Monday, September 26th,
5.30 a.m. Alarm clock rings. Press snooze. Roll over. No, no, no! Get
up! Get dressed, brush your teeth, check your documents, make a
sandwich. It's time to go. Sicily, here I come! Ok, here we
come!
Having bought the tickets for
Trapani weeks and weeks ago I was (im)patiently counting down the
days. Not having a lot to do gave me way too much time to think about
my future travellings, especially Sicily, and I was really looking
forward to a change of environment, people, atmosphere … and Sicily
was a perfect choice for what I wanted, plus the fact that we were
all going (all = Burcu, Marta, Kristiāna,
Léo + me) made everything even more exciting.
After arriving at the Trapani airport we
went to get the car we had rented online. A more-or-less new Ford
Fiesta was waiting for us and we quickly took care of formalities,
stuffed our luggage in the trunk and set off. Within five minutes
Sicily already grew on me. Wild, sort of arid landscape, dotted with
olive trees and vineyards on one side and bright blue sea on the
other is absolutely my cup of tea. Our first destination was Erice, a
little mountain village, as charming as little Italian villages can
be. It somehow reminds of San Gimignano, yet still it has a different
flavour. While walking
narrow paved streets I soon spotted a pasticerria
with an abundance of typical Sicilian sweets from cannoli
to cassata. If you're
on a diet, Sicily is no place for you. Every village and town, no
matter how small, has a pasticerria where you can try such delicious
sweets they take you to a different dimension. Cannoli,
a roll filled with ricotta cream and candied fruit, is extremely
luscious, but nothing can beat cassata siciliana.
Cassata is made of a
special type of sponge, pan di Spagna,
then filled with ricotta cream, topped with a usually green marzipan
layer and decorated with candied fruit. The combination of flavours
exceeded my expectations. There's also some kind of a smaller version
of cassata –
cassatina and I had
three of those – one in Siracusa, one in Trapani and one in
Taormina. They were all a dash different, but still very very very
tasty. Another Sicilian speciality is marzipan paste, often shaped
and coloured like fruit. I think there's no point in losing time on
describing how good ice-cream in Sicily is; the photo is pretty
self-explanatory. However, balancing all this sweetness, Sicily also
offers lovely fish and sea-food dishes and, of course, pasta. Well, I
think you know what I want to say – visiting Sicily is an absolute
culinary delight.
Leaving Erice we headed to Segesta, a little village with an
ancient temple and a Greek theatre. Taking a break in the middle of
mountains was a perfect late-afternoon energy refill. I was actually
very keen on visiting the Greek theatre also, but as it was on the
other side of the mountain and it was already almost half past five,
there was no time. I was thinking, well, there's another one in
Taormina and another one in Siracusa. There will be more
opportunities to see at least one of them. Back on the road we headed
to a hostel close to Palermo, in Sferracavallo. It took as quite a
while to find the hostel as it was already dark when we reached
Palermo and with the streets being very clearly marked (not!) we
had a bit of a difficulty finding the right way. However, we
eventually found our hostel, which was located right by the sea. We
actually picked the very best day to visit Sferracavallo as there was a
local feast with fireworks and a late-night market, but 15 hours of
travelling took its toll and we went back to the hostel soon after
midnight.
Segesta
Sferracavallo
Tuesday was the Palermo day. Waking
up to a rainy morning didn't promise a lovely day, but the anticipation of visiting Palermo put away all negative thoughts. For a while, at
least. It was raining on and of all the time, but still we got a
chance to admire the town. I think I was most amazed by the theatre,
Teatro Massimo,
probably due to its role in the The Godfather 3 movie.
Palermo
When we got back to the car, it had started
to rain again. We were then actually quite successful at finding our way
out of Palermo, but at some
point, we didn't know which way to go, so the best way was to ask a
local. Asking the locals for the way usually turned out great as
Sicilians are extremely kind, warm, open and helpful. As I went to
ask two people selling fruit on the street which way was right for Cefalù, they explained me perfectly, but started to laugh when I
said, Yeah, ok, so when we get to the second round-about,
there'll be directions for Cefalù, right?
