When traveling in Italy, it’s easy to take the train from city to city, and the trip is generally predictable.  Sure, the train might be late.  It might leave the station, drive for 50 meters, stop for 20 minutes, and then reverse back into the station it just left.  (True experience.)  But you know that eventually the railroad will take you on a predetermined path to your next destination.

Driving a rental car through Sicily’s interior is a very different experience.  You’re on your own schedule.  You can act on impulse and pull over to check out an interesting site.  You can wake up in the morning and ask, “Which direction should we go today?” 

We left Taormina on Friday morning and drove west.  As we circled around Mt. Etna, the rural Sicily that we drove through had narrow mountain roads, rural farms, small vineyards, and hilltop towns.  While the speediest drive to Palermo would take three hours on the interstate, we spent the better part of two days making the journey.  As we drove, we made a few stops.

Stop one – Gole Alcantara.  This is a beautiful wild state park with a river gorge as its central feature.  There are interesting gardens and trails at the entry level of the park, but then you can descend into the gorge and go into the river (which is super-duper freezing ice cold, by the way). 

Stop two – Tenuta delle Terre Nere.  Our go-to wine guy in Inman Park told us to check out this winery if we had the chance, but we hadn’t planned to stop there.  We were just driving down a little country road when we came across the sign for the place.  Chad slammed on the brakes and then reversed back on the country road until we got to the driveway again and drove up.  Unfortunately, their tasting room was closed, but we were able to wander around a little bit.

For most of the first day, we were on little country roads with no other cars. After the crazy tourist crowds of Taormina, it was heaven.  

And then, after so many miles of small, windy mountain roads, we arrived at our agriturismo.  An agriturismo is kind of like a B&B (you can sleep there and have meals) but it also has to have a farm (agricultural – “agri”) function.  The place we stayed at has sheep, cows, geese, chickens, goats, horses, a donkey, and peacocks, plus dogs and cats of course.  Our agriturismo also had a restaurant and a pizzeria, and all ingredients were prepared on the property – bread, cheese, sausage, pasta, marmalade, wine.  The food was really good.

The next morning, the farm’s cheese guy made ricotta, and we were invited to watch and learn with tastings along the way.

When we left the agriturismo, the most direct route to Palermo was on the interstate, but how boring is that?  Instead, we headed back up into the hills and had another day of driving on country roads.

We stopped for lunch in the hilltop city of Gangi.  We wandered through little streets, popped into a couple of churches to have a look, and admired the views of the countryside down below.  We were only there for a couple of hours, but we could definitely go back for a few days and hang out.  It’s a cute town with interesting nooks and crannies, and the people were all very friendly.

As we left Gangi, we drove down the mountain on a long cobblestone road.  Holy bumpiness, Batman!  My teeth were clattering in my skull.  It was at this point that Chad said, “Dear Hertz, you now need an alignment.”

Eventually, we drove down out of the hills and rejoined the interstate for our last part of the journey into Palermo.  But before that, we did have one last memorable moment on our country drive.

That “watch for cows” sign is the real deal.