During the summer after my first year of teaching, my roommate and I toured throughout Europe for 2 1/2 months. It was so long ago that we actually used Fodor's "Europe on $5.00 a day" as our travel guide. One of our side trips was to spend a few days in Sicily in an effort to visit (where I thought that my grandparents were born) Mistretta, Sicily. After taking a train from Rome, we left the mainland of Italy by ferry and disembarked in Messina, Sicily. The harbor of Sicily is pictured above. My most memorable recollection of Messina was looking for a restaurant. What seems like a simple task was made difficult because we couldn't read or speak Italian and we didn't encounter anyone who spoke English.
After deciding on a restaurant, we quickly realized that we had no idea what was on the menu. Our perplexed looks must have been quite obvious to the waitress because, soon after being seated, the owner arrived at our table and invited us into the kitchen. The chef showed us the dishes that he was preparing for his patrons and our meal was selected by simply pointing to the items that we wanted him to prepare for us. Perhaps it was the unusual circumstances of selecting our meal, but it was a memorable moment. By the way, the food was wonderful.
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