Day 1 in the Books!

Ciao ragazzi!

Well, one full day of paradise is in the books.  They still haven't found my luggage, but United "thinks" it is in Brussels, so I will try to get ahold of Brussels Airlines tomorrow.  Wasn't having much luck getting anyone to answer the phone in Europe on a Sunday.

Last night, we headed out to dinner at a pizza place about 15 minutes from Mazara.  Here's a pic of Fran and Claudia all decked out for the evening.

There were about fifteen of us at dinner, and Fran took this selfie of the table before we started the meal, and a smaller shot of just a few of the guys - him, me, Pietro and Nicola.

For dinner, most of us had pizza, a few people ordered "cozze," (mussels).  I opted for the house specialty pizza, with mushrooms, eggplant, pancetta, tomato and mozzarella.  It doesn't often happen in Italy, but this pizza was a miss - at least by Italian standards.  It was undercooked and a bit chewy, but still really decent.  At least I thought so.  Everyone else was pretty livid at the (poor) quality of the food and service.  Here is a picture of the offending entree.

The restaurant is mainly outdoors and had a large dance floor.  When we finished dinner, at about 1:00 am, there were probably fifty people in their sixties and older, dancing the night away.  I couldn't help but be reminded of the movie Cocoon when seeing these jovial folks just soaking up life.  Very inspiring.  Hard to see below, but you get the idea.

After dinner, we headed to a disco nearby, where 15 euro gained us entry and bottle service with a couple bottles of San Francisco's own Sky Vodka!  I felt right at home, especially after Pietro had the DJ give a shout out to the club for our amico visiting from the United States.

If you thought the night was done after dinner, you would be incorrect.  After the club closed at 4:00 am, it was on to this place called Goralein "colazione" (breakfast) of "cornetti" (croissants).

We certainly weren't the only ones going for breakfast, as there were at least fifty or sixty people who also came directly from the club to this local spot for a bite. We hung out for a bit longer, and, by 6:00 am, no sleep 36 hours after leaving San Francisco, my first day in Sicilia was a great one, and in the books!