Our Sicilian Experience

We spent the next two weeks in Sicily travelling the triangle formed by the city of Palermo on the north-central coast, the island of Marettimo off the west coast, and the former Greek city of Agrigento which is located on the south-central coast.

Our first stop was Scopello, a tiny hamlet that exists exclusively to service Italian tourists who come to walk in the Riserva Zingaro. We stayed at the Pensione Tranchina, which is run by a lovely woman named Marisin. The rooms are basic but inexpensive, and she offers a fixed dinner menu for her guests at a (for Scopello) reasonable price. Her kitchen makes the best sardine pasta we tasted on our trip (sardines being one of Julian’s favourite foods, we tried a lot of sardine pasta). There are only a few rooms, so the pensione is also very friendly and intimate, with both the other guests and the staff eagerly sharing their experiences.

The Riserva is a protected area with a sub-tropical ecosystem. It was created when locals objected to the construction of a highway through the 7-km strip of coastline that links Scopello with San Vito di Capo to the north. At the end of April it was too cold to swim (although some brave Italians in Speedos did just that), so we walked the Orchid Trail, a route along the hillside and away from the crowded beachfront. The signpost claims that orchid lovers can spot up to 25 varieties. In spring, the path was bursting with colour. I’m not sure this one is an orchid but it certainly is pretty.

From the vantage of the Orchid Trail, we had an excellent view of the rocky beaches that line the coastline of the Riserva.

From Scopello we drove to Trapani where we were to take the ferry to the island of Marettimo. We had rented a car in Palermo because there is limited public transit in this part of Sicily. Trapani is a port town, so we needed secure parking for the four nights we were spending on the island. Secure parking came in the form of Maurice, who runs a tiny parking lot on the ground floor of an apartment building. He parked our rental car neatly in one of the designated spots then drove us in his clapped-out van to the ferry terminal. Cash only please.

Marettimo is the most westerly of the Aegadian islands, about an hour by ferry from Trapani. It is dry and mountainous with well-designated walking paths. Unfortunately, at the beginning of May, it is basically closed. The sole hotel on the island was open and fortunately they provide basic cooking facilities because none of the restaurants were. After a cold and dessicated pasta lunch at the bar, which set us back 40 euros ($60 CDN), we ate out of the alimentari, what we would consider a convenience store. It’s about the size and shape of an RV trailer, but the shelves are packed with a surprising selection of jars and cans that can be turned into dinner, and the tiny fridge contains salami and cheese for trail lunches. On our second day, we discovered the bakery. If you get there before 9 a.m., they offer an amazing tuna sandwich.

Marettimo was an important island for observing sea traffic between Italy and both North Africa and Spain. The Normans, who never met a hilltop that they didn’t think could be improved with a castle, built a ring of watchtowers around the Sicilian coast and on the island of Marettimo. Their invasion took place over several decades in the 10th and 11th centuries, and they never made progress beyond the coast. The watchtowers served as an early warning system. When threatened by hostile forces, guards would light fires which could be seen by the adjacent watchtowers. With this system, they were able to rapidly alert a large area that it was under attack.

They also left behind a pretty church. Until recently, it was occupied by a family and their farm animals. The church has now been restored and makes a good goal for a well-signposted walk out of the village.

The remains of former civilizations, particularly the Greek, Arabic and Norman, are even more prominent in western Sicily than in Syracuse. For a start, there are more ancient ruins in western Sicily than I ever expected. Most tourists visit Agrigento’s Valley of the Temples, which, as you might expect, is comprised by a line of ruined temples dedicated to Greek gods and heroes.

The ruins are hard to appreciate in the heat, with busloads of other tourists. But the museum, located a 15-minute walk up the hill from the valley, is deserted. We spent two hours virtually alone in the air-conditioned space, which is packed with enough Greek vases and statuary from Agrigento’s days as a Greek city-state to satiate even the most ardent grecophile. The museum also provides a good history of the area through the centuries.

The ruins at Segesta, near Palermo, allowed us to imagine what an entire city-state looked like in the 5^th century BC. Segesta was inhabited by the Elymians, an indigenous people with close connections to ancient Greece, Carthage, and later Rome. Archaeological excavations have uncovered the city walls, the agora (market) and Greek theatre, as well as the foundations of the house owned by the Admiral of the Segestan navy. Excavations are ongoing. Shortly after we visited, archaeologists uncovered a perfectly preserved Greek family altar. An Athenian architect designed Segesta temple in the 5th century BC, but it was never completed because of an ongoing war with another Sicilian city, Selinunte.

Selinunte is located on the SW coast near Castelvetrano (home of the delicious green olives). It was a Greek colony settled in about the 7th century BC. The city came into constant conflict with the citizens of Segesta whose territory Selinunte bordered. But it was the Cartheginians, under the command of Hannibal, who eventually captured it in the 5th century BC. The city remained a Cartheginian vassel until the 3rd century BC, when it was finally destroyed as part of the Punic Wars with Rome. Today, it is a lonely, evocative place overlooking the Mediterrean Sea (and not at all crowded).

The Normans are most famous for their invasion of Britain in 1066. However, a hundred years earlier, they had been Viking mercenaries who were given permission by Pope Benedict to invade Sicily. He didn’t really have the authority to give this permission, but they were sent as part of a complex geopolitical power play. The Norman who eventually succeeded in conquering Sicily, improbably named Roger, was a great admirer of the Arabs that he was in the process of vanquishing. Rather than tearing down Arab buildings, he and his son, also named Roger, incorporated what the Arabs had built into their designs. Their admiration went so far that Roger II created a chapel in the Royal Palace that has a distinctly Arabic flavour.

