We are driving in Southern Italy and Sicily and wanted to share our experience with you
DON’T TAKE PHOTOS OF OLD MEN ON SICILY!
As we travel I make a point of noticing the things that make me stop to think or compare our life and land with where I am below are a few short ideas :
Olive trees can be 1000 years old if they could tell their story what language would it be in?
Roman soldiers and Arab invaders walked on these marble streets, and now I am.
Some of the building we slept in are twice as old as our country.
When you have too many stones and few trees build stone walls….every where
Curvy roads with stone guard rails are way more fun for Italian drivers.
You don’t pass here to get somewhere faster you pass just because you have to prove you can!
There are no straight roads and tall bridges go into tunnels and you come out of the tunnel onto another bridge and there are orchards a hundred feet below you and the car in front of you is passing a truck on a curve.
If the road is too narrow for two cars to pass they stop painting a center line, you figure it out.
The fields are so steep in places they have to plow straight up and down because you would roll the tractor if you tried sideways.
Farmers are still burning fields and piles of trash.
If some crop can grow there, there is something growing.
There are so many shades of green driving through the countryside.
There are just as many shades of dirt colors from red to black.
How many hundreds of years has this land produced food?
There are many grand stone buildings that are abandoned farm homesteads, the land around them well plowed and producing. Seems like big corporations or co-ops have taken over.
Learning the history of Sicily is learning the history of mankind…There are always invaders!
The world must really like olives and wine … so many trees and vines!
The Romans built waterways, aqueducts and roads that have lasted a thousand years, our roads are always needing repair.
There are only a few roaming dogs but a lot of cats sleeping in the sun, and not a mouse or rat.
Sunday mornings the men dress in bright team biking gear and do group rides, the only women on bikes seem to be foreigners. The pack on bikes take over the road and ride down the middle.
Sunday is also motorcycle riding day, the women must be taking the kids to church.
There are sleek electric bikes, we see many of those in the hill top towns.
The sea is really the most amazing shades of blue, and so clear.
Not all beaches have sand, some are just round pebbles.
Roads are hung off the side of cliffs over the sea.
We saw Jaguar hearse, lots of Alpha Romeos and tiny Fiat 500’s and little electric smart cars.
There has only been 1 place with a microwave.
Italian women really like glitter and shiny clothing items. The walls where we are staying now have a glitter in the paint and sparkles.
2 November
Here are a few notes bout our recent trip
It has been two weeks since we left home, my hands are healed from the cooking cuts and burns, the wrinkles in my face seem to be less… I don’t know if that is from less stress or more pasta.
Driving through Southern Italy is an adventure, you can never guess what your next room might look like. One night you are in building from the 1500’s with 16 foot ceiling in the room in Matera. The basilica is across the street and our car is parked outside of the old town on a side street near the port. It is 34 stairs to the 1st floor and the room so large we danced in it. The walls have been painted many times and the last was hand trimmed to look like marble. The next night the apartment is completely modern with a sleek Italian kitchen, white tile floors and decorated in red and orange and black so it looks like a magazine cover. We have had 3 bedroom apartments and apartments smaller than a typical bedroom but have a hotplate and extra sink and table. One thing they all have is the standard 27 inch shower… well except two which were very nice and had Jacuzzi shower stalls, and the one with the fold out shower and the wood pallet floor to put down to keep the walls from folding in on you..
Today we are in the old town of Castelmazzano in another old stone building looking over a town that is hanging from the rocks with stone paved streets and tiny walkways with stairs everywhere. Little door frames, stone arches and tidy balconies overflowing with flowers, all call to you to wander up and down through the neighborhoods. The big Church has a piazza in front of it that seems to be lined with old men sitting 3 to a bench. They all are talking and caring on with hands flying and faces showing great expression….until I get into hearing range and things stop until we pass.
We went hiking above the town to get a better view of the zipline that runs across the gorge to the next hull top ancient town. They have you in superman position in a sling for over 1km then you have an hour to wander the receiving town before you take a different zip line back. It was very popular and enterprising at $100 each.
We like having google maps …but you have to watch carefully that you don’t get redirected like earlier today when redirect was not exactly a road. It was scary for a while and so steep with tight switchbacks and steep drop-offs and you could not see what was above or below you. It was a goat trail not wide enough for our little car. Thankfully Bruce is a good driver with our tiny Fiat and a standard shift. The houses are perched on anything they could grab hold on to and I cannot imagine this place in winter.
We are learning to eat on their time schedule because the restaurants are closed on our normal dinner hour and all the stores are closed during the lunch 3 hour. Evenings are for pizza and sandwiches or a antipasto or simple plate of pasta. Most pizza ovens are wood heated, and they do not start the fire until evening. We really are not doing the huge afternoon meal and are happy with only one course. The plates are plentiful and always beautiful. You get 3 dozen mussels as an antipasto there is no room for the next three courses!
Last night we were in a small apartment, like the size of our bedroom and the washing machine would not open to give our clothes back. The hosts drove our clothes to us an hour through winding roads after they finally got them out. Then on to Sefalu a famous beach for the famous and rich in the summer and our first real beach with sand !!! Like most of the old towns there are walking streets with the bottom floor dedicated to stores of high-quality clothes and local art and tourist junk and gelato. Each restaurant seems to have outside tables, and they overflow into the side streets. It was great people watching on the busy streets. There are all these fancy clothes in the stores, but most people are wearing jeans and casual clothes except the old men who are ever present and most with a button down shirt and suit coat, lots with those little hats and button sweaters always watching what is going on.
