Trulli the end

Underground again

At this point, Sweetie and I were starting to feel poorly. Our first stop of the day was the Grotte di Castellana. I still felt well enough to explore the caves. Even if Sweetie had been well, she would not have wanted to do all the climbing and descending and keeping footing on wet rocks. It would have been Erice all over again. So Sweetie stayed with the bus and later went with another remainer to check out some outside things. I masked up and did the cave thing.

I think it was the management that screwed up our time slot, not our people, because we were there pretty early. Our dogged tour guide hashed it out with them whilst we were entertained (perhaps) by an elderly gravel-voiced troubador. We ended up going into the caves with an Italian guide with translation provided by our own tour guide doing extra duty, because otherwise it would have taken too long until the next English-language tour.

We were allowed to photograph only in the first huge chamber, which was quite spectacular enough. We then proceeded through smaller spaces and a huge variety of stalactites and other rock growths from the ceiling, accompanied by expected (stalagmites) and less-expected formations on the floor. There was a lot of up and down, and the way sometimes got damp. Sweetie would not have liked it at all. Fortunately, I am part mountain goat, and I enjoyed it.

Trulli could be yours!

From there, we drove to Alberobello. First, lunch at Miseria e Nobiltà (named for a film, I believe). I did not note what we had! I'm going to guess some kind of sausage pasta. I recall a puff pastry for dessert, which we had outside, and a small purchase of wine.

Then we were off on a walk through occasional spitting rain to the part of Alberobello that's packed with world-famous Trulli houses. I think people recognize them even if they don't know what they're called. On the genuine ones, the roof stones are self-supporting without mortar, like igloos. The weight gets evenly distributed through the stones. Apparently, if you took the roof down when the tax people came, you got taxed less. Then you built the roof again.

I quite enjoyed this neighbourhood of nothing but Trulli houses as far as the eye could see. As it was a tourist area, there were buskers about. One was a harpist sounding quite lovely in the setting. Then he played a tune that I recognized and quickly identified: "Shallow" by Lady Gaga, a song I love. I got a little verklempt because it was beautiful and evocative.

Densification

Sweetie and I then walked to the other side of the valley and just looked around. I did the stand-up coffee thing, not having recaffeinated after lunch. We wanted to visit the Basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian, but we ran out of time.

By dinner time, we were both feeling pretty punk, and not in a good way. We wanted to socialize (we really did -- this was a great bunch of interesting people), but we did not want anyone getting our germs, so we convinced our beloved guru to have the staff set up a "kids table." They were kind enough to do so. So we were spreading airborne germs in the room but hopefully in lower concentration than if we'd been right in the thick of things. As far as I know, no one got sick after the trip.

The wait staff took great care of us at our side table. I don't remember if there was pasta, but the secondo was a steak, and it was pretty much on-the-money medium rare and full of grass-fed deliciousness! And then tiramisù for Sweetie (she had missed it the evening before), and an insane chocolate mousse thing for me.

Rare selfie, with Trulli houses

The schedule for the next day was a drive to Lecce for its rich artistic heritage (as our tour book says), way down toward the end of the boot heel, have lunch at a local restaurant, and then to drive back to Ostuni, the "whitewashed city." If we hadn't been feeling like poo, we would have liked to have seen more of Puglia.

Instead, along with three other tired-out folks, we stayed behind at the Masseria, spent a lazy morning, had an amazing salmon crudo salad and porky pasta for lunch, then later took a walk through the olive trees. They're pruned small, but you can tell by their gnarly trunks that they're quite old. Lecce and Ostuni were great, I'm sure, but we needed and enjoyed our day off.

Despite the room being huge but empty, the log desk being nearly impossible to write at, and the bathroom having no where to hang or put anything, we really enjoyed our stay at Masseria Santa Teresa. We were sorry to leave it at 3 am to be driven to Bari Airport for a flight to Rome and the beginning of our interminable homeward journey that you do not want to hear about.

(The disease was just a cold, albeit a nasty one. I did a COVID rapid test as soon as I got home and it came up negative.)

Pancho stealing focus from the olive trees

 

City of stone

Name that style

It was day 13 of the tour (counting the travel day). We were getting a bit stretched. When I write about the free time we had and took, it seems like a lot, but most of the tour was full and briskly paced.

We had a long drive ahead of us to get to our final stopping point. I wasn't up for bus games, so I put in the buds and listened to music on my phone. Lots of agricultural countryside, and red poppies splashed onto green grass fields. Somewhere in there we were pulled over at a police checkpoint to verify everything was in proper order on the tour coach (show of power, really). We crossed into the region of Basilicata near the sea and then drove inland and upward to Matera.

Sassi across the ravines

Basilicata, the instep of the boot, is a rather obscure region with only two provinces, Potenza and Matera. I don't see a lot about Basilicata, not like Calabria or Puglia or Campania or even Molise, neighbouring regions. Knowing so little about the region and nothing about Matera, I was thinking this was basically a drive-through on our way to Puglia. Instead, it was one of the most profound experiences of the tour.

