It’s been nearly two months now since I went to Sicily, Italy, for our team meetup (I’m a Happiness Engineer on the Store Team at Automattic, the division of the company whose twin purposes are to keep the WordPress.com Store running smoothly and to keep our Store clients happy), and I finally am getting around to posting the pics I took of that mad, 6-day working-and-eating bacchanalia.
As a reference point, we stayed at the Grand Hotel des Palmes in Palermo for the entire week, using it as our home base over the weekend while we ventured out on day trips to the historic site of Agrigento and the rustic fishing village of Cefalu. The hotel had a lot of…issues, many of them having to do with spotty wifi, which is verboten when your client is a cloud-based company that runs nearly a quarter of the world’s websites.
But in terms of location — just a fifteen-minute walk from the harbor and across the street from a charming little coffeehouse with a Breakfast-at-Tiffany’s theme (complete with a very large poster of Audrey Hepburn in that famous black dress — served as some compensation, and the expansive breakfast buffet, which included a seemingly endless supply of yummy cannoli, helped kick off each day on a high note. It was the first time I’d ever had cannoli ever, so it felt only fitting that I would finally indulge in that rich, melt-in-your-mouth dish in its native home.
(Note: These were all taken using my Nexus 4 camera and have yet to be edited. I just wanted them up and published!)
- On the bus to Cefalu.
- Even roadside “coffeehouses” are fancy-schmancy in Italy.
- My colleagues Jon and Stephane.
- Probably my hundredth cannoli. Did I mention that roadside coffee here is amazing?
- Colleagues Dion, Matt, Wendy, and Evan.
- No one can eat just one.
- I just want to pack this all up and take it home with me.
- Colleagues Jackie and Rads. If they could jump out from the picture and talk to you, they would say, “This was one of the worst meals we’ve ever had.”
- Cefalu.
- Rads looking very much like he just stepped out of a Fellini movie.
- Colleague Veselin.
- Road from the beach.
- Dinner in Cefalu.
- Breakfast at our home base, the Hotel Grand des Palmes in Palermo.
- Market day in Palermo (Sunday).
- Relief from the summer Italian sun.
- Communist Sicily.
- Yes, it’s garlic. The aroma was almost overwhelming.
- Palermo catacombs.
Hello Marjorie-
What a great place to have a team meeting! We used to think it was a special occasion if a team meeting was held somewhere local that took us outside of our school district central office!
Love the photos and stories.
I’ve peeked in on a few of your posts and enjoy your perspectives. So, when you look at your list of followers, you will soon find me there as well 🙂
What a pleasant moment it was to find you as a follower of Just Another Nature Enthusiast after our chat yesterday! Thank you. Please do me a favor… offer constructive feedback when you see opportunities. I value your expertise.
Thanks again-
Jane