Dreaming of Sicily

Today Craig and I are in a spacious 2 berth cabin watching gray skies out of our enormous window as the engines thrum taking us far from Sicily which was always clear and sunny for us. It's so restful in this quiet cabin, We have done so many things each day that it's hard to remember even two days ago.

Two mornings ago, (thursday, only our fifth morning in sicily) we woke up in Polizzi Generosa, in Cece's bed and breakfast in a huge antique bed overlooked by a painting of Christ himself spreading his arms in a catholic benediction, in rooms filled with antique cabinets filled with the family's silver, looking over a small garden wedged in between the tall medieval houses of Polizzi Generosa, the beautiful hill town that sits on a huge promontory over valleys that stretch far, far down to the mediterranean, barely glimpsed as the sun set. Our breakfast included excellent coffee with steamed milk and sweet cookies, we met her husband, another elderly guest, and the monk who lives upstairs who stopped by in his brown cassock. Soon we were in our car threading our way out the narrow streets and up and over the Madonies. In this part there are tall cliffs of limestone and long valleys covered with rippling wheat, as we dropped lower there were very old olives. I imagine there used to be tiny farms but now the beautiful landscape is made more lovey by the long sweep of each green field. Some of the fields and all of the radsides are covered in yellow wildflowers sprinkled here and there with purple, while some entire fields are sown with red clover I suppose to rest and rebuild the soil. The roads are very twisty, hard to see how the land folds so much when the fields stretch out like that. The roads slump so you have to keep your eyes open as the road may narrow just as the huge local bus comes around the curve.

As we dropped lower the towns had higher proportions of 20th century ugly apartments. We stopped at one town that sits under a huge crag which is under an even huger crag, the original Arabic name of the town is something like the raptors castle or eagles nest. Because in medieval times everyone was competing for sicily -- European Norman knights who held on the longest, Saracens who were either Turks or pirate types from the south Mediterranean, and of course the Arabs who had ben temporarily in control -- locals built towns around defensible castles very high up. We climbed up above the current town to the original medieval town in ruins. Beautiful mysterious and what a view!

The next town Cerda seemed totally modern at first view. We stopped to gas up at the local station: two pumps and a tiny kiosk along the street. The local owner watched our illegally parked car while we went to find trattoria Nasca, where the proprietor, a brisk lady, told us she might be open in an hour. So we stashed our car in a shady 1 hour zone, under the eagle eyes of mr. Sneaky, a retiree whose job now is to inform the traffic cops if you park too long. Then we had to shift to the sunny spot. The way one hour parking works is,your car has a little paper dial by the rear view mirror, you turn it to show what time you park.

I think Craig wrote about our wonderful artichoke meal. First we had seven artichoke dishes, then we asked for coffee then she laughed in amazement, oh no that was just the antipasti you still need to eat the artichoke pasta primi and the secondi of shrimp and smoked fish and the dessert and THEN you can ask for coffee. Here, have some more of the delicious jug red wine.

After lunch we drove down to the (very welcome) fast toll road, whisked over east to Cefalu, a very very touristy resorty medieval beach town with a lovely set of byzantine mosaics in the cathedral and a lot of tourists on the beach and in the bars. Wow, first overweight people we have seen in at least 4 days, seeing as how in the Sicilian hill towns you get constant vigorous exercise just walking the stairs in your house, the stairs that are your street, and the stairs into church. And these overweight people were in bikinis, not in decorous black.

Finally we went through afternoon nightmarish Sicilian traffic to find the EuropCar dealer in Palermo (one story down inside the train station) and finally connect car and dealer and then take a local train three stops down into old town Palermo and then find the Hotel Orientale.

Hotel Orientale. Wow. Imagine you are on a grimy street with immigrant restaurants (Indian, african) on the bottom floors of medieval palaces and belle époque mansions. Then you open a tiny door cut in the huge portal doors of a genuine palace with a central courtyard, only it is as rundown as can be, African language pop music wailing loudly from one of forty windows overlooking the core, which is packed with cars and scooters; laundry hangs; big chunks are missing from most of the some walls and electric and water conduits connect everything; then you ascend the grand staircase of polished stone on the far side up two landings, then another set of fancy but grimy doors. Opening them up you are in the most charming little spotless family run hotel, the ceilings are a mile high with tasteful painted moulding designs, the rooms have lovely fixtures and lights. Our room has doors opening on to a narrow balcony shared with three others overlooking a grimy busy little alley with street stalls and the disintegration of the walls is even more apparent , but step back inside and you are again in stylish paradise. That's the Hotel Orientale, and only 40 euros, breakfast included. Breakfast is in the front sitting room, the one with the balcony that Mussolini stood on to talk to, I guess, his adoring crowds back in the 1930s