It did not begin profoundly. We arrived in the modern city of Matera, a perfectly fine city, then walked with a local guide into the baroque city, a perfectly fine baroque city. The guide was extolling the architectural features of this baroque city, and yes, it looked great. But we had seen a lot of baroque architecture. I took pictures, but I guess I was past being excited by baroque style at that point. Plus there were molti ragazzi ovunque.

Sassi up the slope

And then, behind the baroque city, at the eastern edge of Matera, we came to the Sassi, a city of caves. I had never seen a place like it before. Sassi means "stones." It's  made up of two great ravines, Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano, with caves dug into the rock and clay on all sides. Later, houses were built to extend the caves. It's a jumble of caves and buildings and streets extending deep into the ravines, reached by steep streets and long staircases. There is evidence of continuous habitation in and near the ravines for 9000 years. Even now that puts me in awe.

Before we descended, we fueled up at La Grotta della Petrarola, purveyor of prodotti tipici lucani (Lucania is an older name for Basilicata). Lunch that day consisted of samples of their wares. They were excellent quality products, just not quite enough quantity. We must have got used to all those big lunches. They sold the group plenty of prodotti tipici for later (taralli al pomodoro secco, yum).

Far side of the ravine

Then, with a different local guide, we descended into the Sassi themselves. The guide did a great job giving us the history and background of what we were seeing. As late as the 1950s, people were still living in the caves as their ancestors had done, huddled in windowless holes with animals sharing the space and providing heat. There were more remote caves on the far edge of the second ravine, some once used by hermits, as well as tiny churches. The Sassi is loaded with churches, a hundred or more, many no longer in use.

In Carlo Levi's memoir Christ Stopped at Eboli, Levi's physician sister describes what she saw in the Sassi in 1935. She said she was used to working in impoverished urban conditions but was unprepared for the level of destitution she saw among the inhabitants of the Sassi. In the 1950s, the area was considered a national shame. The grey day played into the profound sadness of the place as it had once been, a place where for countless generations people grew up and grew old without any hope of their lives changing for the better.

Not one church but in fact two

Today, the Sassi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. As is the way of things, it's even becoming hip. Tourists can eat and drink and stay there. And yet the Sassi retains much of what has long been there. If you see a chimney popping out of the surface you're walking on, you know that someone's house is below. The streets will always be steep and winding, and there will be stairs. Much of the infrastructure will remain embedded in the bones of the land.

We visited the Casa Grotta nei Sassi di Matera, a model cave house. It seemed...not bad? But it was a cleaned-up, somewhat idealized cave, and not cohabited by animals. Also lit with electricity. We also went into a cave church nearby called Chiesa rupestre di Sant'Agostino al Casalnuovo (rupestre means "rocky").

The untouched-by-time look of the Sassi make them a popular film location. Sweetie remembered that a car chase from the James Bond film No Time to Die was filmed there. So were Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

I don't know why the Sassi affected me so deeply. I felt like I was immersed in a very long history, a place where people lived for millennia before Phoenicians and Greeks and Romans came, and a history that was often painful.

Cavernous kitchen

Shortly after I got home, I borrowed Christ Stopped at Eboli from the library and read it in about a week. It was an immersive read. (The memoir is mostly about the villages of Gagliano and Grassano where the author was internally exiled for being antifascist, as penetrating as the story of the Sassi di Matera.)

Before we left Matera, our amazing and wonderful trip guru bought delicious margherita focaccia from the local guide's favourite place. I might have inhaled one piece and then eaten one more that was going begging. The salt level was perfect.

I don't remember how long the drive was from Matera to the Masseria di Santa Teresa in Monopoli, Puglia. The arrival was certainly memorable. Our indominable driver was seriously challenged getting the coach through the front gate and past scratchy untrimmed olive trees (amendments were later made). Apparently the staff didn't realize we would be arriving in such a large coach.

Masseria means farmhouse. The place was a curious mix of modern and rustic, very eco-minded but not always in a way that worked. The restaurant did work, however, and the delicious vegetarian meal was a harbinger of great food to come.

We reach the toe

We packed up, including some freshly cleaned clothes, whilst watching reruns of the coronation. We returned to Milazzo by ferry. From there, our esteemed driver brought us to Messina at the northeastern tip of Sicily.

Click and enlarge!

Messina looked like a city worth exploring. On the tour, we were there primarily to see the astronomical clock of Messina at noon.

On our way walking from bus parking to the cathedral piazza, we waited to cross the street while a whole lot of people of all ages and abilities rode by on their way to the same clock show. As we arrived at the piazza, so did a second parade, this time of classic cars.

Then everything settled down as noon approached and the biggest daytime show happens. It happens over time, and I didn't get good video of it. There has to be some on YouTube.

It's quite a spectacle on multiple levels: (going upward) a window of chariots and drivers that turns; one of various figures, including death, that also turn; one where the basilica appears; one where Christ rises from his tomb between two Roman soldiers (and then disappears back in again); one with more figures that turn; two bell-ringing figures; a cock that crows; and a lion rampant that brandishes its spear and roars.

On the side of the tower are astronomical and astrological clocks from which you can get date, time, and astrological season. The whole thing was built by a German company in 1933 modelled on the previous tower that was destroyed by an earthquake in 1908.

