{"id":896,"date":"2017-01-01T17:55:51","date_gmt":"2017-01-01T21:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/?p=896"},"modified":"2017-01-02T10:38:26","modified_gmt":"2017-01-02T14:38:26","slug":"sicily-day-0-november-16-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/?p=896","title":{"rendered":"Sicily Day 0, November 16, 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Nick and I\u00a0enjoyed several travel adventures in 2016, both national (San Francisco) and international (Costa Rica).\u00a0After some\u00a0medical issues were resolved, we had\u00a0ourselves added to\u00a0the \u00a0wait list for a Rick Steves off-season tour of\u00a0Sicily. \u00a0Months passed, but nothing happened.\u00a0Then one day I received a \u00a0call from the Rick Steves \u00a0company saying that they were opening \u00a0another tour to accommodate the people on the wait list. They\u00a0 asked if we were interested. We were!<\/p>\n

The tour would begin in late November, which was perfect for us.\u00a0We\u00a0would have a memorable celebration of our 40th anniversary. Also, I knew that my birth surname, Nucatola, was a type of cookie that is made in\u00a0Sicily in November and December, \u00a0and I hoped we would be able to find it there. We wanted to reconnect with my Nucatola relatives whom we had met there in 2005\u00a0so\u00a0we added\u00a0some additional days\u00a0in Palermo before the tour.<\/p>\n

Because my Italian was very rusty, I practiced every day using Duolingo<\/em>, an on-line language learning site. \u00a0Also, I contacted three genealogists in the hope that they could help me trace my Family Tree back a little further. Unfortunately, each wrote back to tell me that what I wanted to accomplish was not possible.<\/p>\n

The night before we leave on any trip, I take off my wedding and engagement rings and put them away. For the first \u00a0time, I couldn’t get them off my finger! I tried every suggestion on the Internet, including\u00a0soap, butter, oil, Windex, and wrapping the finger tightly in dental\u00a0floss and then trying to slide the rings over the floss. By this time my finger was a swollen mess. It was obvious that the rings were coming with me!<\/p>\n

We left from JFK on November 16. The flight \u00a0from New York to Rome was uneventful, except that I thought \u00a0I saw the actress Stephanie March, who portrayed\u00a0Alexandra Cabot\u00a0on Law and Order, on the flight.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick and I\u00a0enjoyed several travel adventures in 2016, both national (San Francisco) and international (Costa Rica).\u00a0After some\u00a0medical issues were resolved, we had\u00a0ourselves added to\u00a0the \u00a0wait list for a Rick Steves off-season tour of\u00a0Sicily.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sicily-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=896"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":906,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions\/906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}