{"id":1362,"date":"2017-05-13T19:45:41","date_gmt":"2017-05-13T19:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/?p=1362"},"modified":"2017-05-15T17:01:17","modified_gmt":"2017-05-15T17:01:17","slug":"day-7-godfather-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/?p=1362","title":{"rendered":"Day 7: “Godfather” Country"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Narrow roads, little traffic,<\/p><\/div>\n

It was Thursday, our last day, and our guide, Ben, was proposing to depart from the planned route for an adventure.\u00a0 He wanted to ride back into the coastal mountains and see the town of Savoca, filming site of the Sicilian scenes in The Godfather.\u00a0 The 6,000 vert. ft. in 35 mi. proposed by Strava seemed a bit daunting, but, what the hell, it was the LAST DAY! It called for adventure.<\/p>\n

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Above the clouds at 1,000 m. The day was overcast, but we had no more than a couple sprinkles<\/p><\/div>\n

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The overcast sky threatened rain all day but we never got more than a few sprinkles.\u00a0 Who ever heard of a bike trip without rain?\u00a0 Once again Sicily surprised us in every way.\u00a0 The roads were winding and quiet with reasonable gradients (5-9%) and spectacular scenery. \u00a0We rode through scattered old towns, occupied and industrious, with denizens whose families had seemingly lived there for hundreds of years. \u00a0Buildings were in various states of upkeep and repair–it looked like a\u00a0hardscrabble, dignified life.<\/p>\n

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We passed through many old mountain towns<\/p><\/div>\n

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Working class houses in various states of upkeep<\/p><\/div>\n

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Town in valley below during a clearing in the clouds<\/p><\/div>\n

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Approaching Savoca….<\/p><\/div>\n

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Savoca is a favorite of film buffs. Here’s Ben taking a shot of Bar Viteli, site of an important Godfather scene.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Inside, Howie studies a wall with photos from the filming.<\/p><\/div>\n

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View from piazza in front of the bar to the church where, the wedding was filmed. Note the sculpture of a video camera in the foreground.<\/p><\/div>\n

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As for The Godfather piece, it was charming but not essential to the day\u2019s enjoyment.\u00a0 Don Corleone is from\u2014you guessed it\u2014the town of Corleone, a mafia stronghold.\u00a0 Unfortunately, in the early 1970\u2019s Corleone was modernizing and not very video-genic so Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s location scouts found Savoca.\u00a0 Today, sightseeing by movie buffs assures Savoca\u2019s economic future and the town keeps its charm while enjoying the prosperity many visitors bring.\u00a0 Bar Viteli, for example, lets anyone wander through with a camera; they also dish up the most expensive gelato Howie found in Sicily at \u20ac3.50\/scoop!<\/p>\n

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Packing up to prepare for a 4 AM departure the next morning…<\/p><\/div>\n

Later in the afternoon, we returned to Taormina for our last evening in Sicily.\u00a0 We had had a most excellent day\u2019s adventure, and repeated Rich\u2019s refrain to capture the day and all of our days in Sicily:\u00a0 \u201cNow that\u2019s<\/i> QUALITY<\/i>!!!\u201d\u00a0 (44 mi., 5,000 ft.)<\/p>\n

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It was Thursday, our last day, and our guide, Ben, was proposing to depart from the planned route for an adventure.\u00a0 He wanted to ride back into the coastal mountains and see the town of Savoca, filming site of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[53],"class_list":["post-1362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","tag-sicily-100th-giro"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3QqGi-lY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}