At the end of the first installment we were enjoying an elegant champagne reception in the astounding Valguarner-Gangi Palace.

It is really impossible to describe the palace. It is so magnificently over-the-top. It boggles the mind to think that people actually live there.

We retired to our hotel and some of us took a nightcap in the balmy October weather in the beautiful gardens of the Villa Igeia.

The next morning was a free morning to help people process Palermo's cultural overload. Some simply slept-in and relaxed, some went walking in the city, and some, naturally, went shopping.

We reconvened at noon to proceed to the Lanza-Tomasi Palace — another baroque wonder that is still a private residence — where we were given a beautiful lunch by Prince and Princess Juacino Lanza-Tomasi, whose home it is. The prince is the descendant and heir of Prince Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa who wrote "the " great novel of Sicily, The Leopard. (The men of the old Sicilian aristocracy were called "I Gattopardi" - The Leopards.) Our youthful hosts were wonderfully erudite, immensely charming, and marvelous conversationalists in, of course, perfect English. After a most leisurely lunch the Prince took us on a tour of the great house with all its treasures (from the early Renaissance on) and its terraced gardens hanging over the bay of Palermo... The lunch, the magnificent house — but above all — the delightful company of Lanza-Tomasi and his wife made an altogether brilliant farewell to Palermo.

In mid-afternoon our little bus arrived to pick us up and convey us to the port city of Milazzo where we boarded the boat for Lipari, the largest of the Aeolian Islands... Aeolis was the Greek god of the winds and Greeks believed, as did the later Romans, that these islands were his abode.

We arrived in Lipari in the early evening, checked into the pleasant Hotel Meligunis, settled in and went up to the penthouse dining room for dinner... I'll let you guess what we had — but accompanied by wonderful wines!

The next morning we toured the island with, once again, an absolutely top-notch guide who led us through layers of ancient civilizations and on to the remarkable archaeological museum at Lapari, which overflows with objects from Mediterranean prehistory and the classical world. Once again, in our little bus, we climbed mountains of volcanic debris; great lava flows and a mountain range of compacted ash — pumice — from thousands of ancient eruptions. These islands are still percolating and the pumice is mined commercially, so mining operations dot the islands.

After lunch at the hotel we boarded a beautiful old converted sailing launch that had been used by Roberto Rosselini and Ingrid Bergman during the filming of Stromboli — remember Ingrid clawing her way up the exploding mountain with her bare hands?

We made for the island of Panarea anchoring for a time in the surreal Cala Junco Bay surrounded by fantastic lava formations where two hardy members of our group — Marion Pinto and Gary Eidsvold — donned bathing suites and leaped into the wine dark sea for, well — a surreal swim.
Arriving in Panarea's little port we debarked for a marvelous fisherman's feast at Zia Pina's restaurant and a walking tour of the little town. Towards sunset we reboarded and sailed away from Panarea for a long, memorable boat ride to Sciavva del Fuoco, a huge lava flow where we anchored to watch the nighttime eruptions of Stromboli... We anchored again at the village of Stromboli for a late dinner and returned through the night to home port and our hotel. By the time we reached Lipari everyone was asleep in the sea air. Some on the deck benches and some below deck.

The next morning we returned to mainland Sicily and thence to the large port of Messina to cross the straits to see two of the most magnificent male nudes — The Bronzes of Riaci — which have survived from ancient Greece. Larger than life size, these masterworks of the 5th century BCE were being shipped from Greece to some now unknown Greek city in Sicily when the ship carrying them went down in the Ionian Sea near the village of Liuci. It was not until 1971 when some Calabrian fishermen, dragging their nets, discovered them. The statues clearly represent heroes of Greek myth, although which ones is unknown. After years of painstaking restoration in Florence, they have been on display in the Museum of Reggio Calabria since 1981. If you ever go to Italy these bronzes are worth a side trip.

After the awe-inspiring visit to The Riaci Bronzes, as they are now known, we lunched at a delightful restaurant called, "Il Consolato Della Seta;" something like "The Silkmakers" Guild. It was owned and operated by two very personable young men who were clearly on our wave length. And then hence to our final stop, — Taromina.

Ah, Taromina!... The town, clinging to ridges and crags and dizzying cliffs high over the sparkling sea, makes a wonderful base for excursions and exploration.

We had arrived in Taromina at sunset and the views from the Hotel Diodoro, with Mount Etna looming down the coast, were breathtaking. Many of us went walking in the old, precipitous streets of medieval and renaissance buildings. The day ended with a fine dinner and an after dinner walk followed by a good night's sleep.

The next morning we made an early departure for the great city of Syracuse with its ancient Greek heart. Among many other moving sites of Greek Civilization we visited the immense Greek theatre which was the scene of world premiers of works by the likes of Aeschylus.

In the ancient world Syracuse's status in relation to Greece was similar to that of New York in relation to the "old countries" of Europe. For the Greeks Sicily was "The New World."

After a day of intense sight-seeing we returned to Taromina to visit its own beautiful Greek theater and to shop for things like cards and photographs by the great turn-of-century German photographer, The Baron Wilhelm Von Gloeden. He was particularly renowned for his male nudes — a rarity at the end of the 19th century — and two shops in Il Corso, the main street, still do a brisk business in these beautiful old images.

That evening we had a gala farewell dinner in the very grand old Hotel Timeo and everyone wondered where the next Leslie-Lohman tour might go.

There will, of course, be other tours in the future... We'll keep you posted.

And a brief afterward... Our heartfelt thanks and admiration for Anna Canepa whose meticulous planning and brilliant organization made this voyage of discovery so unforgettable...

And you can be sure, the next time around we will have Anna at the helm again!

Go to Part 1 (the beginning)