The city gate adjacent to the Palace initally looks like a bog-standard Norman gate until you examine the figures that decorate it.

Sicilian food reflects the many influences on their culture. At the Buatta Cucina Populana, a restaurant dedicated to serving fresh takes on traditional dishes, we ate sweetly acidic caponata (eggplant and peppers; Spanish), pasta topped with fresh sardines and breadcrumbs (Arabic), and black pig sausage (Calabrian), spiked with pistachios (Arabic), and tucked inside a beef rouladen (German).

This mashup of cultures defines Palermo. On the surface, Palermo looks a lot like Naples – noisy, chaotic, busy, dirty – but the acceptance of various cultural influences distinguishes the two cities. While Naples is inward-looking, vaguely hostile and threatening to outsiders, Palermo is warm and welcoming.

Late one afternoon, I was starving after a busy day of exploration, so we stopped at a harbourside café in Palermo. The menu was entirely comprised of gelato. I asked the waiter if he had any sandwiches. “Panelle panino?” He asked. I knew panelle was a fried slice of chickpea flour (Arabic; delicious), but I couldn’t imagine it in a crusty panino. However, he’d offered it to a tourist so it must be okay, right? He went next door to the adjacent café and reappeared a few minutes later with exactly what it said on the box: several slices of panelle stuffed into a panino. Surprisingly yum! Clearly, this is comfort food for Sicilians, something you might offer a hungry kid after school. I later learned that the alternative comfort food panino is stuffed with tripe fried in lard. Good call.

One day we were returning our rental car to the train station. It had been a trick getting into the station (note to self: pick up and drop off at the Palermo airport) because it was Saturday and the streets around the station had been turned into a massive open market. Google maps directed us down one blocked street after another and funnelled us into one traffic jam after another. Finally, after a good half-hour, we reached the parking lot. The barrier was up so we started to drive in. The man in the booth at the entrance dropped the barrier and yelled excitedly at us. Needless to say, we didn’t understand a word. At that moment, a young woman walked up. “English?” She asked. She translated for us, explaining to him that we were not trying to sneak a parking spot so we could go to the market, but were, in fact, returning a car. After a few minutes, he calmed down and raised the barrier. She accepted our thank you with a smile and disappeared into the crowd.

Nowhere was Sicilian kindness more evident than on our self-guided walking trip. We booked with a local tour company, Sicilian Experience, to walk in the Madonie Regional Park, which is located about 100 km south-east of Palermo. Our first interactions with Sicilian Experience didn’t inspire confidence. Carmelo, the owner, sometimes didn’t reply to emails or replied without answering questions, and he didn’t ask for payment or even a deposit in advance. He sent Nuccio (with his little dog Zoe) to drive us from Palermo to the town of Ganges and the first inn where we were to start walking. When we arrived, there seemed to be confusion about who we were and why we were there, with Nuccio explaining that we were Carmelo’s clients. Much to our relief, the owner just shrugged, and we were given a room.

It turned out that the owner was Carmelo’s dad Aldo. Carmelo showed up a few hours later. He is a congenial guy who provides support services to British and Australian travel groups as well as his own clients. We teased him about not paying for the trip in advance, telling him we would give him five stars on trip advisor if we didn’t have to pay. He laughed. What if we hadn’t shown up? He shrugged, “If you don’t show up, I don’t pay my father. Anyway, why would you say you want to come then not come?”

He told us the story of how his father came to purchase the decrepit estate that became the inn when Carmelo was a small child. His father led the family through grass higher than Carmelo’s head. “Not for the last time, I thought my father was crazy.”

Before:

And after:

We spent two nights at the inn during which time we got to know Aldo (minimal English but friendly), Carmelo’s sister (fluent English from a stint in Dublin and very chatty) and his mother who cooks for up to 200 people when they show up on motorbikes for a traditional Italian Sunday lunch (we witnessed it). Although the inn and the food were basic, the ambiance was topnotch. The guests of the inn are almost exclusively walkers, which made for very sociable evenings as we compared notes.

Carmelo’s casual approach to the financial side of his business was not mirrored in the care he provided his guests. The tour consists of a curated selection of countryside walks which take you from one picturesque Sicilian hilltop town to another. Carmelo has walked all the routes. He drives you to the start each morning, so you avoid the tedious bits. One day it was pouring and very blustery — I could barely shove my arms into my rain jacket when I got out of the car. He rerouted us so that we walked through a gorgeous, sheltered valley filled with wildflowers – a modification that the walkers with the big international tour groups didn’t get.

On our daily drives, we heard more stories. When the inn first opened, there was no road, so customers were transported down a steep track to the restaurant. On occasion, the van would get stuck in the mud and the customers would have to get out to push. “People came just for the van ride.” He observed wryly.

On our last day, Carmelo had booked us into a B’n’B run by one of his friends in the picturesque village of Sant’Ambrogio. Earlier in the day some Sicilian tradies had cut through a water main then gone home for the weekend, leaving the village without water. We only learned of this when we tried to order lunch. With typical Sicilian insouciance, the osteria served us a late lunch cooked in bottled water. It took awhile to prepare, but the food was great. When we bumped into the waitress a couple of hours later in the tiny grocery store while we were buying snacks to tide us over (and she was buying more water), she exclaimed joyfully at the sight of Julian, “My friend!”

At 8 o’clock that night, Carmelo learned that Sant’Ambrogio had no water. He was upset that we hadn’t been told when he dropped off our luggage. He offered to send us a car and find us another B’n’B in nearby Cefalu – even though our accommodation was no longer his responsibility. We couldn’t have asked for a more congenial and considerate host.

He got his five-stars on trip advisor. And so does Sicily.