Past spring breaks we had traveled to Paris and the UK, but this year we decided to explore one of the remote and romantic regions of Italia: Sicilia. We had been warned about third world-style driving and litter, but we were pleasantly surprised.
We flew into Catania on a Saturday morning, rented a car, and drove to the center of town. This is the fountain in front of the duomo.
And the duomo. Saturday was the only day with bad weather, but it wasn't even that bad. Apparently it had rained almost every day for four months and the Sicilians didn't know what to do with themselves.
We found a great restaurant on Trip Advisor and had a fantastic lunch. Here is Juliet's spaghetti tarantina with mussels.
Georgie and Isaac had spaghetti with vongole (clams) and I had pasta norma (tomato sauce, fried eggplant, and smoked ricotta - a Sicilian specialty). I also had the full mustache from our workplace "Mustache March" competition. I won the Tom Selleck Award and grossed out Ashley for 30 straight days. The picture behind me was terrific: a group of barefoot Sicilian boys with baskets full of grapes on their shoulders from the 1800s.
This is Castello Ursino, which was right next to the restaurant, a medieval castle right in the middle of Catania. They were having a Picasso exhibition but the kids weren't really in the mood for art. Last mustache picture, promise.
Georgie at a picturesque street in Catania.
We walked through a market on our way back to the car. The stacked ricotta on top of the display looked particularly enticing.
This enormous olive loaf, however, did not. Nasty.
We got gelato in the same piazza as the Teatro Bellini, the opera house named after Vicenzo Bellini, born in Catania and composer of "Norma," the opera after which the pasta is named. Georgie is giving us her rendition.
We made our way to our hotel/apartment in Riposto, which is between Catania and Taormina on the eastern coast of Sicilia. It is a fishing village and has a huge marina but not much of a beach. Our host was Swiss and spoke German and Italian but no English. Thankfully not a problem at this point.
The next morning we drove north to Savoca, the tiny mountain town where the scenes from "The Godfather" were filmed. This is Bar Vitelli, the bar where Michael sits down outside with his bodyguards and meets his future father-in-law for the first time. It is normally open for business, but obviously they are in the middle of extensive renovation at the moment.
This is the church where Michael and Apollonia were married. Here we are recreating the scene after the wedding with Juliet as a flower girl and Ashley with a scarf around her head for some reason.
Next stop was Taormina, the lovely mountain town that is overrun with tourists but still has amazing street food right by the duomo. We ate arancini for the first time, which are balls of risotto wrapped around various fillings such as pistacchio cream, mozzarella and prosciutto, or "norma" with tomato/eggplant/ricotta. The whole thing is then deep fried. Delicious.
This is the view from the southern part of Taormina, the Porta Catania, with the beach, the mountains, and snow-capped Monte Etna in the background. Etna is the largest volcano in Europe and dominates the eastern half of the island.
This is one of the churches and piazzas in Taormina, with a lovely mountain backdrop.
This is the view from the piazza. Not bad. You can see Etna again on the right. Juliet was begging for that dolphin balloon. I told her that I would buy it for her if she stopped asking about it. Which she did. Dang.
Besides lovely views, Taormina is also known for its ancient Greek teatro, which was renovated by the Romans and then again in modern times. They still have performances here and there was a trio of Sevillana Operas playing at the time: "Carmen", "Il Barbiere di Seviglia", and "Don Giovanni".
Here is the stage with the ancient Roman pillars as a backdrop.
And of course you can also see Etna and the coast behind the pillars, which this picture doesn't capture very well.
Another view of the backdrop. A guide stopped to talk to us, initially in English, but after our kids blew his mind with their Italian he switched over and we had a great conversation. Until he made some comment about Ashley's motivation to learn Italian and she almost bit his head off. Yikes.
This is behind the theater with Taormina in the background.
We then drove down to the famous beach below Taormina, La Isola Bella (the Beautiful Island). It is very close to the beach and almost connected by an artificial sand bar.
