LETOJANNI
The shift from my Taormina airbnb to the Hotel Della Palme was only five miles, but is a world apart. The Hotel Della Palme is owned by Enzo, a cousin of Rob Amberg, whose 75th birthday party I am attending on Saturday. About 50 or 60 people are coming to the party on the Saturday, the 14th, most of them from Madison County and Marshall, the little town by the French Broad River north of Asheville close to where Rob and his family live. But there are also 10 people or so coming from Duke University where Rob’s photographs are being archived.
Taormina is all elegance and presentation, Letojanni is small seaside hotels and restaurants where middle class people are relaxing and enjoying a beach vacation. Taormina is crowded, at Letojanni the season is almost over, while still cloudless and warm, is uncrowded, almost deserted.
I had dinner at a beach restaurant with Rob and his wife Leslie along with Titus, a documentary photographer and his wife, Maureen who works at the Duke Medical Center along with Marshall friends.
The next day I ate lunch with Rob and Leslie again at the same beach restaurant, Ciaociao along with Rob and Leslie’s daughter Kate with her friend Lurane, who have flown in from Mendocino, California and who after the wedding are flying from Rome to Las Vegas where the two of them are going to host a wild four day bachelorette party for a friend.
Everyone seems to be having an exotic life, including me, it turns out. It is fun getting to know small town Marshall people, friends of my daughter Susie and her man Todd, in Letojanni, Sicily. My son Tom is flying in on Saturday, just before the party, and in addition to jet lag won’t know a soul here except me.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 