Traveling in Sicily


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Europe » Italy » Sicily » Ragusa
April 1st 2009
Published: April 1st 2009
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Fire & IceFire & IceFire & Ice

...snow on lava
Fortunately, the weather forecasters in Italy are no more accurate than our own back home. Monday was supposed to be cloudy but we did not see one all day - unless you want to count those ones hovering around the peak of Mount Etna, and they were probably the result of steam from snow melting on lava.
We had hoped to climb the lower foothills of Etna and hike around her horizontally but the snow on Sunday made that idea ludicrous even for Canadians trying to escape winter. We drove up, anyway, to see what we could see: snowplows, snowboarders, chairlifts, etc. We ate an early lunch, or perhaps it was second breakfast, in the car in the parking lot of the little ski hill. The sun warmed the car. We got some good photos of lava and snow and then decided to try the other offering....the beach! Less than an hour later we were lying on a wide, stony beach near Giardini Naxos with the brilliant blue Ionian Sea in front of us. We rolled up our pants and I took off my shirt as we napped in the sun. We decided to count this as a beach day.
Tuesday we asked John and Rosa, our hosts, if we could do something special for what was to be our last evening with them. I wanted to get some lamb but when John and I went to the butcher there was only one rather thin leg. We got that and about five chicken legs and thighs. John said we should leave it with the butcher to marinate and we’d pick it up at 6:00pm... a great idea, I thought, starting to like these butchers.
Darla went to the beach at 9:30am to enjoy another day stolen from the weather forecasters. While I typed on the computer Aryana called on Skype from Thailand. I was able to Skype Darla down on the beach on our mobile phone for a three-way conversation.
Later, we drove up to Forza d’Angro, a little hilltop town north of Letojanni. We walked the narrow streets, climbed up to the old fort and gasped at the views of the sea far below. Below, on a hilltop right on the shore there is an old, sinister-looking Saracen fort.
Back in the car, we drove in to Taormina which we had not seen under sunny skies. We drove through it and 5km beyond up a twisting road to Castelmola, a village and ruins of a medieval castle perched on the top of the rock. It was here that the gasping peaked as we had our best view of Mount Etna to the south and Taormina far below. We could see up and sown the east coast of Sicily and the mountains of Calabria across in Italy. We basked in the sun for an hour, not wanting the moment to end.
We parked, Italian style in Taormina - which is to say, illegally. I learned this from observation and from John Garufi. There are many forms of illegal parking in Italy, all of them creative. Today, ours was to drive down the wrong way on a one way street and wedge ourselves into a little space where the sign clearly indicated there was to be no parking anytime. These signs, like Stop signs and the white line between lanes on the road are merely decorations in Sicily.
We walked to the Greek Amphitheatre that was carved out of the hillside during Sicily’s Hellenistic age. It would hold 5,000 people for a performance and even today is still used.
That evening, I went to the butcher to pick up the meat. They had taken all the lamb and all the chicken off the bone and marinated it in olive oil, lemon juice and rosemary. All we had to do was place the pieces on the barbeque. I thought we had enough meat but I hadn’t reckoned on John’s deeply carnivorous nature nor his hospitality as he invited a few more people. Soon there were coils of coarse-ground, spicy Sicilian sausage roasting on the coals and then John was off again around the corner to the butcher and back with a half-dozen juicy pork chops. Rosa, meanwhile had made mashed potatoes - her kids had learned to love them in Canada - and a salad.
It wasn’t fun saying goodbye the next day as we had grown to love these people, however, we had to get on with the trip. When we left Letojanni on Wednesday we drove around the east then south side of Mount Etna and then west through green valleys and hillsides, every inch under cultivation, to central Sicily. We had booked a room at a working farm that grew grapes, olives and prickly pear cactus. The buildings were all done with a local warm-yellow stone. They were also a small winery using their own Nero d’Avola grapes. After that great meal in Montalbano last week we were eager to see what country fare could be had elsewhere in Sicily.
It was a cold night and, in the vast hall of the hotel restaurant, we huddled around the wood stove with a lovely Swiss couple from the French part of Switzerland. The antipasto was flame-grilled green onions in the lightest batter and, grilled also, aubergine slices wrapped around ricotta and aubergine wrapped around slices of ham. The two primi were shell-like pasta filled with ricotta and macaroni in a tomato sauce. Secondi, again done on the grill, was chunks of pork, sausages and slices of veal in a lemon batter. The wine just OK but there was lots of it. Dessert was an orange ricotta cake and a lemon ricotta cake plus wedges of fresh juicy oranges. It was not the feast of Montalbano but we were satisfied as we staggered off to bed.
The next day we visited one of Sicily’s treasures - a Roman villa where the floors were all the most beautiful mosaics done by craftsmen and artists from Carthage. It that had been buried in a flood some 1600 years ago and dug up recently. Despite the mobs from the tour busses we were more than impressed. Many of the floors were huge and the whole site was over three acres.