Modern apse in Byzantine style

The Duomo, the Basilica Cattedrale metropolitana di Santa Maria Assunta, dedicated to the Madonna of the Letter (long legendary story). The cathedral is mostly a 20th century reconstruction. The original Norman cathedral was built at the end of the 12th century, says Wikipedia. The 1908 earthquake started the job, Allied bombs in the 1943 invasion finished it. The reconstruction is beautiful, though, including the imitation but convincing Byzantine decoration.

We had a somewhat unsuccessful lunch at a diner on the waterfront by the train station, frequented on Sunday (when we were there) by families and other small gatherings. The restaurant seemed to have some difficulty handling a party of 24. My pasta alla Norma was delicious and cooked al dente. Some others' pasta, however, fell short of al dente. Someone miscounted as well, because we were two plates short. When those plates arrived, they were huge, but the pasta was also on the overly firm side.

We were soon past that and proceeded with our bus onto another ferry. I fell asleep during the extremely short crossing of the Strait of Messina to a landing on the tip of the toe of the boot of Italy. I awoke in Villa San Giovanni, and soon we were in the countryside of Campania, with more vegetable farming than in Sicily, and fewer citrus trees, which blanket Sicily (along with olive and almond). We saw more and more varied agricultural presence than in Sicily, I think.

Capo Vaticano looking southwest

The drive took us to Capo Vaticano, a stunning viewpoint high on a cliff on the Tyrhennian Sea. Even better was the truck selling produce and cheese. The sellers gave us samples of the pecorino (the local sheep's milk cheese), and it was to die for, buttery and with some ovine sharpness. Our tour guru had a discretionary budget, and some of it went to buying a kilo of cheese and two dozen blood oranges (she was a pretty outstanding tour guru) as negotiated by our tour guide (outstanding as well). The experience alone was worth the stop.

Shortly thereafter, we tucked in to the Tropis Hotel in Tropea in Vibo Valentia province. Restaurant service was impeccable and gracious. They let us begin the meal with chunks of our pecorina and several bottles of excellent white wine that our guru had procured back at the Tenuta del Gelso vineyard (without telling us). The "antipasto" was a feast in itself!

This was followed by gnocchi (not pasta!) with speck in a sauce, and then a sort of pot roast of beef, tender and flavourful. Apparently there was a big street party in Tropea to which a few of our more adventurous souls went, but the two of us retired early and slept well.

Grotto church

The next day, we were out in the drizzle to visit Pizzo Calabro, a town just north of Tropea. Our first stop was at the Chiesa di Piedigrotta, a cave carved into a cliff by the sea in which is housed a painting of the Virgin linked to a miraculous rescue. From the 19th century on, a family of sculptors expanded the church with many more statues and features. The church was vandalized in the 1960s and then restored by a descendant of the original sculptor. Photographs don't do the place justice.

We then bused to the town of Pizzo itself. Despite the light rain, we enjoyed the walking tour and the town in general, with its narrow streets, even narrower lanes, and large population of feral kitties.

We had a great lunch at a restaurant called SPQR (an abbreviation that refers to the Roman republic) of papardelle with Tropea red onions and nduja sausage, a soft, usually spicy sausage typical of Calabria. Delicious!

More deliciousness was to come at a shop across the piazza called Ercole. We watched a demonstration of the making of Tartufo, a gelato treat that originated in Pizzo, and then got to sample the wares. Sweetie and I took some free time to retrace our steps up a narrow street and do a bit of shopping before we returned to Tropea.

Tropea city walls

Like so many buildings in our travels, the Tropis hotel is built on a slope. They have incorporate that into the design in ways that lead to unexpected steps in the hallways and elsewhere. The worst for us was in the bathroom where there is a step up to the shower and toilet area, thus a step down to the bidet and sink area, on the floor made of hard tile. That afternoon, Sweetie slipped and landed hard on the bidet, bruising her leg in two places and generally causing pain and shock. It was no one's fault, just suboptimal design (that we noted in our feedback).

Sweetie stayed behind to recover while I went on a brief, fairly informal walking tour of Tropea. I liked the town, though not as well as Pizzo. It's larger but also more touristy. I walked down to the base of the city walls but did not make the climb to the Santuario di Santa Marie dell'Isola on a rock in the harbour, saving my knees for the climb back up. I visited a stark but lovely church dedicated to the Madonna of Romania (another long legendary story). The town and the church were shelled during the Allied invasion but somehow the six bombs did not explode. Two of the disarmed unexploded bombs are displayed at the back of the church.

Genuine WW2 ordnance

When I got back to the hotel with a tiny jar of nduja, Sweetie was feeling much better, so we both walked back to the town centre for a larger jar of nduja, a couple of small bowls from a wonderful ceramic shop, and an aperitivo.

The hotel served another excellent dinner of shrimp risotto followed by swordfish Sicilian style, thin, breaded, and fried. At least it came out moist and flavourful, unlike a certain hotel restaurant in Siracusa. Other than the bathroom, we very much enjoyed our stay at the Tropis.

La vita dell'isole

Milazzo, whence we would depart for the Aeolian Islands, is on the north coast of Sicily. I thought we were driving straight there from Giardini-Naxos, but it seems there are no good roads across the interior of the island at that point. Our coach took us up the coast, past Messina, and back around to Milazzo.

