Thursday, August 26, 2010

Sicily: The Harvest and the Homecoming

Moments after we stepped off the plane in Sicily, we saw this:


Not only is it possible to get reasonable coffee from pods in Italy, but you can also get pizza from a vending machine in the airport. While we didn't actually try this machine out we were impressed with the windows that let you watch your "pizza" being made.

We began our Sicilian adventure in Palermo, and were instantly taken with the gritty beauty of this city.


We spent our first day wandering through the street market. I had been wanting to buy some new sandals and things were cheap. My sandal shopping was prompted by one of Shane's recent comments to me. In Venice one night Shane looked at my "admittedly-dorky- but-totally-comfortable-for-lots-and-lots-of-walking" sandals and said "Are you going to wear those sandals when we get home too?"

It's hard for a backpacker (errr...rolling suitcase/backpacker) to keep up with the fashionable Italians, but a pair of slightly less practical sandals was a good start.

We also happened upon this in an alley after the market closed.


Living in East Van I have seen many different things in alleys, but a severed swordfish head was a first for me.

Shane got practically giddy when we saw this:


We also sampled some amazing Sicilian food. We had Arancini balls (stuffed, fried rice balls), Pane e Panelle (chick pea fritters), and the delicious potato croquettes. What we did not try, but was fascinating to watch being prepared was the street vendor's beef spleen sandwiches.

Watching a vendor make one of these sandwiches was graceful affair - almost like a dance with beef spleen as the partner ( I wouldn't hold my breath for it to appear on Dancing with the Stars any time soon).


Our mission in our first days in Palermo was to secure a rental car as my old friend Jill (world-traveler extraordinaire) would be meeting up with us for the first week of our Sicilian travels and we had big plans to drive around the island.

Finding a car was hard. Most companies were completely sold out, or if they had any cars left they were horrendously expensive and/or the business itself seemed sketchy according to travel site reviews.

Luckily, when Shane went exploring he happened upon a independent car rental agency that was able to provide us with a car for a reasonable price. It took a few days longer than we had planned on to actually receive the car and the car rental agency tried to explain things to us via Google Translate. When you see the words "big MISHAP" show up in the translation you know things just aren't going smoothly.

But at last, we were off. Because we had a car we were able to drive around the countryside looking for B&Bs and farmstays to bed down in for the night.

The first night we stayed in a wonderful house on a olive/fig farm.


Beautiful pomegranates were also growing on the farm.


We also encountered this fantastic gas station created roadside attraction. Celebrity statues in plexiglass!


View from castle town Erice.



We visited the ruins of Selinunte.


I was nearly ready to rip up all the hardwood floor in our apartment and put down mosaics after we visited Villa Romana del Casale which features 3500 square metres of illustrative mosaics that were buried under mud for 700 years. The most famous mosaic features these ten bikini- clad babes.


Views from Mt. Etna, Europe's largest active Volcano.




And it was always time for a swim when you saw a beach like this.

Yet another beautiful farmstay.


And the highlight of our Sicilian trip was a town not found in any Lonely Planet or Rick Steve's Italian guidebook - a town called Marianopoli. Marianopoli is the hometown of my grandfather, and the location of my Sicilian family we were meeting for the first time.

We stayed with our hosts Rose and Rosario. They took us out to visit the historic churches, the local archaeological museum, and a cave that was lived in in prehistoric times. But the best part was visiting their farm. Here we saw almonds, figs, olives, tomatoes, pine nuts, and my personal favourite, prickly pears.

Almonds ready to harvest.


Rosario using a hammer to open the almond shells.


Picking figs.






Saying goodbye to everyone at the end of our visit was hard, but they sent us on our way with a huge care package of fresh almonds, figs, prickly pears, biscotti, and a new collection of family memories.

1 comment:

  1. it looks like next to the beef spleen photo there's a big roll of toilet paper! hehe

    ReplyDelete