You have to walk the last several meters in about a foot of water, which we did gladly. There is a nature park on the island which was closed when we arrived just before sunset, but we still had a lovely time playing on the sand and rocks.
Some woman apparently bought the entire island in the early 20th century for a few thousand lire. As Eddie Murphy would say, "What a bargain, what a bargain for me."
Everything was lovely until I gave Juliet my phone to take a picture of me whilst she was standing in the water. And you can guess what happened next. I immediately rescued the drowning phone, took it out of it's case, dried it off, turned the power off, went home and bought rice, stuck the phone in the bag of rice for 24 hours and...it was totally fine. More than the phone I was worried about losing the Godfather pictures from Savoca.
The next day was our ridiculously overpriced but once-in-a-lifetime four wheel drive tour of Monte Etna. We are standing in the middle of an enormous old lava field which has seen numerous lava flows. You can see how the lava has surrounded that one section of mountain in the background. The black peak above us was smoking and is so hot that snow melts immediately.
They also took us to a small cave and we repelled down into it then climbed out the other side. I carried Juliet down in one hand while holding onto the rope with the other. So now I have officially carried her up the Eiffel Tower and down into a volcano cave on two different spring break trips.
Here we are emerging from the belly of the volcano.
We stopped at a remote rifugio for a quick break but it was closed. Still we got some good pictures. They took us to the ski resort on the north side instead. The lifts were running and it killed me that we missed the opportunity to ski on a volcano.
We then hiked up some small hills where we saw beautiful views of the coast, tons of minerals in the black rocks (cobalt, pyrite, iron, etc.), and a small caldera that was dormant. The wind was so strong that it almost blew us off the top of the hill. Isaac is protecting his ears from frostbite.
We got back from Etna at about 3:00 and relaxed until dinner. We walked to a highly rated restaurant near our hotel and I had my favorite meal in Sicilia: vegetable-stuffed ravioli with a pistacchio cream sauce. Unreal.
The next day was our Syracuse day. We drove about an hour and a half south and parked on the island of Ortygia, which is the best part of the city. The first thing you see when you cross over onto the island is the ancient Greek temple of Apollo.
Up the street toward the duomo is the Fountain of Diana, Apollo's sister. Not ancient, but still lovely.
You then come to the duomo, which was built in the location of the ancient Temple of Athena and still uses the original columns as supports.
Here is Georgie in front of one of the columns. Athena is her favorite goddess and she can't wait to see the Parthenon in June.
Nowadays the church is dedicated to Santa Lucia, Saint Lucy, who was from Syracuse and was martyred here in the 4th century AD. This is supposedly her dress. Doubtful. All of the pictures and sculptures showed her with a knife in her throat. Morbid. I took this picture specifically for my little niece Lucy, since we were here on her birthday, and whom I have still not met.
Pictures of the square outside the duomo. It was lovely but I can't even imagine how hot it is in the summer.
A gypsy woman playing the accordion outside the duomo. I'm sure Ashley paid for this picture. She was playing the love theme from "The Godfather", of course.
This is the Church of Santa Lucia, also in the main piazza, which houses a painting by Caravaggio, my favorite painter, of the martyrdom of Santa Lucia. Juliet looks especially cute and chubby in this shot.
Another accordion player outside the Chiesa Santa Lucia.
Now to the best part of Siracusa: the food. This is the number one rated restaurant on Trip Advisor and was forcefully recommended by our landlady. This is "tricotta", ricotta cheese that has been roasted in the oven and therefore cooked three times. It is heavenly.
This is the owner-operator of the place, who stands outside the restaurant making sandwiches so you can watch while standing in line. Georgie commented that, "This is just like Subway!" To which I replied that this was absolutely nothing like Subway. One of the sandwich fillings involved forming some ricotta into a sausage shape, adding strawberries (in season), and then rolling the whole thing inside cured prosciutto. Try ordering that next time you "dine" at Subway.