Fisher folk at work

We had time for a short walk along the lovely waterfront, and then we were off to our destination in Lipari. Taormina blew us away, but in the seaside island town of Lipari (the main town) we were quietly charmed. There was a small amount of tourist business, but the waterfront was dominated by the fishing trade.

The beautiful Arciduca Grand Hotel is just a short walk up the hill from the piers. We settled in, had lunch at the hotel (decent as I recall — the one with the huge, delicious cannoli?), and set off on a walking tour, down narrow lanes, into the Basilica Concattedrale di San Bartolomeo (St. Bartholemew is patron of fisherpeople, and apparently there are two cathedrals), and then across the Piazza Municipio.

Lipari Castle above the village

We climbed up a street past rather nice shops (noted), and up to Lipari Castle, site of excellent views and an archaeological museum. Sadly for us, museum visits weren't part of this tour, unless we managed to do them on our own during free time. Reviews say this is a good one. Nearby is the Lipari Amphitheatre with another spectacular view. Of course, there was also a church, Santa Lucia del Mela, an ornate baroque church with fancy decor and artwork.

The relentless way up

We saw walls. Historical walls. One was from what had been a tower built by Greeks in the 4th century CE. One was the wall of a 16th-century (Habsburg) Spanish fort. And finally a tower and gate of a 13th century fort. As always, Sicily comes in layers.

A group granita treat was promised from a shop at the foot of the street. We weren't in the mood, so we stopped in at previously noted shops. We bought rather nice cotton scarves (actually Indian prints) from a pleasant scarf-selling woman. They came in handy during the rest of the tour. When we ran into our peeps at the granita café, it turned out that an espresso granita, sort of like affogato, had been ordered but abandoned untouched! I remedied that situation, happily.

The reward

Back at the ranch, it was sunny and mild and a little breezy, and our room had a really nice bright covered balcony with chairs and a table. Our second hand-washing of socks and underwear and a few other things went better than our first in Siracusa, mostly because the balcony was superb for drying stuff quickly.

We had hardly used our room TVs up to this point, but at the Arciduca we had to turn on the TV to get wi-fi. I'd never seen that before. We got engrossed for a while in what we could understand of an Italian broadcast about a woman who claimed to have stigmata and was accused of defrauding people out of molti Euros. When Italian TV no longer sparked joy, we turned on BBC World to watch pre-coronation hoohah (with the sound low).

Model of folkloric Lipari village

We were served dinner at the hotel. I think one course was grilled prawns (mine: one a bit off, one good, one fresh and sweet). The moon was full, rising over the harbour, and Sweetie and I went to the rooftop balcony for the best view.

I think it was the next morning, after too much breakfast (of course), that we had a bit of free time, so we strolled down to the waterfront early, and on the way bought an obsidian necklace from the craftsman himself (in passable Italian, since he spoke little English).

We visited a church right on the pier called the Chiesa delle Anime del Purgatorio. It was a lovely small church built in the 16th century after pirates attacked in 1544, devastated the town, and deported most of the population. Apparently, the dedication is related to those people and their suffering. The church contains an extraordinary model of the past of the town of Lipari.

Apse of the Chiesa di San Pietro

We returned to our wi-fi linked TV just short of coronation time. Then we met up with our group and we were off on a ferry to have lunch in Panarea, a pretty island not far from Lipari. We were told Panarea is known mostly for being a favourite haunt of young people, and we saw evidence of that later after another ferry had arrived. We had an excellent lunch that was not cucina tipica siciliana — penne with pesto, a Ligurian dish — in a sheltered outdoor patio, then had some free time.

We stopped for (sadly) just-OK gelato. We walked up a narrow road to the Chiesa di San Pietro, a simple but lovely church. It featured drawings by school children with an antiwar theme (without mentioning, of course the precondition for peace that is Russia leaving all of Ukraine).

Then came the ferry that took us to Stromboli, the town and island and volcano of the same name. I disliked this waterfront, despite the authentic fishing presence. The facilities were the tackiest tourist places I'd seen in our travels. Up the street, however, things were nicer and much less touristy. We walked up, took a photo of Ritrovo Ingrid, a bar named for the fact that Ingrid Bergman had lived for a time on the island. The Chiesa de San Vincenzio was very white and not particularly fancy, but then something magical happened. Some women started praying and singing in a private service to the Virgin Mary. It was beautiful and moving.

Blogger balked at video of flame

Dinner at Ristorante Bar Pizzeria Da Luciano was pizza! Wood-fired-oven thin-crust Neapolitan pizza, much to the delight of those jonesing for pizza. "Individual" pizzas were huge, but that's how they came. My alla Norma (beautiful sweet eggplant) was delicious, and somehow I ate the whole thing, with a beer. Sweetie did some respectable damage to her Margarita pizza. There was good cheer all around.

We straggled back down the hill. A bunch of us suddenly realized we'd missed a cutoff and found ourselves at a dead end. We backtracked just enough to be able to cut through to the beach, far away from where we had gone up.

The tour boat took us (and many others) off Stromboli and around the island to the best spot from which to view the active volcano. We were already seeing smoke before the sun set, and when it started to get dark, that's when we saw a few spouts of flame and lava. It was great fun!

