Tag: restaurant reviews

Postcard from Palermo, Sicily: Dining from A to Lac-

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Above: A crispy slice of potato topped with fish, sauteed spinach and a crown of fried leeks at Il Mirto e la Rosa

In keeping with the practice of alphabetizing restaurants we visited to try to assist you in your future travels, A’Nica Ristorante e Pizzeria Gourmet is first up to bat. We already had been in Sicily for a month by the time we arrived in Palermo, so our standards had risen fairly high. A’Nica’s large outdoor patio was directly across a pocket park from our apartment, so it attracted us the first night.

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Postcard from London, England: Stonehenge to “Pottershire” road trip

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Above: Definitive proof that a family of giants, so advanced they had cellphones, built Stonehenge.

According to folklore, Stonehenge was created by Merlin, the wizard of Arthurian legend, who magically transported the massive stones from Ireland, where giants had assembled them. Another legend says invading Danes put the stones up, and another theory says they were the ruins of a Roman temple. Modern-day interpretations are no less colorful: some argue that Stonehenge is a spacecraft landing area for aliens, and even more say it’s a giant fertility symbol in the shape of female genitalia.”

“Stonehenge,” James Allen, National Geographic

Kate, third from the left in this family of giants, arranged a driver for a road trip from London into Wiltshire and Berkshire so we had no difficulty comfortably working the stops below into a day.

Far be it from me to attempt an explanation of the site of Durrington (“The Farm of the Deer People”) Walls Henge, aside from the archaeologists’ conclusions that the Neolithic Bronze Age settlement of Durotiges Celts dates from about 2,500 B.C. In other words, an extremely long, long time before Mel Gibson’s Wallace of Braveheart.

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March music madness, food and follies

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Above: Bottlecap Mountain playing at The Highball

Not sure how many people were registered officially for the first four days of SXSW 2024 (SouthBy ’24), but there were more than 75,000 from 100 countries in 2023. Those are mainly the techies. Add in the film and music festival attendance throughout the week, and the number doubles. There were somewhere in the range of 1,500 acts scheduled, not counting the unofficial ones rippling across music venues throughout the city.

In other words, Austin was hopping.

We are among the fringe attendees who avail themselves of a couple of the many free or low-cost events not requiring badges. Some snapshots from those, several at The Saxon Pub, are found below, along with a snippet of Bottlecap Mountain’s new “I’ve Got Something for You.”

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