Our next stop was Caltagirone, another Unesco World Heritage site, a town that has been making pottery and ceramics forever. We didn’t stay long as it seemed about to rain. The town is built on a hill. There is a church up the hill and a flight of 142 steps some 30 feet wide from the church down to the lower level of town. Each of the 142 risers is decorated with a different theme of tiles. So we just had to descend and then climb the steps. The pottery and colourful ceramics for sale in this town are absolutely beautiful. I shielded my eyes, or wallet, but Darla did succumb slightly.
On our way again, we drove to the town of Ragusa for a couple of nights. We were so hungry the first night we went into the first restaurant we found. It was a good choice. We shared one plate for each course so we would at least have a chance at cleaning the plates. Antipasto was olives, cheese, marinated mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes and grilled aubergine. Primi was a local delicacy called Pasta a la Norma: spicy tomato sauce, fried aubergine and grated, salted ricotta. Secondi was veal cutlets in the most delicious gravy and french fries cooked in olive oil...Darla was in heaven. The service, it must be mentioned, was nothing less than eager. They hover about us...what can we do?...would you like anything else? I have learned never to wait for the bill or the ‘cheque’ as it is called here. Hell could freeze over and they would patiently wait to see if, maybe, we might want something else. We noticed this positive spirit with all the waiters in Italy but most especially in Sicily. They take their hospitality very seriously
Friday was a glorious, sunny day. We had a lot of choices of places to visit - all of them Unesco sites - and we opted to leave the car and simply walk through Ragusa, itself a Unesco site. ‘New’ Ragusa is some 300 years old. Old Ragusa, or Iblia, is over 2000 years old and down on the valley floor. We started our walk descending through narrow, cobbled streets and stairs...endless stairs. It took a couple of hours - and a lot of pinching to remind us of how blessed we were to be there on that day - to find our way to the oldest part of Iblia and the Duomo, gasping at the views and sights along the way. We ate our lunch of peanuts, pears and yogurt in the shade of palm trees in a beautiful park. After a 40 minute wait for a bus back up the hill we decided we would walk. It was about two km horizontally and 396 steps vertically back to our hotel.
We drove the car back down to Iblia for supper, to a restaurant we’d found during the day. Antipasto was ‘Mare-monti’ or ‘sea and mountain’ (surf&turf) - marinated seafood, marinated mushrooms, on a bed of chicory lettuce and deep-fried mozzarella in a batter. We opted for two secondis plus a salad, Darla had deep-fried calamari and pan-roasted potatoes while I had little skewered rolls of spicy beef rolled up around some cheese and then grilled.
Saturday, we checked out of Ragusa the town and Ragusa the province feeling a bit guilty as we had only seen two of the three Unesco sites. We drove through green rolling hills and, getting closer to the south shore of Sicily, flat bottom land with many, many acres covered in plastic as farmers hasten the season with indoor growing. Sicily has always been is the bread-basket of the Mediterranean. All successful empires of the Mediterranean had to conquer Sicily in order 1) be an empire and 2) feed the troops and the people.
The wind was howling in from the sea as we arrived at our large clean beachfront apartment hotel outside of Agrigento for two nights. Our host, Giovanni Sciacca, said that this was a sirocco - strong, warm desert winds, blowing in from Africa. There were two sailboarders and five parasailboarders flying out there in the crashing waves.
We opened a couple of bottles of vino rosso to breathe and went for a walk on the fine sand beach before sunset. Every few kilometres there was a massive concrete pillbox with observation slits left over from WWII. Some of these were askew and of no use but others were painted up and used by locals for business endeavours and change huts.
We had bought some 10 euro speakers for the laptop and we settled in to listen to Puccini, Bizet and Verdi highlights while making a simple pasta dish along with a gorge of artichokes leaves dipped in olive oil and garlic.
Agrigento is known for the ‘Valley of the Temples’ a ridge between the city and the sea with three temples built by Greek settlers in the 6th and 5th century BC. Undaunted by clouds and rain on Sunday we carried on. What’s a bit of rain when one has the chance to visit a 7,000 year-old construction site? We were, as usual, amazed and humbled at these massive buildings with incredible columns. There are a series of small, carved rock caves near the temples. We wondered how anything so beautiful could be built by workers who had to live in these little caves for the years it took to build the temples.
We had originally planned a couple of weeks in Sicily as part of a tour of as much of Italy as we could see in our three months here. However, plans change and we have come to love Sicily. It’s a little warmer here than back in Italy. It is also much bigger than we had imagined with amazing landscapes, ocean views, historical sites and, best of all, incredible hospitality. We have decided to stay on for over a month here and then take a boat from Palermo to Livorno in Tuscany when we depart. We will miss Calabria and Puglia and other great spots but we will save over 1500km driving and the head-banging of constant daily travel. We like staying in one place for a few days or a week at a time. We get to know people and explore the back roads.
Next week we move to the north shore of Sicily near Palermo.



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