With our bellies full we decided to take a leisurely stroll around the whole of the island. We found a small beach that had an unreal number of smooth, flat stones and skipped as many of them as we possibly could.
Another view of the beach.
The other thing we did a lot of on various beaches was collect interesting pieces of tile. Ashley brought back a bunch of them with the idea of making a mosaic on top of one of her wine barrels, and Isaac would get pretty miffed whenever she rejected one of his tiles.
Spring Break on the island of the Cyclops. Ashley commented that, "I feel like the sky is bigger down here!"
The land you can see in the distance is a natural park on the peninsula south of Siracusa. We had heard that it was lovely but there are only so many things you can do with the time that you are given.
Thankfully one of those things was taking a leisurely stroll around Ortygia. We all thoroughly enjoyed it and Siracusa was one of our favorite places in Sicilia.
We left the coast briefly to walk back through the real neighborhoods away from the touristy stuff. We found this narrow street and the kids took turns trying to hold themselves up between the walls.
Isaac's got it.
Georgie goes no-hands.
Thus concluded our lovely day on the island of Ortygia in Siracusa. Highly recommended the next time you are in Sicilia, although it is probably unbearably hot and crowded during the summer. You aren't going to have that lovely slice of rocky beach to yourself.
The next morning we headed back up the slopes of Etna again to see the world's oldest and largest chestnut tree. The estimated age is 3000-4000 years. It is called the Hundred-horse Chestnut (Castagno dei Cento Cavalli) because of a legend that says that the Queen of Aragon was once stranded here with 100 of her mounted knights and the entire company was sheltered by this one tree.
Too good to pass up. How has this tree survived being this close to Etna?
What you see above ground is obviously not thousands of years old, except for maybe some of the dead stuff, but all of the various outgrowths are part of the same ancient root system.
I collected a few chestnuts off the ground and I want to plant them when we finally settle. Just think of the genetic jackpot this tree represents.
The rest of the day was dedicated to the beach. The air temp was high 60s and the water temp slightly lower, and of course we got all kinds of crazy looks from proper Italians who were wearing scarves and parkas, but we went for it anyway.
Isaac kept asking to go back to La Isola Bella. We should have listened to him. Instead we tried a new beach at Giardini Naxos which was overrated but still fun.
Juliet needed a midmorning break and I was only happy to oblige. These moments must be cherished, the time passes so quickly.
She recovered and was back to her old self, stealing mom's glasses and looking just too cool for school. We found another highly-rated street food place, ate some more excellent arancini rice balls, and the owner brought out some free doughnut-hole type pastries for us. Which didn't prevent us from also getting gelato before we left.
The next morning I woke up early and realized that I just had time to dress and run down to the beach if I wanted to catch the sunrise over the Strait of Messina. Which I did.
We left Riposto and the eastern coast of Sicilia that morning and headed west to Agrigento. As we were getting on the freeway we saw a woman in the toll booth. Usually you just grab the ticket and there is no attendant. Well, this was no attendant. It was a gypsy woman that had somehow entered the toll booth and was handing people their tickets in the hopes of receiving some alms in the plastic cup she held in the other hand. Only in Sicilia.
Next stop: Agrigento and the Valley of the Temples. A number of Greeks left Athens back in the 6th century B.C. and settled here on the southern coast of Sicilia. They became wealthy due to trade and decided to build some serious monuments to the gods. No marble was available, so they built using the local sandstone and then covered it with white plaster to imitate marble. The plaster is gone so now the temples have an orange, "Valley of Fire" appearance.
Isaac is imitating one of the "Atlas" titans holding up the roof of the mighty Temple of Zeus. This is the largest Greek temple ever constructed. Unfortunately less than 5% of the stones are still there. Most of them were carted away to build a sea port after the temple was destroyed. The titans were located in between the pillars but were only half the height, so they appeared to be floating in the air. This is a reconstruction.
This is the real thing and gives you some sense of the size. There were 38 of these around the temple.
