It was a late fall afternoon when I arrived in Contrada Noce. I stood on the tiled veranda of the house where I'd stay for the next three weeks as I learned to harvest olives. Sicily is still warm that time of year, and the sun’s gauzy rays fell on my bare arms; in the valley below soft hills of tilled earth folded down toward a dried-up river bed. The saddle of a mountain rose behind the house, its craggy gypsum peaks pocked with wild asparagus and fennel. I watched as the Tyrrhenian blue sky softened to purple.
Contrada Noce is a rough patch of remote farmland in Sicily that none of the Italians I met en route had ever heard of. Located outside the medieval village of Caccamo, its name roughly translates to “walnut land,” but I came in search of a different crop. My family on both sides were farmers for generations (apples, mainly), a link that was broken in my grandparents' time—meaning I now sit at a computer for the majority of my work life. But I love to cook and bake, and I was curious about the work it takes for agriculture to become food. Olive oil is a product I reach for almost every day, yet I hardly knew a thing about it. Never content to take someone’s word for things, or watch a YouTube video for that matter, I decided to learn about olive oil by participating in a harvest. At least that’s what I told people, including myself, when I chose to take this trip.
When people asked where I was going and why, I handed out neat little answers about the virtues of manual labor and my own agri-curiosity, but I could always feel the asterisk rolling around on my tongue.
A few months earlier, my parents’ 34-year marriage had imploded spectacularly on a windy weekend visit to see me. The details vary, but the contours will be familiar: Mom found emails, Dad came out, and the life they built together fell apart like wet crackers. Within a few months, my parents were separated, lawyered up, divorcing.
The speed of their separation sent me spinning. I still referred to them as “my parents” and refused the implicit “my Mom” and “my Dad.” I wanted for all of this simply to un-happen. But since that was proving unlikely, I chose the second-best option: running away under the guise of self-enrichment, learning to harvest olives instead of navigating the vocabulary and rituals of change.
In Sicily, families harvest olives for their greatest cooking essential: oil.
Writer Avery Keatley learns to pluck olives from trees with a rake, “just like combing your hair.”
Through the limitless magic of the internet, I found a retired British couple, Tony and Lyn, who live in Sicily and needed a hand with their harvest in exchange for room and board. Two planes, three trains, and one slithering drive up into the
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Frontier Airlines is giving a salute to service. The budget airline has a special Veterans Day promotion, with a 50 percent discount on base fares for active and retired Military, and military families. Eligible service members can use the promotional codeVETS for the airfare discounts on Frontier’s booking site. The fare sale runs through Sunday, October 27, and is valid on travel through December 18. Travel + Leisure spotted a variety of discounted flights including:
Southwest announced Thursday the appointment of six new directors to its board as part of a settlement with activist investor Elliott Investment Management.
Online travel company Ixigo’s board on Thursday approved plans to acquire a 51% stake in train e-catering food service Zoop. The deal is for INR 125.4 million ($1.5 million).
In August, while weighing a move from San Diego to LA, I took a road trip to the earthy, off-beat enclave of Topanga Canyon for a reflective weekend away. The community’s serene, New Age persona lured me in with the promise of crystalizing my relocation decision over contemplative canyon hikes, expansive artist chats, and, of course, a stay at a tucked-away cabin—the ideal place to think things over away from all the usual stressors of life.
It was late August when I arrived at the outer limits of the Stockholm archipelago. Much of the Northern Hemisphere was still luxuriating in all-out summer splendor, but Sweden’s long summer days of nearly 24-hour sunlight had distinctly ended. I had traveled to the archipelago, an area covering 30,000 islands, islets, and granite skerries in the Baltic Sea, to immerse myself in the islands’ remote landscapes. I would be traveling along part of the Stockholm Archipelago Trail, a new 270-km hiking path (approximately 170 miles) that stretches across 22 islands off Sweden’s east coast, making it possible to venture deeper into the outer archipelago.
When planning your next trip, there’s one important thing you should do before you buy your plane ticket—check the U.S. Department of State’s Travel Advisory for your destination. The State Department provides important safety and security information about every country in the world so that travelers can make informed decisions about where to visit.
As airlines compete to attract high-paying passengers, mini hotel-like suites are all the rage in business- and first-class cabins of commercial aircraft. But the reverse scenario—a commercial aircraft in a hotel suite—is a much rarer amenity.
A Russian supporter of Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been charged with murder in Germany over the fatal stabbing of two injured Ukrainian soldiers who were recovering from operations in Bavaria.