Yes, gentle reader. We’ve been in Palermo for four days and still haven’t had a pizza. We’re determined to have one tonight – the only thing standing in our way is the ‘light’ lunch we had at a farmhouse between our tour of a Marsala winery, Florio, and a visit to the hill town of Erice.

The winery tour was fine, but as veteran wine-tasters, one tasting was a bit light. Since Marsala is a fortified wine, we wouldn’t expect our usual five to seven tastings, but two or three would have been nice. We did learn that Marsala can be quite varied – the one we tasted was similar to sherry.

I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to visit Erice – I thought I’d had my fill of hill towns in Tuscany. But this was definitely worth the trip. At an elevation of 2,463 feet, it afforded outstanding views of the ocean, the islands and the mountains. There is also a four-star hotel in a converted fortress. This is one of those cases of ‘if we come back, we’ll stay here’ – though given everywhere else we want to go in the world, I don’t think we’ll get that chance. For any future visitors, a don’t miss.

As to our ‘light’ lunch, our tour guide warned us that it wouldn’t be light. As we’ve found in most of our travels, food in the country tops that in the city, and this was one of our best meals. We started with a tasting of the six olive oils they make on the farm, followed by antipasti including eggplant and breaded tomato, a local pasta with tomatoes, basil, almonds and garlic; mozzarella and tomato salad; and ice cream infused with olive oil. Despite all that, and the rain that’s just started, we’re still determined to get pizza tonight.