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The rain lightly pelted my window just as dawn was breaking on the Ionian Sea. I was lying snugly in my hotel bed in Syracuse, the venerable, ancient city on the eastern coast of Sicily. I dozed off for another hour or so before I was awakened once more by morning light through the balcony window. Does travel get any better than this? I thought. I...

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In the baroque town of  Caltagirone, Sicily, the main attraction is its ceramics industry. The name of the town derives from the Arabic word qal’at-al-ghiran, meaning Castle of Vases. There are ceramics everywhere you look: tile murals on buildings, as signs, and in the many ceramics shops just waiting for a savvy voyager to select a few special pi...

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No, its not just because the pizza you'll find in Italy's smaller cities will likely be cheaper than comparable pies in the big touristy ones like Florence and Rome. It's because to overlook places in Italy off the main tourist track is committing a travel sin of the highest order. Sure, I love Venice as much as the next person, but the summer thro...

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Federazione Siciliana del Michigan presents its 10th Annual Memorial Mass at 11:30 a.m. at Holy Family Church, 641 Chrysler Drive, Detroit. This is a Memorial Mass for everyone in the Italian-American Community, in which loved one’s names will be read out loud. In situations where more then one family member lists the same deceased name(s), all ind...

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We Play for Tips, the outstanding new album by the Sicilian saxophonist Francesco Cafiso, is a homage to New Orleans jazz. The title comes from a saying that Crescent City street musicians have emblazoned on their caps, an image that Cafiso says stuck with him after a trip to New Orleans when he was a teenager. But the latest recording by the 28-ye...

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Sicily is one of Italy’s most fascinating and unique places, and there is no shortage of astounding things to do and see on this island. Sicily is teeming with cosmopolitan towns, and fishing villages alike, archeological sites, enchanting piazze, breath-taking scenery and panoramas, and delectable cuisine that reflects the many cultures that have...

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We stood on the deck of the hulking cargo ship, through the bluster and drizzle in the Strait of Messina, both of us feeling something like sailors docking at an unfamiliar port of call. My new acquaintance, a Genovese Ph.D. student in anthropology named Giacomo, explained to me that he’d rarely ventured south of Rome, much less ever been to Sicily...

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Italy’s most popular destinations—Rome, Venice, Florence, the Cinque Terre—are endlessly alluring, but in peak summer months they can be crowded and expensive as well. The country’s classic attractions—great art, architecture, food, wine, medieval villages and beautiful country landscapes—can be found outside its famous spots, but where are the bes...

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Today, the enigmatic pachyderm mentioned by the geographer sits atop an 18th-century fountain in the middle of a piazza. The fountain was constructed in the 1730s by Sicilian architect Giovanni Battista Vaccarini, who appropriated the city’s by-then legendary elephant as its centerpiece. Vaccarini draped a marble saddle cloth over the elephant that...

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My first trip to Sicily was pre-GPS in the early 2000s. Desperately lost in the chaos of downtown Palermo on a congested one-way street, I yelled over honking horns to ask a policeman how to get to my hotel. “Well, you can go straight, left, left, and left again, then right … or,” he paused and waved his hands with the drama of an opera star, “you...

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