Hey there friends of the world! Happy Monday!

This week's newsletter is brought to you by me, Aimara. Surprise!

How was your Thanksgiving? We obviously celebrated with tons of pasta and wine :)

It's hard to believe that we'll be leaving Italy on December 6th. This has been our home for 2 months. We've seen so much of this gorgeous country, eaten so many delicious foods, laughed with so many friendly people and feel a bit too comfortable with the custom of having wine with most of our meals LOL - IDK how we're going to break out of that habit!

Today we're saying hello from another beautiful Sicilian city: Syracuse (Siracusa in Italian).

As you read this email, we will be out there exploring it for the first time, so we don't know much about Syracuse besides that it was on some famous show called 'White Lotus?' I believe someone told us about this, but we haven't watched TV in 2 years LOL, so you probably know more about Syracuse than we do 😂

Believe it or not, we're staying in what seems to be a predominantly Sri Lankan neighborhood, and we already discovered the hot local spot. You may think we're crazy for opting for something other than Italian food while we are here, but it turns out that there is a limit to how much pasta we can eat.

Here's where we will be having our meals for the next 4 days:

Also, I (Aimara) booked the place where we're staying at... and by now, you know what that means... upgrade 🙌🏻

We are fully settled in our new home.

Can you believe this place is $53/night? We are loving the accommodations prices in Sicily in the off season!

Obsessed with this island 🤩

This is a bold statement... BUT being here has been our favorite part of this trip. Is it because we think we've finally found our favorite region in Italy? I don't know... we'll have to see them all first 😜 but it was love at first sight with us and Sicilia.

This past week was spent visiting gorgeous seaside towns, medieval villages and ridiculously impressive ancient Greek ruins. This island has so much to offer for any type of traveler! We're currently filming 2 videos simultaneously and that's why we're moving much faster than usual. In the end, we want to produce content that's useful to you and that will help you decide which places are more your style.

This is where this past week took us:

Stop #1 - Favignana

Did you know Sicily has its own group of islands? They are called the Egadi Islands, and they are spectacular. Favignana is the biggest of this group of three islands, and right now it's the #1 place on our list of places to come back to in Italy.

This island is quiet, relaxing and has the most beautiful turquoise waters. The best way to move around is to rent e-bikes and that's exactly what we did for a day.

We pet a billion cats, fed two super friendly donkeys and marveled at the gorgeous waters and views everywhere. If you do decide to visit Favignana, the best time would be the end of September or beginning of October so you can have amazing beach weather, without too many crowds.

Stop #2 - Trapani & Erice

We slept in Trapani for 2 nights and had no idea what to expect when we booked this place. But we got to feel like we were on a cruise 😂 just look at our place:

Trapani turned out to be a wonderful city, with fun pastas and a very relaxed pace of life where you can take it easy and enjoy life's simple pleasures. From there, we went on a little day trip to a very famous medieval town call Erice which is home to the best bakery in all of Sicily!

And as if the bakery wasn't perfect enough, a very sweet cat claimed G as its human. Needless to say it was a great experience 😂

Keep in mind that basically all the shops in the town of Erice are closed during the month of November and until December 6th. So even though it was very beautiful, it felt like a ghost town.

PS: we have been moving around Sicily with buses only. They are affordable, reliable and the views from the highways are stunning. You guys, we are super serious when we tell you to add Sicily to your list of places to visit!

Stop #3 - Agrigento: The one where I went on a solo adventure 💪🏼

Guys, there are Ancient Greek ruins in Sicily! Why you may wonder... well, because the Greeks were here... and they brought their hot dogs 😂

What is known today as the Valley of the Temples, was once a Greek city called Akragas. Various coastal areas of southern Italy were once colonies of the city-states of ancient Greece and these ruins are some of the finest, best preserved examples of Greek temples outside of Greece itself.

G was a little bit under the weather, and since it was cold and very windy, we decided it was best for me to go alone. We were only aiming for 2-3 minutes of post-edited footage and some of it will be a VoiceOver, so I figured I could handle it all on my own! And I did... well sort of.

It was kind of terrifying to talk to a camera alone without any emotional support haha. Not to mention it was hard to find places to set up our little tripod. Thankfully there were broken ancient columns EVERYWHERE 😂 So in the end, I think I did a good job. At least I was proud of myself and that's what's important here.

Do yourself a favor and add The Valley of the Temples to your Sicily itinerary. Even if you're not interested in ancient ruins, it's a beautiful place to walk around, watch a sunset and enjoy the surroundings. It's only 3 km south of a city called Agrigento, which turned out to be a wonderful little stop with delicious foods and super friendly locals!

We don't have a new video this week :(

It's true. I won't have time to edit any new videos until we're back in the US. But in the meantime, you can watch last week's video where we compare Lake Como and Lake Garda. Pretty please watch it, not a lot of people have, and it's a good video. I promise 😇

What's next for us?

Syracuse is our second to last stop here in Sicily 🥹 I'm having a hard time processing that this trip is about to end, but we're also really looking forward to see our friends and fam who we miss so much while we're on the road. And we have more work to catch up with ever! 🙈

We'll spend this week here in Syracuse filming and getting to know this place, we have a daytrip to a small town called Noto, and on Thursday we head to our last stop: Catania.

We'll probably end up eating a lot of Sri Lankan food (not a joke), AND we plan to try what it's said to be the best sandwich in the world! It's quite an experience to watch how they make it.

We'll tell you all about it next week, but here's a clue in the meantime:

Thanks so much for reading this super long email! I rarely write anything significant for our weekly newsletter, but this was fun. G will be back next Monday :)

See you then ✌🏼

Aimara & Gordon

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