stone room with several high arching alcoves. Our bedroom, a twenty-by-twenty-by-twenty-foot cube, with a view over the orchards and vineyards to the sea, was the room occupied by our host when he was a youth.

And then there’s Sardinia, a smaller island located a 13-hour overnight ferry ride northwest of Sicily. There are supposed to be 7,000 ancient nuraghi on Sardinia, erected between 1800 to 1500 BC for purposes that experts still debate. There are signs along the roadways to many of these generally cone-shaped stone structures, but rarely is the driver given the distance to the site, and frequently there is no passable road to the nuraghi. We pursued several dead ends.

And it seems like rural Sardinians like to fool with travelers by piling up rocks in their fields in the shape of cones which imitate the antiquities. We chased  after some of these imposters as well.

JER