Tonight we are in the wonderful town of Polizzi Generosa, up in the madonie muntains of north Sicily, being treated to our third major festa of the trip. And this time it's absolutely Sicilian style: processions of serious faced Sicilians in black, men and women, absolutely silent and serious, pious expressions, carrying tapers as big as they are, through stone streets in a stone town on a stone promontory of a stone mountain range. Dramatic beautiful scenery, dramatic beautiful people.
The fireworks have started exploding and it's time to write about the last two rich full days. In the 36 hours since we left Siracusa in our rented car, we have crossed the Sicilian nation from south to north. We have been in Greek religious ruins on high olive groves, in roman hunting lodge ruins with spectacular mosaics of every wild animal and wild human behavior, in a Norman town where everyone is strongly built and fair haired and blue eyed like they just got back from the Crusades, and in a ceramic artists paradise where painters rave about cobalt blue and manganese green.
We have been staying or eating in five more hill towns in the two days: palazollo acreide, caltagirone, piazza Armerina, morgantina, aripa, and Polizzi Generosa.
I would like to write about each stop in detail, as so much happened, so I can remember the trich details
Wednesday morning (yesterday) in Siracusa,where the air was warm, we took an early morning stroll past the yachts and through the old stone town with its sophisticated stores and restaurants. Then in our rented Fiat, we were out into the warm summery countryside climbing into limestone mountains. In less than an hour we were in the hill city, Palazollo Acreide, drinking cappuccinos next to the town's older men and Amy walked up 100 steps to the cathedral, where pigeons were cooing in the baroque interior. The town also has a tiny museum a collection of Sicilian folk art: marionettes and nativity figures carved 150 years ago, baseboards of Sicilian carts carved with mythology, old ceramics in pale green Arabic styles. Better still, outside town is the acreon, a small ruined greek city, with almost no one there! We explored the grassy Greek theater, the remains of temples to Artemis, the huge quarries that, long after the Greeks gave way to the Romans, were turned by early Christians into catacombs and safe living spaces in the decades of war that followed. The area is rural, warm, green, with vistas of miles towards the seas.
From there we started climbing on rural curvy roads up and up. In another hour we went to the very top of a dramatic baroque style hill city, Caltagirone, where the Arabs started a ceramics tradition that still thrives today with beautiful platters, madonnas, pitchers and bowls. We ate antipasti and spaghetti Norma, an eggplant sauce. In this town there's a stairway 500 stairs long, and this time of year it's covered in plants that from a distance make it look like its covered in flowering vines. On each side are about a hundred ceramics shops, each with slightly different styles, they sit and paint the slips on the ceramics as they wait fr customers to stop by. And the results are fantastic.
After Caltagirone we got to one of Sicily's fine freeways that whisked us high up the central part, olive groves and Hawthorne trees and cedars. Here in the middle of suburbs of Piazza Armerina, is a roman emperor's hunting palace/lodge that was buried in mud a thousand years ago. It is fill of beautiful Mosaics of great detail and color, on every floor and the walls were once beautifully frescoed. The place is enormous, takes at least an hour to wind through it all on the scaffoldings they have created to take you over every drawing.
Finally we ended the day in the ancient medieval center of Piazza Armerina, high Norman citadel town, and this day was the feast of Santa Maria Della Vittoria, our lady of victory. In between hot pizza topped with cheeses boiled potato slides and fresh herbs, and wine tastings offered at the wine store of our b&b owner Giovanni, we joined the procession with the local high school band and a group of teens in white carrying a portrait of virgin and child on one side, and french/norman crusader on the other. The crowd sang hymns, said a lot of hail Mary's and went all around up and down the steep mountain up to the cathedral.
Thursday morning.... This morning.... We spent an hour at breakfast with Giovanni eating hot fried yeasty bread filled with thick sweet ricotta and a local pistachio butter on bread and a jam they make of Mexican nopal cactus, very popular to grow here. We drove just a few miles east of the roman villa and now we were hiking through a huge wealthy Greek city where they found hoards of silver platters with gilded designs, statues of Demeter and persephone because they think the local lake was the entrance to hades underworld. Also on the east horizon, mt Etna was snow covered and billowing clouds of smoke and steam. Quite a sight!
We spent the rest of the afternoon climbing passes into the very green madonie mountains, covered with green wheat fields, sheep pastures, and horse and cow pastures. The mountains are huge rocks and the hilltowns crown the highest points of the highest crags.
Wc drove and drove, pausing when local shepherds had to coax 50 sheep across the narrow roads, it got greener and greener and the wildflowers more and more fabulous. We had lunch way high in the mountaintop town of aripa on the deck of a restauran appropriately called the bel vedere, beautiful view --because it was perched way up on a cliff dropping to a huge turquoise lake below mt Etna, with a tall medieval fortress in the foreground. Amazing! We ate antipasti and spaghetti with ragu and rose wine.
Now we are in Polizzi. We had no reservations and did not even know there was going to be a festa here. Because everyone wanted to watch or take part in the procession, and because there are only 3 places to stay, and two were full and one had only one room left, it was touch and go to find out if we could be here or nit, but some very kind people took many extra steps to helps track down some hosts and we are now the guests of CeCe, in palatial accommodationsy,with antiques, having been out at the towns only formal restaurant, now listening to the fireworks boom. Two more days in Sicily! Tomorrow down towards Palermo, then we'll see.
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