This is the altar out in front of the temple to the east. The sacrifices would take place at sunrise, so that the sun shone on the face of the god's statue inside the temple as he "watched" the sacrifices. Here Ashley is getting ready to sacrifice Isaac. How appropriate.
The next temple was the Temple of Hercules. These pillars were reconstructed in the early 20th century by a British naval captain, Captain Hardcastle, who loved this place so much he retired here, bought a villa amongst the temples, contributed much of his own money to the restoration, and asked to be buried in a mausoleum that had a window facing the temples.
Next we came to the mighty Temple of Concordia, which was preserved so well because...the Christians made it into a church! This is the best preserved Greek temple in the world, and it is older than the Parthenon.
It was murder trying to get a stranger to take this shot with minimal people in the background. The theme of our trip was realizing multiple times that we did not want to be here in the summer.
I love this shot of Isaac and Ashley.
This is the Temple of Hera, the last stop on the tour. Juliet was done with taking pictures at this point. They all were. But I persevered.
More sacrifices on the altar.
Georgie took this shot for us. When the kids are fed up with having their picture taken, they will always volunteer to take one for us.
On the way back we walked along the city wall, which the Christians had hollowed out in places and made tombs. This was an especially big one, most were dual occupancy only. I told the kids to pose like Greek gods and this is what I got.
That night we stayed at a B&B run by two brothers and their father on their family property just outside Agrigento. The place wasn't much to look at, but their friendliness and hospitality were more than enough to make up for it. Plus, they spoke almost zero English so we got to show off the kids' language and practice quite a bit ourselves.
This is Vicenzo, the younger brother, preparing the evening meal. They have their own olive trees and use only their own olive oil. Ashley asked to see the press, thinking it was a small machine, and instead we drove 5 min away to a friend's commercial operation where they showed us the five different machines that they use to separate the leaves & stems, wash the olives, mash the olives, separate the oil from the water and rind, and then finally remove the water leaving only pure, salable product. The machines run 24 hours a day for 2-3 months straight, and you have to be on-call 24 hours a day because when they notify you that your window is coming up within 20 minutes at 3:00 AM, you have to be there with your product within 20 minutes.
This was the evening meal, a seafood extravaganza with king prawns, small shrimp, small sardine-like fish, two different filets made with vegetables and fish, a swordfish roll, black & green olives, and a carrot-puree dip. Plus a huge thing of eggplant Parmiggiano and a whole sea bass each.
But more than the hospitality and the food, this was the highlight of the trip for Juliet and Georgie: a two month-old puppy named Romeo. When we asked the girls if they wanted to go see the olive press Georgie asked, "Can we bring the puppy?" Which Giuseppe, the father, readily consented to. He told the girls that Romeo was their puppy for the evening. So on this trip we sacrificed Isaac and Juliet fell in love with Romeo.
This is the whole crew, minus Ashley. Vicenzo, his girlfriend (can't remember her name), us (obviously), Giuseppe, and Simone, the older brother. On the wall behind us all of the guests that have stayed there since they opened last summer have written a short message along with the flag of their country. Our message had Isaac thanking them in Italian, Georgie saying that Romeo was the cutest puppy ever also in Italian, Juliet writing her name with a heart & Romeo's name, and Ashley wanting to start a business with this family in the US. I told them grazie mille from their American friends in Friuli and Isaac drew both the American and Italian flags.
Sicilia was one of the best food, nature, and ruins trips for me, rivaling many of the other stellar places we have been to. The kids were GREAT and we got multiple comments from tour guides and hosts about how well our kids do with travel and sightseeing. Not to mention how fun it was to show off their Italian skills. Isaac and I stayed up late on the last night talking with Vicenzo and Simone, covering topics such as travel, tourists, local food, politics, baseball, soccer, our life in Friuli, mainland Italia, and the uniqueness of Sicilia. All in italiano. Hopefully they will tell stories to their future guests about the crazy Americans who fell in love with their country and made the effort to learn their language.