Moon was orangier than this

Then the boat headed back to Lipari at high speed on its hydrofoil blades. It was chilly above so I went below for a while, but it was too crowded and warm and full of coughing people, so I went back above deck. I hunkered down behind some tanks to cut the wind and enjoyed the rest of the ride facing aft — the just-past-full moon rising on my right, Venus unusually high in the western sky on my left, the north star just left of the stern, and stars all around. I was never cold. It was pretty magical.

We made our way back to the hotel in the dark for one more night before our brief return to the mainland of Sicily before crossing into the mainland of Italy.

Pancho loved Lipari and wants to come back

 

Adventures in White Lotusland

The bus sped us through seaside Naxos

The schedule for the day was a trip to Mount Etna in the morning and sightseeing in Taormina in the afternoon, mid-afternoon, really, because of the long drive to and from Mount Etna. In our tour booklet, the Etna trip had been billed as a drive through the lava field. But in reality it included outdoor lava field hiking time, and the predicted temperature up there was a few degrees above freezing at best. We might have awkwardly triple or quadruple layered and stayed warm enough, but for us, seeing Mount Etna up close wasn't compelling enough to overcome our lack of sufficiently warm clothing.

Sweetie decided that instead of Etna she was going to go into Taormina early. I quickly came to see the wisdom of this choice. Our tour guru quoted us a taxi price. Not us. We're rocks. We'll take the bus.

We only light real candles

Before we left, I turned on roaming. With our mobile phone package, it didn't cost too much for a single day to be able to navigate on our own and stay in touch with our group without wi-fi. When we visited central Italy nine years ago, we tried to make do with wi-fi only. As I recall, we enabled roaming at least twice. If we were to tour in Europe on our own for even a week, I think at least one of us would do the sim card thing.

We walked down our pedestrian-unfriendly busy road and a nicer side road to reach the bus stop Google Maps had directed us to. The fare was €1.90 each. We thought we were catching an express bus, but we were barely on time, and the bus was full. The local came right afterward.  We had a fun ride through Naxos and the waterfront, listening to people speak in their own dialect.

The end of the line for the bus was a short walk below the walled city of Taormina. We bought some gifts on the way up. Just after the Porta Messina, we hit Gelatomania for breakfast gelato. The woman who ran it was super nice, and the gelato was excellent.

Post-gelato, we visited Chiesa di Santa Caterina d'Alessandria, who is the Catherine of the Catherine Wheel. In her statue, she holds a book in her left hand, because she was said to have been a scholar. The church was restored in the 17th century after the destruction of an earlier church. The façade and interior are not fancy but still beautiful.

Cool old map of the Kingdon of Sicily

We wandered along the Curso Umberto, looking at buildings, visiting shops, popping into churches that allowed it. Sweetie bought a lovely, soft cotton sweater because the weather continued to be cooler than we had planned for. I snapped a shot of Mount Etna in the clouds. As much as anything, we absorbed the atmosphere.

I wanted to check out lunch somewhere off the Curso, away from tourists. As we wandered into a section lower on the east side of the hill, we stumbled upon the front of the "White Lotus," in real life the San Domenico, a Four Seasons hotel. I braved the guards at the front gate and shot through to the front entrance. I didn't know at the time that the shot is almost like a still of the White Lotus front entrance sequence. (Apparently, the beach front of this hotel is a bit rocky, so the White Lotus beach scenes were shot on the sandy beaches of Cefalù on the north coast nowhere near Taormina.)

Front entrance of the "White Lotus"

Right nearby, we found Siciliano Osteria-Pizzeria Tradizione Contemporanea. It didn't exactly sound like Nona's home cooking, but we'd been having plenty of that. The hostess had partly pink hair and was cute and welcoming, so we went with it. Good choice, as it turns out. Outside under a tarp. Mostly Italians around. I actually took pictures of this food: a beautiful insalata siciliana, such as we had not had yet (shaved fennel, mandarin segments, olives, red onions, anchovies); and scialatielli (a thick square-cut spaghetti, more typical of Campania) with amberjack, olives, tomatoes, herbs, whatever. We enjoyed the meal and the atmosphere and the service, and I enjoyed some wine and then espresso, very much.

We did more wandering. Somehow we were never bored, even though I can't always remember what we did. We walked quite a way off the Curso to spend time in the Villa Comunale di Taormina, a lovely park with a great view of the coastline. And as we walked toward the piazza where we would meet our group, we were drawn back to Gelatomania for another round.

We met up with our group around 3:30, and the local guide promptly led those willing to climb up to the Teatro Antico di Taormina, which included me but not Sweetie. This theatre is much more intact than the one in Neapolis, and the views from the cheap seats made me wonder how anyone ever actually watched the plays. It would have been like watching Shakespeare at Bard on the Beach main stage, open to English Bay and the mountains behind, except more spectacular (and no party boats).

