I will take no credit for the brilliance of this post. It all goes to “the machatunim.” “Machatunim” is Yiddish. It literally means “father of my son-in-law.” Colloquially, it means the entire extended family. In this case, it really does mean the father of my son-in-law, Bernie.

In my last post, I asked for recommendations about places in Sicily. We got some great ones: Syracusa, Taormina, Agrigento, Cefalu, and a whole bunch more. I also made the off-handed comment that Googling “small fishing villages in Sicily” just isn’t specific enough. Bernie suggested that instead of using Google, I use ChatGPT. He tried it, sent me the results, and opened up a whole new world of possibilities.

I instantly realized what makes planning this adventure so challenging: we have constraints I had not really thought of because I did not think we could manage them. For example, Rebecca’s balance is messed up. She walks with poles, cannot carry her own baggage, goes slowly, and prefers holding onto my arm. (That is why we have successfully limited our baggage to one small roller bag and two backpacks, one that hooks onto the roller bag handle and one for my back.) Another is that we have no car, so we need places that are convenient by train or bus. Another is that we want to avoid big hills and rough, uneven terrain. Another is that we want relatively non-touristed villages with comfy lodging and good food … in the off season.

ChatGPT is unbelievably good at finding villages that meet our needs … villages that we would never have thought to look at without its help. Once we have a list of potential villages, Google Maps and Booking.com give us the specifics we need to find places and specific locations within a town. It’s really working!

Here is the plan du jour: We leave Gozo tomorrow. (We extended our stay for several days because we just endured a monster Mediterranean storm with winds exceeding 65 mph and humongous waves. It’s a good thing we had a perfect third-floor room with a balcony overlooking the full wrath of Mother Nature!)

From Gozo, we head to the other side of Malta again, first to a small fishing village we want to see, Marsaskala, and then back to Marsaxlokk so we can experience the Sunday market one more time.

After Marsaxlokk, the winds are supposed to be lingering around a non-gale-like 20 knots or so, so we will be taking the ferry from Valletta, Malta to Pozzallo, Sicily.

We thought Pozzallo would be a scrappy ferry/seaport town, so we thought we’d spend the night there and head out for a real village on Tuesday morning. ChatGPT tweaked that thinking. Not only does Pozzallo sound like a cool place, it has a vibrant downtown with lots of cafes, a long, sandy beach, and great-sounding hotels that are right downtown, one block from the beach, and still totally affordable. I guess Pozzallo will be stuck with us for a few days, and we will be able to judge whether or not we agree with ChatGPT’s assessment of places.

From the Pozzallo train station, we will be able to take a short train trip west to Sampieri or northeast, to Syracusa/Ortigia, which will probably be our first major stop after Pozzallo.

Despite Sicily’s reputation for being home to some of the best preserved ruins in the world, we expect to appreciate what we see and not make special trips to see more. We’ve seen Athens and the Greek Islands and Izmir and Petra and, here in Malta, the Hypogeum and Ggantila. At this stage in our lives, we are more interested in village life than in more sightseeing. We’ll see how that pans out over time.

Stay tuned for updates. Today, we are exploring off-the-beaten-path places in Gozo with Dannae and her boyfriend, Claudio, both from Chile. Dannae (pronounced Donna) is one of the food service folks at our hotel here in Marsalforn. After almost two weeks here, we have bonded pretty tightly. She is delightful! Today is her and Claudio’s day off, so they took us on a tour of places in Gozo we would not otherwise see.

What we have been up to…