Making the most of it

Weekend 1….

So far I’ve been lucky enough not to have to work on the weekends. That might change soon though as the job gets towards the pointy end, so I’ve been trying to make the most of being in this beautiful place. Instead of my normal weekend behaviour of sleeping in and procrastinating over boring housework, I’ve been leaping out of bed early on a Saturday morning and getting out and about (ok, not exactly every Saturday morning, but quite a few even so).

To date I’ve made it around Central and South Western Sicila and along the Mediterranean Coast. The first trip still ranks as the best, travelling through the least populated, least touristed region. Here we have a close up of the very long set of steps in Caltagirone, each individually tiled according the traditional style.

Caltagirone is famous for its ceramics. Always a place with high quality clay, when the Arabs took their turn at running Sicily (and believe me, *everybody* has had a go at some point), they brought glazing and a particular blue shade to the table. The result is a beautiful product with a few dedicated individuals and the tourist trade sustaining the traditional industry.

Caltagirone was the first town on my exploration circuit, and I immediately got to put my new driving round tiny streets skills into practice. Here I was following the main road believe it or not! I was looking for the famous stairs, drove round this tightest of corners, over a bit of a bump, looked up to my right and lo and behold there they were! I’d just driven over them.

(I was driving towards the camera as per this photo)

Fortunately my experience in Ortigia has also made me adept at spotting a parking opportunity. Wrong way down a one way street? Other cars and scooters? No problems for the little yellow panda (seen here as clearly not the only car going the wrong way – note the one in front!.

The white van has stopped beside the little corner store and put its hazard lights on – acceptable practice here for random parking manoeuvres… park anywhere as long as your hazard lights are on.

I won’t bore anyone with a detailed description of my travels, suffice to say that this was taken from one of the higher points through the Sicilian Pennines, from a castle founded more years ago that you can imagine. Enna is one of the larger towns in the central region and it’s as beautiful as the others. Perched precariously on top of mountain tops with tiny narrow cobblestone alleys and ancient defences, with amazing cathedrals ringing out on a Sunday morning, surrounded by countryside and the occasional herd of animals crossing the road, this area was just beautiful.

A major highlight of this trip was the Villa Romana del Casele which I will only link to as no photos I could have taken would have done justice to the sheer awesomeness of the 2000 year old mosaics. However another highlight was the Park of Neibrodi, a nature reserve consisting of the largest beech forest in Europe. With my visit perfectly timed in mid Autumn, the 2 hour hike was a feast of spectacular colours.

In the distance in this photo we see the looming Mt Etna. It really is quite difficult to miss! I can see it (from a more southern angle) on my way into work in the morning when I’m not distracted by the crazy Sicilian drivers or my Italian lessons on the CD (or both). Here it is covered in snow, but the fabulously warm weather (November in Sicily is like July in Manchester but with less rain) has melted it all. Hopefully it will come back by the time the Mt Etna region gets onto my weekend itinerary.

A note on the history of Sicily. As far as I can tell, the following people have had a go at it: Byzantine, Greek, Roman, Arab, local tyrants, Norman, German, English, Spanish, Naples and finally, only in the late 1880s, did it become part of the newly formed country known as Italy.

Here we have a bizarrely English looking manor in the countryside – at some point Admiral Nelson did some remarkable service (presumably at sea) for the King of Naples who promptly made him Duke of Bronte (near Mt Etna). This was only officially relinquished by his descendants in the 80s! And so we have Nelson’s manor neatly tucked in next to the 10th century abbey with a “Gothic-Norman portico and a Byzantine icon which, according to the tradition, was painted by St. Luke himself”. So there you go.

Weekend 2…

On another weekend I went travelling along the Mediteranean coast, ie the southern coast of Sicily. Around the awful industrial places like Gela there are some beautiful stretches of coastline, not least of which is this little outcrop, the Scala dei Turchi (Turkish stairs). On my way to the visit the famous Valley of the Temples I stopped here and nearly didn’t get away again! I passed a lovely few hours reading on the rocks….

… almost being tempted by the beautiful clear water (it was warm, but not that warm).

But eventually I did make it to the temples near Agrigento, and, well, WOW. The Greeks built this series of temples around 500 BC (seriously, sometimes Sicily makes London look modern and I don’t just mean because in London there are road rules). Read all about them here for the details, I just wandered around aimlessly imagining life some 2500 years ago.

Finally we have the sunset over the lovely little beach (castle in the background, available for party hire) as I wound my way back home to Ortigia.

I’ll try not to do too many touristy type posts, but really in a place like this it’s hard not to! Next might actually be of Siracusa (where I live) though, as well as the ultra baroque town of Noto. We’ll see if I can get motivated :)

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If you notice a new little logo on this blog, it's because I'm flirting with the idea of calling myself a humanist (although of the small h variety).  This is despite a general reluctance to use such labels.  Humanism explained