Sicily – Reichels Get Busy Livin

Leaving Rome. We survived the taxi ride to the airport and took that as an omen.

Through our travels we met others who loved Sicily, who had great memories and recommendations there, which confirmed our interest. But it appears that there’s a sort of a spectrum in experiencing Italy, as I see it; a grab-the-handlebars way and an I’ll-sit-in-the-backseat way. Sicily is the former; it requires both hands. To steer. Or hang on.

Apart from whatever the situation would be with Sicily, our Week Eight had a certain weight to it that we hadn’t realized. So close to the end. We wanted a sort of passive experience (backseat, not handlebars) after the previous weeks, but hadn’t figured that out until we landed in Palermo and drove around. It was the sound of the needle skidding across the record.

Sicily is not a passive sort of experience. In fact, it took a team approach, full faculties, wide awake.

To be fair, we are rookies, first of all. I say that because it is true – mostly – and it’s appropriate to be humble. Secondly, you see any place differently when you arrive through its airport. It requires a bit more patience before the spirit of a place can present itself. For example, to visit the beautiful Santa Fe, New Mexico, one lands in Albuquerque and then drives through the not-best part of northern New Mexico for an h-o-u-r before reaching magical Santa Fe. Train, bus or ferry terminals are typically centrally located in cities, they have to be. A few blocks and one is oriented to the spirit of the destination. Great. The drive from an airport armpit, however, can be a drain on ones sensibilities, right?

Since Rick Steves chose to omit Sicily entirely from his Italy guide book, (Rick, why?) we arrived vague on specifics and apparently off-message a bit. I could say that not having a huge plan is a testament to our trust at this point in the trip and a testament to our growing travel confidence. What that actually means is we were unprepared. Armpit. Handlebars. Whatever. We just wanted to sit by the beach, frankly, soak it all in, not have to work too hard.

The drive from the airport to our apartment felt like Cuba, or what I’ve seen of Cuba in photos. The gps took us on streets where we nearly got wedged, even after the side mirrors were pulled in. Streets weren’t marked. Weeds growing. Trash blowing. Buildings chipping. It had a distinctly neglected feel (armpit). It was going to require a bit of effort to find the Magic Sicily. This was going to transform us from rookie status if we were going to squeeze a rabbit out.

We had only a rental car, an Airbnb guest house and a week.

As it turns out, we fell in love with much of Sicily and met very special people, kind and authentic human beings, and experienced such richness in Sicily. We needed time and patience.

The hidden oasis of our sweet and enchanting little Airbnb house. The green gate opens to the crazy, gritty and bedroom suburb of Tomaso Natale. Behind me is paradise. The host family is growing a cornucopia of flowers and vines, citrus and fruit trees, grapes, swans, chickens, turtles, donkeys, a goat, an adorable little doggie who likes to terrorize the chickens, a pool, a hammock, should I go on? Our host, Arianna, is a sublime reminder of a calm and gracious spirit. She is a lovely embodiment of a beautiful human being and especially the likes of which one relies upon traveling far from home.

Taken from the loft. Slider doors open out to the property and gardens.

Palermo has a crown of mountains ringing it, keeping the climate pretty constant and the landscape visuals picturesque. The old town and epicenter is layered with centuries of influence and occuption from the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Spanish. Moorish, Baroque and Art-Nouveau architectural accents are mashed-up, surprising and eye-popping in the old towns of Sicily’s main cities.

In the late 1800’s a Belgian company came to implement a trolley system in Palermo when the city was at a particular lavish time. Inevitably, the city ran out of money so in order to pay their debt the Belgians were given a portion of land by the sea to develop, as compensation. They did a beautiful job developing and managing it for all these years. Today this neighborhood, Mondelo, has the read and feel of a Northern European seaside town. As an example of the cultural layering, Palermo has many Northern Europeans seasonally and permanently.

The Mondelo area is a part of Sicily with gated single-family villas, large even by today’s standards, tree-lined streets and shade trees ringing the gentrified beach. Today, the majority of Sicilians live in condo style housing so the walled and gated garden-like villas are quite unusual, so is the hunting park turned public park and arboretum.

Sicily is populated with a uniquely independent people. They are aware of their history. They are proud of being Sicilian. The mafia is very real here. Tourism is too but no one really falls over in the service of a tourist. In a way, that’s refreshing, if not a bit of a warning: Sure, come to Sicily, we believe it’s beautiful – you will too – but we don’t need you.

For example, it is important to remember when beckoning a police officer for a question about parking that one must not use hand gestures in any manner, no matter how innocent or sincere one may appear or believe themself to be. Have you heard about hand gestures in Italy? Have you heard about hand gestures in Sicily? May we live to make it to the airport tomorrow.

