Driving the Sicilian Autostrada

The long drive back and forth to Taormina gave me a taste of Italian "interstate highways" (inter-province, of course). Sicily is a volcanic island with sawtooth-like mountains, rising a thousand or more meters, but only a few kilometers apart, hill after valley after hill. Until a few decades ago, the only route across the island was the coastal road, SS-113, on which the longest straight measures 50 meters, has no shoulders and many blind corners (still, passing is common!). Sicily undertook a massive engineering project to force the A20 across the island. They bored through the mountains and built bridges over the valleys to creat a level roadway.

It's stunning, but in stretches, you're constantly taking off and putting on your sunglasses. I soon tired of that and just left them on in the mostly unlit tunnels. It created a Tron-like effect - as I entered the tunnel, the pavement and walls merged into a black void and I navigated by using the light bouncing off the yellow reflectors. I loved it, but Geri was not amused.