Together with cabin neighbors, Katie and Randy, we began our three and a half week
Italian adventure on the Island of Sicily. It was good to be out and about again in a foreign country. We toured archeological sites and the old parts of the towns, eating fish and seafood, drinking red wine, walking/hiking/climbing, and playing Rummikub. We stayed at airbnbs, all comfortable, several with the IKEA theme and others with Grandma’s hand-me-downs. Most had balconies or outdoor areas with a view. Masks were required in all shops and museums, although many were worn with exposed noses.
Randy did all the driving which was great because some of it was very scary. One wrong turn and it was extremely difficult to get back on track again because of small one-way streets and dead ends in parking lots. Randy drove while Katie navigated using directions on her phone. I sat in the back and did my best to remain quiet. There were some very steep hills with hairpin turns and very narrow roads, also many road changes with renumbering, or no names shown at all. Towns had many roundabouts. Most challenging were the extremely steep streets that were barely the width of the car (ours was a small standard transmission Fiat). In one driving adventure, Katie and I were so terrified by the steep incline on an extremely narrow street with a sharp turn at the top that we got out and walked.
The countryside consisted of rolling green hills with many vineyards, olive, orange, and other fruit trees. Small stone houses, many abandoned, dotted the hillsides. In a few places there were cattle and sheep, but mostly crops grew on the hills. There were lovely wildflowers, especially red poppies and tall yellow dandelion-like ones.
 |
| Poppies by Pompeii |
On Sicily we started out in Palermo, the regional capital, and then wound our way around the island in a counter clockwise direction. Leaving the airport, there were mountains, with palms and cacti next to the highway. We stayed in the old part of town where the narrow streets were made of stone. Often you couldn’t tell where one building ended and the next began. In Palermo, we had the best pastries on the whole island at a café in a church, the dolceria at Saint Caterina church, where the nuns prepared the cannoli according to the “ancient recipe,” with cannoli properly filled with whipped ricotta cheese only when ordered.
 |
| Pastries |
We visited the Puppet (marionette) Museum; there’s an old tradition from the 1500’s of puppetry in southern Italy when stories of French knights were recorded and then produced at puppet shows. The museum had over 2500 puppets from different countries. We watched part of a show where there was lots of fighting between the knights with the appropriate sounds. We also toured the impressive opera house from 1897, the third largest in Europe after Vienna and Paris.
We were first introduced to the many cultures that have inhabited the island at the Palermo Archaeological Museum. We saw artifacts and architecture: the Palermo Stone, a “stele”(stone tablet/monument) from the times of the Pharaohs, Phoenician (25-64 BCE) objects such as sarcophagi (stone burial coffins) from the 5th century BCE. Greek statues and columns also from the 5th century BCE, and Roman objects, such as mosaics from the 1st century CE. This layering of cultures was the main archaeological experience we had of Sicily. Sicily layered cultures; later came the Byzantines (500-800s), then the Muslims with the Arab conquest (800-1000s), and the Roman Catholics with the Norman conquest in the 11h century.
We visited the Greek archaeological site in Selinunte from the 7th century BCE. There was one large temple that had been rebuilt in the 50’s, not very accurately apparently, but it was impressive, and there were ruins of other temples. We then walked to the acropolis where about 30,000 people lived with a view of the sea.
The next big archeological site was the Greek Valley of the Temples in the next town, Agrigento, founded in 582 BCE. There were many ruins of temples, but one temple, the Temple of Concordia, built in the 5th century BCE, Is beautifully preserved. Originally the building was of ground white marble stucco. Over 200,000 people lived there. The archaeological museum had an endless number of artifacts, especially exquisite drawings on vases. In all of the museums the number of artifacts was overwhelming.
 |
| Concordia Temple |
We visited a Roman villa, Villa Romana del Cassale from 300 CE located in the interior, a sprawling villa, 37,000 square feet, with amazing mosaics. Landslides sealed off the area in the 1300’s and it wasn’t excavated until the 1930’s; the mosaics of a great hunt and women athletes were found in the 1950’s. There were many rooms and apartments all with amazing mosaics, some pieces so small, the size of a fingernail. One theory is that the owner of the villa was a dealer of exotic animals which he sold to circuses.
