Driving in Sicily, Road Signs, and GPS
Happy June dear friends! Hope these long days are bringing you extra light, energy, and room for exploration.
I took two driving adventures recently. I really wanted to take a picture from my car window the other day but I also wanted to be a responsible driver, so I didn't. The picture I wanted to take was of road signs. Boring? Potentially, but not this one.
Italian road signs are notoriously difficult to understand (I think Italians might even back me up on this one). If you want to amuse yourself, take a quick peek at Wikipedia's page dedicated to road signs in Italy. I’ve learned the minimum to navigate the roads of Sicily, but I’ve mostly learned that the signs are ignored: no parking is just a formality, the speed limit is merely the slowest acceptable speed, and if there’s road work telling you to slow down and merge into one lane, what they mean is speed up and make three lanes in one lane's space.
I’ve also learned a little bit about directional signs. Green signs indicate the autostrada or the highway (usually a toll road). Blue signs indicate roads outside of towns with no tolls. Brown signs point to some sort of historical or touristic sight of interest. White signs...well, they usually mean you’ve arrived, or almost.
What it all boils down to is the holy grail of road signs that I wasn’t able to capture last weekend because I'm a semi-responsible driver. I was coming to a Y-shaped intersection. Left was definitely the dominant route, what one might consider straight. And there she was: two blue signs "Palermo - Trapani" on the same pole, one pointing left, the other right. The double irony is that Palermo and Trapani are in opposite directions: Palermo to the east, Trapani to the west.
Sit with that for a second. Yes. I know what you're thinking. The beauty! The mystery! The precision! Both roads lead to anywhere you'd ever want to go. The wisdom.
And while you contemplate this small bit of magic, let's consider topic two: three quick stories of using Google maps in Sicily.
1. At some point, you inevitably lose service and it reroutes you through a kind-of paved hiking trail on the property of a man with 87 cats lying in the street that don't want to move out of the way so the man comes out and yells at you for honking at his cats.
2. It takes you through some small town where either you are fined for driving in the historic center because cars are forbidden, or the road (and this you find out too late) is too skinny to accommodate your four-door car and you end up swiping your car or reversing down some ally way. Not fun.
3. You're routed onto a road with road work and you don't trust the sign (see above) so you keep going only to find the road literally ends. A huge chasm. Or big mudslide. No way to cross over, the only option is to retreat.
So now that we know that neither road signs nor GPS is reliable, where does that leave us? My mom would say with a map and a magnifying glass. But really, it just leaves us there to enjoy the ride. We can have an idea where we want to go, we can rely on signs, signals, or a mechanical lady with bad pronunciation, but in the end, we're steering the vehicle, and the route probably won't be what you expected (in Sicily at least!).
In my four years here, my four years driving more than I've ever driven in my life, I've come to know some routes well. If I turn left here, I might hit traffic, but if I stay straight, I'll have to pay 1 euro toll. I know some hours that are busy around Palermo. I know to turn off the GPS and just ask for directions in a small town (although that too, is quite unreliable). I know that 8 km doesn't mean 15 minutes, but might mean 40 minutes of uphill twists and turns. But mostly, I've come to learn, there are many ways to arrive in one place, so stay calm, be patient, have hope, and that's why every car in Sicily has a patron saint decal or a rosary hanging from the rearview mirror.
Curious to hear what road signs you've followed in your life, what journey they've taken you on, and where you're hoping to end up.
Happy June, happy Tuesday, and happy adventuring!
Sending sunshine,
Henna