Pria A Mare was our second beach in a sweet little B&B with the most amazing breakfast display just for us. Sliced meats and chesses, fresh cooked eggplant, 4 kinds of pastries, cereal, yogurt, olives, pickles, breads and scrambled eggs and bacon. We rode their towne style bikes on the boardwalk for an hour and scoped out the area, from the large rocks to the castle up on the hill. We have seen many castles and I think being a princess in those days would not be the life Disney shows us. I even had time to sit and paint.
Erice another top of the mountain old town was really different with the fog moving in just like in the movies and the marble street glistening with the damp shinny old stone pavers. I kept waiting for the vampires to show up. Here there have been so many cultures as each new set of invaders took over that the blend in the spices and food is very distinct.
Now in Marsala we learned how that famous wine was born. Wine had to be fortified as not to spoil on long boat passages and adding alcohol preserved it. We went to the tasting and tour of the original vineyard and learned the history. The beach here is pretty nice as well. Dinner tonight was the famous Scalopine Marsala and they used pork not veal.
It is Fungi time, we went to a mushroom festival. The streets and piazza near the castle were full of vendors selling mushroom related food and lots of other stuff just like our Goldrush days. Bottled relishes with tomatoes eggplant and mushrooms in any flavor combination were out to be tasted and sold (just like we have dips and salsa) Fast food stands had sliced roasted pork with your choice of topping mushrooms 3 ways, caramelized onions, grilled peppers and you could get patatas(French fries).
The busiest place was giving samples of Panettone a soft cake like bread with dried fruit in it. The stuff we see every Christmas season but at a much higher level. They served it with pistachio butter or almond butter. It was amazing and we even bought one. It was great marketing…. And the family was from Chicago, the kids came back to Sicily to revamp the family business.
Other stands had baked goods, cookies, scarfs, festival tee shirts, kids junk toys and ceramics. The music would not be starting until 10:30 p.m. just after dinner.
We got up early one morning as the book said go to the fish market early. The alarm was set for 6:30 a.m. and we grabbed the camera and went. The place was just getting set up and we were surprised to see how much of it was being defrosted. When we arrived back to the B and B breakfast was just getting set up an hour off schedule. We found out the time was changed with out us knowing and we were in the market and every where else an hour earlier than we expected. Later back at the market things were beginning to move at 10 am. The men did the selling and yelling… to the customers and to each other. Their knives were very large like 16 inches long and 4 inches wide and fileted the fish without missing a word of conversation. Above this area was the fruit and vegetable market and the meat stands. The meat has no marbling and is almost fat free, even the ribeye and porkchops. Chicken was sliced thin and often sold already breaded, meat rolls of thin sliced meat with bits of cheese inside then rolled in bread crumbs were another staple in every counter. The sides of meat hung waiting to be processed and the cavallo stand was busy as horsemeat meatballs are a favorite.
As you have figured out I add a bit of this when I have a chance and now the trip is almost over.
We will have slept in 25 beds by the time we leave and only one collapsed in the middle of the night.
The facilities ranged from beautiful apartments behind old paint peeled doors, to stone rooms that were once a stable to sleeping under the dome roof of a Trulli house, and buildings older than our country.
The meals we varied as well, Pasta was amazing, especially the fresh made, the light wine and mussels and the Carbonata. Garlic is not a heavy flavor here and much of the food is salted more than we do.
The women do not all have heavy dark hair, the young ones seem to keep shorter cuts and wear lots of eye make up. Many of the young women are very thin and it seems once they get married, they bloom.
Men seem to be sitting around every where having coffee or sitting in the sun practicing for when they get to be old men and sit in the piazza all day. Men do a lot with other men and not much with the wife and family.
November first is All Saints day, and every thing is closed. No bakeries make bread, most grocery stores are closed and the only one open closed at noon. Cafes were open because this country runs on coffee.
Fish plates here in Sicily fish plates a squid, sardines, anchovies, octopus and a few small shrimp. Chicken is not a often mentioned food on menus and the veal was tough.
Pizza was wonderful with no two places making it the same…but most in wood fired ovens.
Tomatoes are the center of so many plates, along with eggplant both prepared a hundred different ways.
The people have been wonderful and helpful and will try to give you directions if asked…I do know how to ask the questions but sometime the answer is beyond my Italian.
We have spent 18 day in Sicily and have amazed by the Greek and Roman ruins and the old hill top towns and the varied landscape that has been cultivated for thousands of years.
The most amazing part of the trip for me was in Locorotundo where my Grandfather Joe was born. Donna Isabella and her son Graziano helped us find Papa’s family. They took us to the town hall and had his birth certificate found in the original record book from 1895. Then the people there looked up family records and found his brothers son was still alive. We went to see him and he was so surprised to learn there was family in America. The next day he brought us photos of Grandpa’s parents and brother and we got to meet his sons. I hope to be able to keep in contact with them.
I hope you enjoy this little look into a part of the world we do not often see on TV.
I will be home soon
Mary Lou
Views of Sicily