They just said, Ha, you're in Palermo, there are no
directions! I also bursted out
laughing. So, we continued our trip according to the directions I
got, but the rain was getting heavier and heavier. Finally, we had to
turn our car as the road we were taking was basically flooded. When I
saw one of the newer BMWs trying to pass a huge puddle, which seemed
like a lake to me, and having water almost up to the windows, I
started to panic a bit. The rain just wouldn't stop, the level of
water on the road was only increasing and finding a right way to get
out of a Sicilian town isn't a piece of cake. We turned the car
around, took another road, drove the wrong way on a one-way road,
turned the car around again and finally got on the highway. I was
relieved. Really relived. Even though it was still raining cats and
dogs, at least we were on the right way. By the time we reached our
camping close to Cefalù, it almost stopped raining. We made pasta,
took a walk and took a swim in the unexpectedly warm Sicilian sea. We
visited Cefalù in the evening and decided to visit it also the next
morning which turned out as a great decision. Cefalù by night is
namely a bit of a ghost town, but in the morning it was buzzing all
over. We soon headed towards Taormina, but first we stopped at Etna.
I wasn't expecting a magnificent view on the volcano and my
expectations were right. Etna was overcast when we reached one of the
excursion start-points north of the volcano. It was, however, despite
the bad weather, quite impressive to see it, all the volcanic
rocks, signs of how lava flows destructed the landscape … People
that work in the souvenir shops at this excursion start-point
explained everything about the most recent eruptions. One of the guys
even took loads of photos of the 2002 eruption and I was quite
speechless as I was imagining all the lava flows, bursting out of
calderas. We didn't stay long at Etna as it was cold, 12°C, so we
headed back via a very serpentine road (which made me sooo sick)
towards Taormina. Despite of how much I liked Taormina, as it is
again one of those little charming mountain villages, it felt too
touristy for my taste. It's also possible I was feeling too tired to
really admire its beauty or maybe it was simply just too full of
people. However, again, I wasn't able to see the Greek theatre as we
were too late. 20 minutes too late. Being a bit disappointed I was
thinking I can see the theatre close to Siracusa (I was wrong, of course). Late in the evening
we reached Catania, which is now my favourite Sicilian town. It's not
enormous, but big enough, it has a great fish market, its
architecture is extremely beautiful, plus, it's at the seaside and
within an hour drive south you can reach breath-taking beaches.
Roaming the streets of Catania by night and by day, the next morning,
gave me that perfect holiday feeling. I was surprised how cheap food
and drinks are – a cocktail €4,50, pint of beer around €2.
Unbelievable. Also food isn't expensive and in bakeries they have
real bread – with a dash of salt and so soft your heart melts when
you eat it. After five months of eating Tuscan bread I almost forgot
what a pleasure it is to eat this kind of a bread. Sicilian bread.
Lovely, seriously lovely.
(from left to right, clockwise)
our private beach, Cefalù, Etna, Taormina, Etna, Cefalù
Catania; Ari Trezza - the Cyclops Coast (bottom right corner)
Having a bit of a bad luck with the
weather we didn't exactly get as much sun as we'd wanted, but the
last two days were sunny and hot and we definitely wanted to get to a
beach, sunbathe and take a swim. We headed north of Catania hoping to reach a sandy beach, but we had no luck, so we headed south
direction Siracusa where we, after a while, got to a quite empty
beach in Arenella. After a few hours of relaxing on the beach we had
to find a hostel. We had no place booked for our last night as we
kept out accommodation side as flexible as possible. Eventually we
found some kind of a hostel or a house or a B&B close to Enna. We
had no idea what kind of a place it would be. As Marta would say,
with the universe being on our side the whole trip, our last night
turned out more than perfect. We were staying in a B&B on the
countryside, basically in the middle of no where. There were big
beds, fresh towels, clean bathrooms and hot water. The owners of the
B&B also have horses, two sheep (which think they're dogs, so
they run after cars all the time), four dogs, two cats and a load of
geese. The atmosphere was so warm and relaxed, I could stay there for
another day or two or three. They also had fig, orange and pomegranate trees. I slept like a baby and in the morning we had such an
awesome breakfast I thought I had died and have gone to heaven. We also rode the horses, pet the dogs and cats and hung out with the owners.
Arenella, Siracusa, Siracusa (top)
Sacchitello (bottom)
Even though we didn't want to leave this little paradise, we didn't have a choice. We headed to Trapani, which was a lovely surprise after driving through its bland suburbs. After having lunch (pasta for €4) we quickly visited the historic centre, had a few sweets and we were back on the road for the last time. Destination: Trapani airport.
Trapani
After returning the car there was nothing left to do except waiting for the plane and reminiscing all the lovely moment we had and watching the photos on our cameras. One thing was clear: we're definitely coming back!
