A honeymoon and homecoming
SICILY | Newlywed couple celebrates the future by looking for relatives' past
My new wife and I had one mission when we arrived in Termini Imerese, the Sicilian town where my dad's ancestors lived: Find my family's namesake street, Via Fusco.
We had a hunch this wouldn't be easy. More than two weeks into our honeymoon in Sicily, our trip had been anything but.
Before you go: If you're exploring your lineage, talk to as many relatives in the United States as possible. Had we reached out to my extended family, I could have looked up a distant relative or two in Termini Imerese. Also, weigh the amount of time you'll spend booking hotels vs. what you'll pay to hire a travel planner or go on a tour. We used BlueStone Tourism Services, www.bluestonesicily.com. Another option is www.world sisland.com.
Getting there: Bank on at least one connecting flight on the way to the island, meaning there's a possibility of lost luggage. Carry-on as much as possible. Consider flying into Catania, on Sicily's east side, rather than Palermo. It's a great starting point for a trip -- close to Syracuse, Mt. Etna and tourist friendly Taormina.
Getting around: Sicily's main expressway network, the Autostrada, is a joy compared to local roads. Use it whenever possible.
Three good hotels: In Taormina, the historic San Domenico Palace, www.thi.it/eng/ben venuto.asp. In Catania, the sleek Il Principe, www.il principehotel.com. And in Palermo, the centrally located Hotel Principe di Villafranca, www.principedivillafranca.it.
Must try foods: Almond granita, arancini (fried rice balls), cannoli and just about anything else you can at the local bar. (Bars in Sicily are bakeries, coffee houses, sandwich shops and drinking establishments all under single roofs.) If possible, try the grainy, ancient-recipe chocolate in the baroque town of Modica. Chris Fusco
First, there was the lost luggage. Then came the white-knuckle scooter-dodging drives on winding roads designed for horses, not horsepower. And who could forget the grumpy innkeeper in Corleone, who we strongly suspect hocked loogies in our cappuccinos.
But in Termini Imerese, the 70-ish-looking man working the front desk at Town Hall greeted us warmly. I gave him my business card, hoping he'd recognize me as a long-lost relative . . . or at least give us a map.
"Foose-co," he said slowly, pronouncing my name as it sounded before my relatives Americanized it to Fuss-co.
Then he recognized another word: "Chicago."
Before we knew it, we were in the heart of the centuries-old building, exploring its chandeliered Council chambers as we awaited directions to Via Fusco from an English-speaking employee. My wife, Chicago Sun-Times Travel Editor Lori Rackl, snapped a shot of me next to the town crest.
I grinned from ear to ear.
Sicily may have driven us mad at times, but -- at this moment -- the place felt magical. Here I was, 5,030 miles from home, about to retrace my great-great grandparents' footsteps.
This long-held desire to get a glimpse of my family's past as Lori and I embarked on our future pushed Sicily to the top of our honeymoon list.
We'd heard rave reviews about the island's food, wine, sweets, landscapes and architecture. But the chance to see the towns from which my family emigrated proved as enticing as plates of pasta with fennel, bottles of Nero D'Avola, bars of Modican chocolate, spectacular wildflower fields and the well-preserved Greek temple at Segesta.
Heading to Sicily also would make us trailblazers of sorts. No
one in my immediate family had been to the places where my great-grandparents once lived -- not even my grandparents, all of whom were born in Chicago and rarely traveled beyond the South Side and southwest suburbs.
I knew only the following about my family's roots: My dad's side (Fuscos and Scalettas) hailed from Termini, on the north coast about an hour's drive east of Palermo. My mom's side (Alleruzzos and LaPortas) came from Nicosia, a hill town close to, well, nothing.
We booked our flight in January, thinking we could e-mail hotels and reserve rooms for our late-March honeymoon. But we soon learned that Sicilians -- who once lived under Greek, Arab and Norman rule, among others -- are, like many Italians, a bit lacking in the customer-service department. Only a few hotels replied, and those that did seemed to be quoting us nightly rates well outside our budget.
For help, we turned to a Sicilian travel company, BlueStone Tourism Services. My travel-veteran wife was skeptical about paying somebody to organize our itinerary. But our trip planner, Riccardo Mobilia, saved us hours of aggravation by booking our hotels and directing us to must-see places.
He also saved us from a honeymoon without most of our gear by staying on top of Alitalia airlines, which couldn't find our bags for six days. Mobilia hounded Alitalia until our bags finally turned up in Palermo, where he personally picked them up and drove them three hours across the island to our hotel in Catania.
Should we be lucky enough to have children, the name Riccardo clearly is in the running for our first-born, Lori said.
Mobilia's heroics with our bags allowed us to more fully enjoy the whirlwind course he had set for us.
Sicily might best be described as several countries wrapped into a space the size of New Hampshire. It's got beaches, forests, vineyards, volcanoes and seemingly every kind of vegetation imaginable -- from fennel to cacti to lemon trees.
Historical and cultural diversity is on display, too. In Syracuse, for example, there's a Baroque cathedral a few blocks from the Greek temple to Apollo. An hour or so west of town, you'll find rolling green hills and stone fences that belong on a postcard from Ireland.
And that's just Sicily's southeast side. Snow-covered Mount Etna to the north offered an alpine experience. We planned on hiking some of its tens of thousands of acres of parkland. But once Lori learned we could ski down a muntagna, as the locals call it, there was no turning back. I soon was careening down a snowy slope for the first time in a decade, hoping not to fall on my face and break my signature Sicilian promontory of a nose on a lava rock.
We both fell plenty, but the experience of skiing down a smoking volcano eclipsed our embarrassment.
After Etna, we drove to Nicosia, a place seemingly lost in time. A bunch of guys who looked like my late Great Grandpa Alleruzzo sat and chatted on the weathered square. Looking at them, I got the sense why Great Grandpa left. The hill town of nearly 15,000 had its charms, but it also felt incredibly isolated from the rest of the world.
Termini Imerese, home to the other half of my family tree, proved to be a more inviting spot. About an hour east of Palermo, it felt like the Naperville of Sicily -- clean, easy to navigate (by Sicilian standards) and filled with friendly people.
We eventually tracked down Via Fusco, only to find this "street" is more of an alley ... better yet, a glorified driveway. It didn't even have a street sign, as the letters recently had been painted over. So much for that family photo.
Termini did, however, have a massive, manicured cemetery filled with Fuscos and Scalettas. As is common in Italy, many graves included a picture of the deceased, so we started snapping pictures. Only when we attended a family reunion later in the year did we realize we had taken a photo of my great-great grandparents' grave. How cool is that?
Much cooler than the surly innkeeper in Corleone, who grumpily coughed up a lung as he prepared our cappuccinos. Our travel agent, Mobilia, warned us this place wouldn't be anywhere near the grand San Domenico Palace -- our magnificently gardened hotel in Taormina -- but we didn't expect it to be quite this bad.
Nor did we expect Sicily to be so exasperating, fascinating and beautiful.
This may not have been the most relaxing honeymoon. But we came home with a better understanding of my background, a possible name for a child and a long list of experiences we'll remember 'til death do us part.