Less of a construction zone than Neapolis

Our guide then gave us a tour of the Curso Umberto, so we were shown a few things we hadn't seen and heard many stories that we hadn't known. The tour somehow did not include a meander through the Duomo di Taormina, dedicated to San Nicoló, so we did that with the bit of free time we had after the walking tour, before meeting the group to return to our hotel. It was rather unspectacular for the local cathedral. Maybe Taormina is not so much about churches! We took an aperitivo at the far end of the Curso where there were few tourists and then rejoined our group for the ride back to Caesar Palace.

Taormina literally took my breath away, even more than the Chiesa di Santa Chiara in Noto. I feel like a chump. Everyone falls in love with Taormina! I don't usually love what everyone else loves, but sometimes the rest of the world and I are on the same page. We also felt good about our ability to get along on our own for the day. There's more of Taormina that we didn't see, above and below the Corso. We left the city thinking of how lovely it would be to stay in a pensione for a few nights.

Classic ruins and modern grit

Loquats

We put the hotel in Siracusa behind us and headed to the nearby Neapolis Archaeological Park, which contains several sites associated with Greek and Roman occupation.

The first section began on a path through the Latomia del Paradiso, a wild and lovely garden, with both flowers and various trees, including lemon, mandarin, and loquat, an import from China with fruit that resembles apricots (sadly, we never got to try them). Past the garden is a series of man-made caves or grottos. They were excavated for minerals by slaves, who also lived in the caves. The history our local guide related to us was grim.

Today, the caves are cool and pleasant, draped with unlikely plant growth from any and all directions, seemingly rooted in rock, not soil. Such is the tenacity of plants.

Orecchio di Spock

The most famous of the grottos is the Ear of Dionysus, created in a particular shape for an apparently cruel ruler. He must have had ears like Mr. Spock, because that's how the cave is shaped. It has some brilliant echo properties inside. Our tourguide did a massive whisling performance. (I would have shown a photo of the inside but it looks weirdly vaginal.)

After the caves, we walked back through the garden and on to the Teatro Greco, the ruin of what was once a huge Greek theatre, used for performances of comedies and tragedies. Because very little of the original theatre remains, they're rebuilding it with modern materials so as to make it a place for performances again.

Thus, the site was a bit of a construction zone, which wasn't all that much fun. We walked to a high spot above the theatre for a good view of the surroundings, including the harbour at Siracusa. On our way to our final site, the Roman Amphitheatre, we passed a long, multilevel stonework called the Ara di Ierone, the largest Greek altar ever found.

Roman sportsing

Unlike the Greek theatre, the Roman Amphitheatre was enclosed, with seats on all sides like a modern stadium, because Romans perferred gladiatorial contests to plays. Like modern sports or reality TV with wild animals and all the protections turned off.

Both ends of the amphitheatre were open at performance level to allow the entrance and exit of gladiators and animals. There is also a vomitorium on one side, which is not, in fact, a place to vomit, but rather a place that would have allowed large numbers of spectators to come and go. I could almost see and hear Ben Hur and the other movies about gladiators in my mind's eye, except on a smaller scale.

Where wine was aged

From there we drove north along the coast of the Ionian Sea, then a bit inland to a place called Tenuta del Gelso, the sign for which describes it as an "Orange Resort & Wine Experience." The building in which we had lunch was what had actually been the winery at one time. The interior of the place was gorgeous, with so many things to look it.

Lunch was a plentiful sampling of all kinds of tasty farm products, including the best sun-dried tomatoes I have ever had, plus a sample of each of the wines they made, all quite lovely. I left with a 500 ml bottle of their own olive oil made from two local olive varietes and grown on only just over two hectares of land. [Note: the EVOO is delicious. Fruity rather than peppery, which is what we like for raw use.]

Lovely, lively, a bit tattered

We spent the rest of the afternoon in Catania, the second largest city in Sicily and the commercial and industrial capital. I've heard Palermo described as gritty, but Catania really is. More tagged than anywhere else we'd seen so far. Lotta dirt. A bit of a New York in the 1970s vibe.

And yet, I realized afterward that I'd taken several photos of interesting things. We had yet another very good local guide who pointed out things we might not have noticed it we had wandered on our own. More Sicilian syncretism: a Catholic church with an Orthodox cross on top; a Norman castle with both a cross and the menorah marked into the wall. Catania showed the signs of a city that has been inhabited since the 8th century BCE and invaded again and again.

There has been a University of Catania since the 15th century, and we went into one of the two former main buildings across from each other on a piazza. The mosaics inside one are not of the calibre of the ones in the Roman villa but are still pretty cool. All those young 15th (and later) century lads studying the law or science or literature.

Opened once a year for S. Agatha's feast

We visited the Cattedrale di Sant'Agata, dedicated to the patron saint of Catania, Saint Agatha of Sicily. According to her hagiography, she was only 15 when she was told to renounce her Christian faith and refused. She was then tortured in particularly gruesome ways, including having her breasts ripped off. She was to have been burned at the stake but was saved by an earthquake. She died in prison.

Saint Agatha is the patron saint of all kinds of things, including rape vicitims, breast cancer patients, wet nurses, and bellfounders. Her removed breasts (always neatly excised, not torn) get featured in many a depiction of the saint. There is even a dessert called a Minne di Sant'Agata that looks like a breast, with maraschino cherry on top.

