Mandranova, Palermo, Rome, JFK, Saturday, May 11, 2024
Up bright and early to make our 12:40 flight from Palermo to Rome. The drive was a snap, mostly on autostrada, with just a bit of traffic around Palermo. Dropped the car, flew to Rome, and found a nice lounge to sit for while. OK, the men liked it better than the women and the food was genuinely terrible. So we left plenty of time to figure out what we needed to do to check in to our Norse flight. Good thing, too, since confusion was the order of the day. Norse offers no online checkin. So we had a hell of a time figuring out how to check in, but after lots of extra walking and anxiety, we went to the gate as it was announced and sure enough, they simply scanned our passports and gave us a boarding pass. The captain of our plane claimed that they will add online checkin in the “next few months,” but I’m not sure we’ll ever fly with them again.
Departing Rome at 7 PM is not necessarily something I would repeat. It meant arriving at JFK at 10:30 PM, or rather 4:30 AM European time. I slept for several hours, but Sue couldn’t get comfortable. We walked in the door at midnight…and our exceptionally memorable trip to Sicily was over.
Sue and I are already eager to return. For Sue, Sicily stands with the state of Oaxaca as places with which we feel a deep connection. We will probably return to the eastern half of the island, spending time around Etna, on the Aeolian islands, and…at Mandranova.