Ah yes, it’s been too long since we had a ridiculous Sicily driving story, hasn’t?

(Though the rabbit incident should have been enough to fill my driving-stories quota for like a year and a half).

Caltagirone is a city in central Sicily (about an hour from Sigonella) that is known for its gorgeous painted pottery. Chris and I took the kids there in March. Its biggest attraction is an enormous 142-step staircase on which each step is decorated with its trademark painted ceramic pottery.

Beautiful, right?

Yeah, we almost ran it over. Almost. 

At worst, I’d say we nudged it.

Backing up — my friend Amanda and I decided to head to Caltagirone for  some Christmas shopping this morning while our kids were in school. Amanda graciously offered to drive her small SUV, which is most likely the reason I am at home writing this right now instead of still stuck inside my minivan in a situation like this:

Though actually we did have a random Sicilian of our own to help us. Lucky for Amanda, Aziz and I that Sicilians are so helpful!

Anyway, I was navigating and blindly following our Google Maps directions to the general direction of the staircase. We didn’t realize that we were being led (through numerous small streets) to the top of the stairs until we looked right and bam! There it was. Like, right there.

So, locals told us we couldn’t park up there so we decided to uh, just figure out how to get to the bottom. Which was fine! Admittedly we had to stop a few times to pull in mirrors and I at least held my breath through quite a few suuuuper tight turns, but all was fine.

Until we looked ahead and sticking out into the narrow roadway … a stoop. Or what we thought was a stoop. Until we got closer and realized it was the bottom of the fucking staircase.

So I got out of the car in an effort to help Amanda thread the needle and avoid smashing the stairs. Turns out I suck though, so Random Guy across the street started shouting instructions instead and we all found that a much better strategy. We made it out having just, I’d say, nudged the stairs. And then basically dissolved into hysterics.

The fabulous Amanda and her daughter Maggie! Arms stretched for scale. On the bottom right, the stair we nudged. Fortunately, this one didn’t have ceramics on it, like the one directly above.

Anyway, we had a fabulous and super quick visit. I finished up a bunch of Christmas shopping at Ceramiche Artigianali di Salvatore Gurreri and also got a quick tutorial from an employee there.

Gorgeous, no? But I’m not telling what came home with me!

The post The one where we almost ran over Caltagirone’s most famous attraction first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post The one where we almost ran over Caltagirone’s most famous attraction appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

We’ve been planning to go to Caltagirone for quite a while, and on Saturday we finally made it!

(As you might recall, the last time didn’t exactly work out).

Caltagirone is a town about an hour and 20 minutes to the southwest of us. It’s been known for pottery since it was in the hands of the Moors more than 1,000 years ago, as the name comes from an Arabic word for something like “castle of pottery jars.” Caltagirone ceramics are found all over the island now!

The main reason we went was to see the Scalinata di Santa Maria del Monte, the 142-step staircase that joins the upper and lower parts of the city. Every step is decorated with different ceramic tiles.

We walked up all the steps, stopping to admire the tiles on the way. The kids were troopers — Fiona didn’t even want to ride in the carrier most of the way.

Fiona was fascinated!

The view from the top was gorgeous! And kind of scary looking from this angle. Fiona was fairly determined to plummet to her doom, but we managed to thwart her attempts.

“I JUST WANT TO TUMBLE DOWN ALL 142 STEPS”

See the basilica in the distance?

At the top was this mural! I had a theory as we were going up that the tiles were Crusade-themed — which I thought made sense since Richard the Lionheart (whose sister was married to the King of Sicily) stopped in Sicily en route to the Third Crusade — and I feel like this fits? I haven’t done more than a cursory look to try and confirm this theory though. #badblogger

Also at the top of the hill was the Chiesa di Santa Maria del Monte, a 12th century church that didn’t look like all that much from the outside …

But once inside, it proved to be gorgeous.

They did have to have a net up there since the dome seems to be losing some pieces. 

We kept the trip pretty low-key this time — just hung out on the stairs, had a nice lunch and hit up a bunch of pottery shops while I obsessed over what I wanted. Here’s one of the ones I ended up picking.

I’m hoping that we’ll go back at the end of May for Infiorita, a festival where they decorate the stairs with flowers. At the end of July they also have Illuminata, when they light up the stairs with candles in honor of the town’s patron saint, San Giacomo. Both look amazing!

Photo credit: http://www.ansa.it/sicilia/notizie/2016/05/19/a-caltagirone-scala-infiorata-2016_477f931f-3b82-4015-9582-83de233ec6c7.html

The post A day trip to Caltagirone first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post A day trip to Caltagirone appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.