A few of us persuaded our guru that we weren't exhausted yet and had a serious gelato need. So we took our free time and hit a gelato shop right off the main piazza. Not as good as Palermo, but quite good, and hey, it was gelato!

Our place of rest for two nights was called Caesar Palace [sic], a large, fancy place in Giardini-Naxos with a lovely garden and a rather nice dinner buffet, although the first evening we had dinner down the road at Spizzicannu, a very good seafood place. Caesar Palace would be our launching pad for adventures in Taormina.

Pancho dug the tiny balcony at Caesar Palace

If it ain't baroque...

Our morning day trip out of Siracusa took us to Noto, less than an hour away by coach, reputed to be the gelato capital of Sicily, and one of the locations used in The White Lotus series 2 (Daphne and Harper's overnight trip). Our local guide was full of information about the architecture and history of the town. Our walk took us through the Porta Reale o Ferdinandea along the Corso Vittore Emanuele and sometimes off to either side a bit.

Could have rested here a long time

We strolled through a block of what used to be different cloisters and associated churches. We passed the Chiesa di San Salvatore and came to the Chiesa di Santa Chiara, a stunning baroque church in white marble and gold. For me, this was a take-your-breath-away kind of place. I think our tour guide, a masterful whistler, might have whistled Ave Maria or some baroque song. I might have cried.

Farther down the street, we saw Noto Cathedral (Cattedrale di San Nicolò), which was reconstructed in baroque style in the 18th century with a neoclassical dome, also reconstructed. On the volcanic island of Sicily, periodic earthquake damage, and sometimes destruction, is a thing.

Above the cathedral stands the Basilica Santissimo Salvatore e Torre Belvedere. It didn't wow me the way Santa Chiara had, but it did have a feature normal perhaps for a synagogue but unusual for a church: high in the apse, the Tetragrammaton, Hebrew letters Yod He Vav He, the unpronounceable name of God. This was not the last example of Sicilian syncretism that we saw.

Not your typical church decoration

There was another church in there that I failed to identify (didn't snap a sign with the name), and then we had about a half hour to wander before lunch. Sweetie and I didn't go far. We took some pictures on the steps of what I think is Chiesa di San Francisco d'Assisi all'Immacolata. We probably at least window shopped. Being as we were about to have lunch, we did not go looking for gelato.

Thanks to our group's astute drone flyer, documentarian, and website photo publisher, I know that we ate lunch at the Trattoria Ducezio (I failed to snap the sign), but I don't remember what we had, other than that it was (happily for us) cucina tipica siciliana. A cold seafood salad, and pasta with a seafood sauce, as I recall. I remember the non-seafood eaters having some lovely giant cheese ravioli in marinara. I'm pretty sure we ate some more octopus, which makes us a little sad, because they are very intelligent critters, but they are also tasty, and plentiful.

Clever descent of Holy Spirit design

Unlike one of our comrades, who had gelato both as we arrived and before we left, we never managed to hit a gelato stand with enough time to get through the lineup. That was among the many reasons that we took our free afternoon in Siracusa near the hotel rather than to go along on a walking tour (which our guide graciously volunteered to do) through Ortigia, the old city, a much more interesting part than the neighbourhood in which our hotel was situated. We were determined to find gelato! Also, it was threatening rain, and we weren't up for touring while damp.

So instead, we got adventurous and set off with a screen-capped Google map and directions to a nearby gelato shop. We walked about a kilometre from the hotel, making a slight left here and a sharp right there, along barely-there sidewalks that periodically vanished, dodging the fecal leavings of small dogs the entire way. It was not the most pleasant walk we had ever taken, and when we reached the shop, it was closed, probably for afternoon siesta time. This was not in a touristy area. Majorly bummed, we retraced our steps on the marginal sidewalks around the poo back to the hotel. At least we didn't get lost. 

Yr humble narrator with natural hair

A magnificent orange, or maybe two, from a market in Palermo eaten on the only slightly damp (at that point) roof deck put us in better spirits. The honour-system rooftop bar, however, was lacking in choices, so we headed to the main floor, where Sweetie had a spritz and I had a beer. It was a shame to be in Siracusa and miss Ortigia, which apparently is like going to New York and not visiting Manhattan, but we benefited from the downtime.

The previous night's abundant but not-very-nice hotel restaurant dinner was best left unmentioned. This night's dinner was only somewhat improved. Here was another hotel chef who seemed to find seasoning a challenge. Adding the missing salt at table doesn't work as well as building salt into your food during cooking to bring out the best flavour, grumbles the amateur home cook and disciple of Samin Nosrat.

Brought to you by UNESCO

In Boston, there is a band called Classic Ruins. Back in the day, we shared a practice space with them and later a record label. Hearing the phrase "classic ruins" twice whilst touring a Roman villa naturally caused us much amusement, because that's how we are.

Temple of Concordia, straight through

We loaded up the coach and left Agrigento for a place called Valle dei Templi, the Valley of the Temples, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It's not actually a valley, but it definitely contains temples. Greek temples in Doric style, to be specific. We saw three of the seven on the site, as well as some statuary and a cluster of curly-horned goats.

The temples dedicated to Hera and to Heracles were mostly destroyed. Invading armies, Carthaginians in particular, it seems, were more interested in demonstrating their power than in historical preservation.