Agriculture on the inside, beaches dotting the coast, scattered archeological ruins and novelties. An old blownout volcano crater and one still very active volcano, shape the topography. Seems appropriately gritty. Drought has plagued all of Italy but nowhere has felt it longer or more intensely than on the island of Sicily, according to Sicilians. There is a sense of pride here knowing they and their crops have the fortitude to endure such things better than Rome.

We learned that Palermo has the third largest opera house in all of Europe, after Paris and Vienna. In fact they have a varsity and jv opera house, both a few blocks from each other. Opera, it turns out, is important in Sicily. And they want you to know that it is.

CEFALU

Same beach after 7 pm. Only a few less umbrellas. Almost the same number of bodies.

Cefalu piazza and Duomo, built in early 1100’s.

Byzantine floor mosaics installed on gold underlayment. This is a replica, I’m sure, the originals are in a museum. The bones and crowns of two popes, which graham found on display, were both exciting and weird. Not sure. About Graham or the catholic tradition of making relics out of bones. What is it with the proof of human remains and early Christianity? Don’t answer that.

Graham’s photo. Pope Something the Something, femurs, tibias, clavicle and crown… we believe you. With the matching painted portrait that hung above this display it was made even more creepy. No offense. The smaller the Italian town the less signage and printed information. All we can guess is Sicily sent one or two native sons to the papacy. You can be sure they got more out of the deal than these “relics” in return.

Road trip. Heading to overnight on the other side of Sicily. Look at all that room. Happy faces – this, obviously, was taken at the beginning of the drive. 36 hours later, on our way back home, when we are weakly navigating a mishmash of rural road construction in the dark with Sicilian Highway Department markers (not), the spirit and the air was not as light.

Old volcano. This actually shows nearly an entire ring of the remaining crater.

Current volcano. Mt. Etna, active but in nap status, definitely not dormant, with her continuous puff of smoke. Seriously.

SIRACUSA

Deciding to road trip was a little bit of an admission of defeat. We were going to forfeit the fantasy week of sitting at the beach in order to discover Sicily, a departure from the relaxing-in-the-backseat mindset we had wanted. We are so glad we drove the three-and-a-half hours to the opposite corner of the island to Siracusa.

Siracusa is a breezy and sunny, old European/Mediterranean town with castles and Greek ruins turned Roman ruins turned cathedrals. The ruins are stacked and leaning in amongst the renaissance, neoclassical and contemporary structures. Their 1200th century cathedral, for example, was built right ontop and wrapped around a Greek temple from 500bc.

Cathedral. Built on and amongst a Greek temple from 500bc

Looking out to the south- I don’t think that’s called the Mediterranean right there.

Greek ruins, walking from the parking garage. Hey, ruins.

This thing was kinda uneventful, it was built in 13th century. So yesterday. Castle to protect the tip of Sicily from marauders. I think parts of Europe will begin a certain fortification against modern day marauders, tourists, soon.

Cool shady spot in the castle when we were sweltering. How’d these guys do it in armor?

Castle as seen from the old town. They dumped a lot of big chunks of stone in the water to slow the marauders. Now there is great snorkeling here.

We really enjoyed their little aquarium. Couple of tanks, like being in Ben Morales’s room. I think Ben’s room is way cooler but we give props to them for committing. The most memorable thing is the litter of kittens that born in the space behind the blue neon letters “Aquarium.” I have a better photo of them looking all worldly and bat-like in their little kitten cat-attitude. You can barely make out the ears under the A and M. At first, there were 5 lounging on the ledge. That didn’t sound great. I don’t mean there WERE 5 before something happened to them. They just went inside their neon sign house because they were bored with us. The aquarium people said they’ve never been down yet. What a shock that will be.

Near the Siracusa street market – only place the locals shop for anything – we see a bunch of big burley dudes sitting in crates and buckets in the street with these piles of … sea urchins! Are those black urchins that sting? You can barely see the license plate of one of the two cars he’s sitting between. Couldn’t do this at the kitchen table? I took a picture of this guy, one, because he didn’t look like the angry-urchin-gutting kind of guy and, two, because I was sure he didn’t see me; but that means you can’t see his work area. They are cutting the urchins in half, scooping out the drooly orange urchin guts into Dixie cups, as many as will fit, and saving the empty half-a-urchin shell in a pile. Tedious work, and for what? No, I did not ask why they were doing that. This is Sicily. I’m a bit cautious after Taylor insulted the Carabineri yesterday.

We had some of our best strolling through Ortiga, the old town.

Best cannoli, hands down, melt in your mouth.

After overnighting in Siracusa, the next morning we headed on to another cool part of Sicily for the day, Agrigento. After our adventures there we had a harrowing drive through the interior of Sicily at night, in the dark, making our way back to Palermo late that night. It almost erased the amazing things we did and experienced in Agrigento earlier in the day. You know, like how bad ending can ruin a great book. Before the 2 hour white-knuckle drive in the dark, we had an epic day.

AGRIGENTO

Valley of the Temples and Scala dei Turchi

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