Our Sicilian Family from Caccamo!

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DAY 7:  Thursday, May 24th:  Our flight from Naples left at 2:00 in the afternoon and within less than an hour we had arrived in Palermo! 

Before I go on, I need to flashback to last December when Jo Ann's mother (my mother-in-law), Celia Dolores Zaranti, was researching her family tree with her daughter Laurie.  They knew their grandfather came from Caccamo, Sicily, but they didn't know any of their relatives, and they weren't even sure if any of them still lived there.  So I wrote some letters in Italian to everybody with the same last name in the town of Caccamo and almost immediately I received an email response from Silia, whose husband Pino was a relative! That started a phone and email communication with her family and ours, and soon their oldest son Roberto came to Buffalo to visit!  Sadly, none of us knew then that Celia would pass away by the following March, but she had a chance to meet and spend some time with Roberto, and had some great phone conversations with Silia in Sicily.  What a beautiful family they are, and now here we were, in Sicily, and we were about to meet the Zarauti Family from Caccamo!

We arrived at the Palermo airport about 3:00 in the afternoon, and Silia and her second son, Sergio, were waiting for us.  There were 4 of us with all our luggage, but somehow we all managed to fit everything into their 2 small cars and Silia joked that Jessie's luggage was bigger than her car!

Silia was as charming and beautiful as we thought she would be, and in fact it wasn't until after we had left Sicily that Jessie and JoMarie were shocked to find out that this was actually the first time Jo Ann and I met Silia - we all got along so well together and had so much fun together that the whole time we were there they thought we already knew each other.  They never realized that none of us had ever met until that day when she picked us all up at the airport. 

On the way to Caccamo we stopped at a small coffee shop that offered pizza, panini, pastries and gelato and Silia treated us all to a delicious afternoon meal of the variety of foods offered.  It was a great start to our first visit to Sicily!

After we enjoyed our meal, Silia and Sergio took us and all our luggage to the apartment that we rented in the center of Caccamo.  It was a perfect location and had a balcony overlooking the town.  Silia said she'd be back in a few hours to take us to dinner at her house, so we unpacked, settled in, then took a quick walk to explore the town before getting picked up for dinner.  I even had a chance to take one of my now famous "foot pictures" on the ancient stone streets of Caccamo.

We spent the evening with Silia and her husband Pino and enjoyed a beautiful dinner that they prepared for us.  The grilled eggplant was the best I had ever eaten (must get the recipe!), and I will be dreaming of Silia's home- baked bread (homemade in her wood burning oven at their country home) filled with a ricotta stuffing for the rest of my life!

Pino left soon after dinner but he came back shortly afterwards with a platter full of mini gelato cones dipped in chocolate!  Delizioso!

It was an enjoyable evening, but soon it was time to go since we had a busy day planned for the next day.  So Silia took us back to our apartment and taught us all how to light the stove and make espresso in a small pot just like the one I still have from my grandmother.  Then it was time for bed since tomorrow we had another full day planned starting with an early morning visit to the market in Termini.



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CLICK HERE TO START AT THE BEGINNING POST:  Meet the Buffalo Girls!