There’s always one thing that does it.
One sight.
One sound.
One smell.
Something that tells you, unmistakably:
You have arrived.
For me, at Don Arcangelo all’Olmo, it was an olive tree.
Not Mount Etna.
Not the Ionian Sea.
Not the flowers.
Not even the food.
An olive tree.
It stood perfectly framed by the great arched doorway at the end of the entrance hall, sunlight pouring into the garden behind it with soon-to-be friends.
After everything it had taken to get there, I stopped.
And stared.
Now, let’s be frank.
I spend a lot of time outdoors.
Some might even consider me an experienced woodsman.
And here I was in Sicily, completely enthralled by a tree.
You might think I was channeling my inner Euell Gibbons.
Which, incidentally, you can do in Sicily.
But this tree was different.
Its silhouette looked to me like a woman walking away in a long, flowing dress, the train trailing behind her.
Or perhaps she had stopped and turned just enough to say:
Benvenuti.
Welcome.
And after the journey we had just endured, I appreciated the gesture.
Very much.
The closer I got, the more fascinating it became.
Bulbous.
Tortured.
Twisted.
Scarred.
Prehistoric.
And somehow, at the same time—
Romantic.
Graceful.
Beautiful.
The trunk seemed less like wood than sculpture.
Every knot looked like an old wound.
Every bulge suggested another chapter.
Every twist seemed to say that survival isn’t always pretty.
Sometimes it is magnificent.
And these trees have had plenty of time to work on it.
The villa itself dates to the 18th century and was once part of a wine-producing family estate. Today, the restored property sits between Mount Etna and the Ionian Sea, surrounded by lemon groves and nearly two acres of extraordinary gardens.
The gardens as we see them today were developed by the owners beginning in the 1990s, but incorporated into them are ancient, centuries-old olive trees—living remnants of a much older Sicily.
I couldn’t find a reliable published age for the individual tree I photographed, so I won’t give it a birthday it may not have earned.
But the olive trees at the villa are described as ancient and centuries old.
Looking at those enormous, contorted trunks, I wasn’t inclined to argue.
They looked as though they’d been there when somebody first decided tomatoes and mozzarella might get along.
And then there were the gardens.
Good Lord, the gardens.
Bougainvillea cascaded overhead in explosions of magenta. Jasmine scented the air. Palms and tropical foliage mingled with olive and citrus trees. Flowers seemed tucked into every available corner.
Mount Etna’s fertile volcanic soil, Sicilian sunshine and the influence of the nearby sea conspire to make the place almost ridiculously lush.
This was not landscaping.
This was nature showing off.
And every morning, we gathered outside beneath the trellis for breakfast.
That became one of my favorite parts of Sicily.
No rush.
No airport.
No fuel gauge.
No volcanic ash changing our plans.
Just good coffee, wonderful food, filtered Sicilian sunlight—and a group of fellow travelers who, remarkably quickly, stopped feeling like fellow travelers and started feeling like friends.
There is something about traveling together that accelerates friendship.
You share a bus.
A meal.
A wrong turn.
A spectacular view.
A glass of wine.
A few stories.
And before long, you’re laughing together as though you’ve known one another considerably longer than the itinerary would suggest.
The kitchen at Don Arcangelo has its own remarkable story. Many of the dishes are inspired by the owner’s family recipes, handed down through generations, while breakfast pastries and cakes are prepared fresh using locally sourced ingredients.
Somehow breakfast tastes different when you’re eating it beneath a trellis in Sicily with people whose company you’ve come to genuinely enjoy.
I cannot explain this scientifically.
I am willing to continue the research.
Then came late afternoon.
Drinks and hors d’oeuvres in the garden.
Another terrible hardship.
We would gather among those old olive trees as the light softened and the day’s adventures became stories.
Glasses were raised.
Experiences compared.
Stories told.
And retold.
Usually with improvements.
Those evenings became part of what made Don Arcangelo all’Olmo so special.
We had arrived in Sicily as a group of fellow travelers.
Somewhere along the way, we became friends.
And amid all of that, there was something especially wonderful for me about experiencing Sicily with Trish.
There is something deeply romantic about traveling with the person with whom you’ve shared most of your life.
You’re discovering something new together while carrying all those years with you.
Trish and I could look across that garden and talk about what we’d seen that day.
Or something that happened forty years ago.
Or join the laughter around us.
Or say nothing important at all.
That’s the wonderful thing about love that has had time to grow old.
Silence doesn’t need filling.
And perhaps that’s why those olive trees spoke to me.
They were old.
Twisted.
A little battered.
Still growing.
Still producing.
Still beautiful.
Especially because of their age, not despite it.
There was something reassuring about that.
I also learned something about the olives themselves.
Green olives and black olives are not necessarily different varieties. The color largely reflects ripeness. Olives begin green and darken as they mature.
And in the Etna region, one of the characteristic varieties is Nocellara Etnea.
Interestingly, it isn’t strictly an “oil olive.” It is considered a dual-purpose cultivar, used both as a table olive and for making olive oil.
Nocellara Etnea is particularly important to Monte Etna PDO extra-virgin olive oil, where it makes up the majority of the blend, sometimes accompanied by other Sicilian varieties such as Moresca, Biancolilla and Tonda Iblea.
There is something wonderfully Sicilian about that, too.
Even the olive refuses to be pigeonholed.
Our days at Don Arcangelo all’Olmo developed their own rhythm.
Breakfast beneath the trellis.
Exploring Sicily together.
Coming home.
Drinks in the garden.
Dinner.
Conversation.
Stories.
Laughter.
New friendships.
And always those trees.
Standing there.
Watching yet another collection of travelers pass briefly through a place where they had been standing for centuries.
Perhaps that’s one of travel’s great surprises.
You leave home expecting to discover places.
Sometimes you discover people, too.
Maybe that’s what I loved most about Sicily.
It changes your sense of time.
In America, two hundred years is old.
In Sicily, two hundred years can feel like Tuesday.
You walk among Greek temples, Roman mosaics, Norman churches, Baroque towns and olive trees that seem perfectly capable of remembering all of it.
And somewhere along the way you realize that perhaps the best travel isn’t about seeing how many places you can fit into ten days.
It’s about allowing a place to slow you down enough that you actually see it.
I saw Sicily.
But more importantly, Trish and I experienced Sicily together—and we shared it with people who quickly became friends.
The food.
The history.
The people.
The sea.
Etna.
The gardens.
The laughter.
The friendships.
And one extraordinary old olive tree that welcomed all of us when we finally arrived.
Which brings me back to our journey getting there.
Three hours sitting on an airplane while a fuel gauge was repaired.
Refueling.
A volcano that apparently decided our vacation required its participation.
A diverted landing.
A much longer journey to the villa than we’d planned.
At the time?
Not particularly romantic.
But perhaps Sicily knew what it was doing.
Because after all those hours of waiting, rerouting, wondering and traveling, we finally walked through that darkened hallway.
At the other end was a sunlit garden.
And perfectly framed within the arch—
That olive tree.
I stopped.
Trish was beside me.
Our new adventure—and, as it turned out, some wonderful new friendships—were waiting just beyond that doorway.
And suddenly the delays didn’t matter.
Maybe arrival isn’t always supposed to be easy.
Maybe every now and then, the journey needs to make you work just a little harder for the destination.
Because when Sicily finally opened that door for us…
we were more than ready to appreciate what was on the other side.
And, boy, did we.
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