Here's where Modica is on the map of Sicily (lower center-right of the island):
The apartment we rented for our stay in Modica was so lovely, and it was very typical for the region. Modica is a city and area where people have lived in caves in the limestone cliffs since before recorded history. Indeed, people continued to live in caves nearby until they were forcibly moved to other housing in the 1950s. Our apartment was a cave, although a very fancy cave with running water and electricity. Nevertheless it was a cave, and a part of the timeless thread of history we felt in the entire area. It was a unique experience, and on top of that (or could it have been a part of some ancient energy?), we had some weird (coincidental, I'm sure) things happen in connection with our cave!
The last night we stayed there, Wayne and I planned to have pizza at a favorite local restaurant at the end of the "magic path" from our place into the center of town before sleeping for a few hours and then leaving for the airport in Catania at 3:00 a.m. Leaving our packed luggage inside the apartment, I locked the door with the key, and we walked one last time into town. When we got to the restaurant, Wayne decided he wanted to go back for his camera. I searched in my purse and the house key was nowhere to be found. We walked back along the path and didn't see it on the ground. Mindful of the time, I texted the apartment manager that we apparently had lost the key, and then met him at his office a few blocks away to get a replacement. Meanwhile Wayne searched the path again, assuming we had dropped the key. It was never found.
After we returned home to Oakland, one day we locked up our house and walked down to a shop at the bottom of the hill. When we returned home, our house key with security lock was nowhere to be found. I knew I had put it in my purse. After searching the sidewalk on our path down the hill and back, Wayne took my purse and turned it upside down for probably the 3rd time to empty it. Then he felt the purse.
"I feel the key in here," he said. Sure enough, the house key had slipped into the lining of the purse. And in there with it was the key to the cave in Modica.
The second experience involved several copies of New Yorker magazine that I had finished reading during our stay in Modica. I left them in the cave, thinking the next tenants might like some reading material. Two weeks after we returned home I got an email from a woman I knew only from email - a friend of a friend I had corresponded with once about a recipe for biscuits. "Imagine my surprise," she wrote, "when I found these New Yorker magazines in my apartment in Modica with your name on them." How we both managed to stay in the same obscure cave apartment in the same obscure town in Sicily, one right after the other, I don't know. I think it might have been a message from the universe.
Anyway, enjoy the photos, and I'll put more of Wayne's in as I can. It was a lovely trip and a lovely place.
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