The so-called Temple of Concordia, however, is mostly intact and quite magnificent. It spent time as a church, so the altar was destroyed. We don't know which deity it was originally dedicated to ("Concordia" coming from a Latin inscription nearby). According to Wiki, it's considered one of the most outstanding examples of Greek architecture with its six columns across and 13 columns deep.

Goats will eat anything

We had a break from classic ruins after an hour or so drive into the interior of Sicily at an agriturismo called Legumeria Le Fontanelle in Caltanissetta. I don't often take photos of food, and now I realize at least one reason why people do — to remember what you had! As I recall, the farm food was fresh, rustic, and delicious, the way we like it. We didn't always have wine with lunch, but we did that day. Before we left, we had time to commune with the chickens, duck, and goats kept behind the main building.

After lunch, we drove another hour or so through beautiful country to another UNESCO heritage site, the Villa Romana del Casale. This is the remains of a fourth century Roman villa, a huge structure with something like 60 rooms, many of which we saw. The mosaics are so well preserved because they were buried for centuries by landslides and flooding and were excavated only in the late 19th century.

The scope of this villa is astounding. One can only imagine how wealthy and influential the owner must have been, how many (mostly enslaved) people were involved in construction, and the number of hours and days it must have taken to create each mosaic. The quality and variety of the mosaics is amazing: people, animals (many exotic), geometric shapes, scenes of work, scenes of play, scenes of fantasy.

Part of a very long hallway

The famous "bikini athletes" mosaic depicts women playing competitive games dressed very much like modern female beach volleyball players. (Sorry, I did not get the best photos of that one.) There is a mosaic that despicts children driving chariots, with different birds instead of horses pulling the vehicles. It seems like something out of a fairy tale.

The colours are often still vibrant because they come from the stones themselves. There are also intact frescoes on some of the walls.

The Villa Romana del Casale was impressive, and our site guide was very knowledgeable, but at a certain point it became exhausting. It was like trying to see too much of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in too few hours. But unless you go to study the mosaics over more time, a long walk through room after room is the only way to do it. It's good to have photos to examine at leisure.

Our drive from the villa to Siracusa was slowed at one point by sheep being herded by two guys in a Mitsubishi pickup truck. I'm not often quick enough to snap things from the bus, but this time I managed it. Just another day on a rural Sicilian highway!

Sheep rule, we wait

From wet hill town to dry Marsala

After another hotel breakfast buffet (all breakfasts were at least good, can't complain), we checked out and hit the road, safely driven by our half-man-half-coach-handsome-AND-great-personality Sicilian driver. I think it might already have been raining as we left Palermo, and it was certainly raining and becoming increasingly chilly as we climbed to the top of Mount Erice (750 m / 2,460 ft elevation), whereupon sits the town of Erice.

Grey grey Erice

By the way, facts and figures come from places like Wikipedia. I can bring to mind many things that our guides told us, but not in a systematic way.

So, per sources, the town started life as a Hellenized Phoenician settlement called Eryx. Carthaginians destroyed it, Arabic people from North Africa conquered and held it until the Normans came in the mid-12th century and named it Monte San Giuliano. Apparently, it's been called Erice only since 1934.

It never stopped being wet in Erice until we slipped into a restaurant for an extremely fine lunch (charcuterie/cold salad board was memorable, pretty sure the pasta was good but can't remember what it was, something with sausage, I think). The streets are pretty much all vertically inclined, and all are made of a variety of uneven cobblestones. Sweetie said she spent the entire time looking down at her feet so as to remain upright. I took all of five snaps, including one of the name of the restaurant.

Erice is an historically important place. I imagine we would have enjoyed it more if the day had been dry. Even so, a quick visit was fine for me. It's lovely, but it's made of mostly the same stone, and the street view doesn't vary a lot no matter how much you walk around.

[Sweetie reminded me of one magic moment in Erice. We were there on a Sunday, and the small town is dense with churches. At 11 o'clock, several of them rang bells, each a bit different sounding, to call people to mass, which created a lovely soundscape.]

'splainin' about Marsala

We bailed on an almond cookie tasting to do a bit of shopping because we just weren't hungry. And then we were off. I'm glad we visited Erice, the lunch was excellent, but let's head to Marsala, shall we?

As we drove down, the weather improved greatly. It was grey but dry by the time we reached Alagni Vini winery, which produces a line of Marsala wines called Baglio Baiata Alagni. We were given a very good description on how Marsala wines are produced, and then we set to a whole mess of tasting with accompaniments like bread and salty snacks. We went for souvenirs here, a couple of tiny sample bottles — almond liqueur aged in Marsala casks for Sweetie, dry Marsala for me.

After a stop at the Scala dei Turchi, cooler to look at in person than in photographs (except maybe the ones taken via a drone that one of the people in our group brought), and some kind of sweet pastry that we ate outside so we didn't powder the bus with icing sugar (delicious but too close to dinner), we arrived at our hotel in Agrigento for a one-night stay.

Dinner at the hotel restaurant was memorable only for its underseasoned food of some sort, pretty sure another pasta, not particularly inspired.

Pancho the travel pod with a preview