One of the best parts of being in towns was wandering in the old sections with narrow streets and flowers and plants on the balconies. The town of Noto was probably the most impressive. It had been rebuilt after the earthquake of 1693 in a planned and consistent manner, like most towns it was built on a hillside and so there are stairs all over town. From the rooftop of our apartment, we could see much of the town.
 |
| Darlene climbing stairs to our Airbnb |
 |
| Cathedral in Ortygia |
Katie had wanted to find the Jewish ritual bath, a mikvah, it took awhile, but we eventually found it. It is about 60 feet underground. [A mikvah is a ritual purification bath that is used at a variety of times over the life of very observant Jews, such as before marriages, conversions, etc. The water in the pools must be “gathered” fresh water running freely from springs, not pumped in and not tap water.] This mikvah is the oldest surviving mikvah in Europe. Jews were in Italy since Roman times, probably first on Sicily. At some time about 135 AD, Rome expelled the Jews from Jerusalem and more Jews poured into Siracusa. It would have remained in use until Spain, having conquered Sicily, expelled the Jews from Spain and its territories in 1492.At that time, about a quarter of the population of Ortiga was Jewish.Then the mikvah was both forgotten and protected until it was excavated by accident in the 1990s. At this time, there are no Jews on Sicily.
We ate at one especially fine seafood restaurant, La Lisca Cucina e Bottegaso, so delicious that we returned the next night. I raved about the mussels in ginger and mint and was brought a dish compliments of the owner.The view of a square from our apartment was very pleasant and relaxing. We then drove north to Taormina, passing the volcano Mt. Etna which has been somewhat active lately, spitting up smoke and hot stones. In Taormina, we could see the volcano from our balcony.
 |
| Mt. Etna |
We flew to Naples and then took a bus to Sorrento on the Almalfi coast. We enjoyed Sorrento, especially the apartment where we stayed surrounded by lemon trees, in fact the whole town was filled with lemon trees of different types, large ones, called citrons, bumpy ones, and ones pointed at the ends. We gathered those that had fallen from the trees in the yard and Katie made delicious lemonade.
Sorrento was a real town compared to the other two that we visited, Positano and Almafi. Positano seemed to be an especially superficial rich tourist town. The towns are built on the hillsides and definitely very picturesque. We did our share of climbing stairs and going up and downhill.
 |
| Amalfi Coast |
Visiting the Roman archaeological site of Pompeii was a highlight of the trip. We wandered on the streets with our guide and visited the shops and small houses. So much was intact. Everything was gray stone, but originally it had been covered with ground white marble stucco. A large villa was especially impressive as we entered and observed where the office of the noble would have been and then the courtyard with greenery, and finally the rooms where guests were entertained. There were six public baths where both the rich and the poor gathered. Now the sea is three kilometers from the town, before it had been close by. Pompeii was founded in 600 BCE, an important trading town bustling with activity with 11,000 residents and busy with seamen and merchants from other places. The brothels were handy when men came into town. We saw the brothels, which had explicit stuccos of sexual positions and the prices, as the travelers would not be able to communicate their desires, nor the prostitutes able to name the prices.
 |
| Road with crosswalk |
 |
| A villa |
We saw the Roman theater where 5000 people could be seated, women and slaves up high. The gladiators fought one another; we also saw the small rooms where they lived as slaves. When Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, blowing off two thirds of its height, the pyroclastic cloud of hot gas killed most of the people and ash buried everything, 13 to 20 feet deep, crushing the top floors of the buildings. However, because it was ash and not lava, Pompeii was not incinerated and was preserved for the next 1600-1700 years. Pompeii wasn’t discovered until 1738.
 |
In Naples we went to the archaeological museum to see the mosaics and the frescoes from Pompeii. Once again we were very impressed with the mosaics and all the work that went into creating the beautiful designs with color subtleties made with teeny tiny tiles. An amusing part of the exhibit was the collection of art with the subject of penises. Apparently, penises were the symbol of fecundity and therefore success. Statues, stuccos, and mosaics reflected this good luck charm.
We took the fast train to Venice, a very beautiful and special city for our last few days. We wandered and took ferries and toured the Doge’s Palace in St. Mark’s Square. The extremely impressive palace was from where the government ruled all through history; it housed public offices, courtrooms, prisons, the Doge’s apartments, stables, armories. The governing men met and voted there. The ceilings and walls have paintings by famous Venetian artists. The building itself has undergone many changes and rebuilding, mainly because of fires.
 |
| Doge Palace |
We spent the last two days enjoying the art at the Biennale and visiting the country pavilions. It was fascinating. The theme of the Biennale was “Milk of Dreams - life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of imagination.” The US pavilion with the sculptures of an African American woman, Simone Leigh, was impressive. Some of the presentations at the pavilions were rather strange and even after reading the interpretation were challenging to understand, but of course they were artists’ visions. Some of the art was especially interesting, maybe not beautiful, but it was a good experience in pleasant surroundings.
 |
| American Pavilion |
 |
| ? |
Our final night in Italy, we ate at Ongia, in Campo San Barnaba, a restaurant Katie and Randy had first visited in 2016. Again we had seafood and red wine, but this time finishing the dinner, our stay in Venice, and our time in Italy, with an after dinner liquor, limoncello. It was an amazing trip that we all thoroughly enjoyed.
To see photo album:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/LGFhyRWBFsKX9RmN7
No comments:
Post a Comment