Sicily - Palermo

06/Jun/2015 - 07/Jun/2015 Palermo, Sicily

Palermo was a logical stop for our final night in Sicily before crossing the Tyrrhenian Sea to Naples.

Despite many negative reviews I had read, I found Palermo to be a fascinating place with a large vibrant historic centre, well worth visiting - we should have stayed longer. Amongst the decay there was astounding beauty. Restoration attempts were evident, a feast of beautiful dishevelled historic buildings of differing architectural styles. The lack of uniformity an indication of the many invaders who had left their mark - Palermo is claimed to be the most conquered city in the world.
The Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Saracen Arabs, the Normans, the Swabians, the French and the Spanish were some of the invaders.
What has resulted is a fascinating fusion of architecture, food and culture. Central life seemed vibrant and chaotic amidst the grim and ruination.
Neglect was negated by beauty, unpredictability and curiosities.





















On our way to Palermo we took a side step to Monreale. 15km south of Palermo, Monreale sits on the slope of Monte Caputo, overlooking the fertile valley “Golden Shell” famed for its oranges, olives and almond. Its draw card which we had come to see was the Monreale Cathedral. Famed for its glorious golden mosaics completely covering the walls of the aisles, transept, nave and apse (68,220 square feet), it is perhaps the finest Norman building in Sicily.
It came to be when the Arabs took control of Palermo, banishing the bishop who then settled on what became the site of Monreale . Here he built a modest church. 240 years later, in 1072, the Normans drove the Arabs from Palermo and in 1174 King William II (William the Good) constructed a new church at Monreale.  Arabic and Byzantine (as well as Norman) craftsmen worked on the cathedral resulting in a fusion of architectural styles and religious symbolism.
In 2015 it was granted UNESCO World Heritage Site status.

Monreale Cathedral, walking over the cloisters.

 

 

Rooftop, Monreale Cathedral.

It was a struggle to locate our accommodation in Palermo.
We drove multiple times around a confusing one way system until eventually we pulled up on the pavement of what we hoped was our accommodation. There was no proper signage for Abatellis B&B. We waited until Jarvis and I could sneak in with a local through the now opened oversized fortress style door. We managed our way up several flights of stairs to a surprising discreet office, we were in the correct place, a relief. Our car was then whisked away by an unknown person to an unknown location for the night and we unpacked into two lovely bedrooms in this central historical quarter, Kalsa. With not much time before our departure the next day, we began our wanders through Palermo.

The boys were amused by the nudity of the sculptures of the Fontana Pretoria, the first stop after our mandatory gelato stop. This huge fountain was initially intended for a house in Florence, but was bought in 1573 by the Senate of Palermo to become the centrepiece of Piazza Pretoria. When it was first unveiled the public outcry over its flagrant nudity was immense, it has since been dubbed the Fontana della Vergogna or “Fountain of Shame”.



Piazza Pretoria, "Fountain of Shame", Palermo Centre.

Only a little further up the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, we came across Piazza Vigliena, a Baroque piazza laid out on the orders of the Viceroys between 1608-1620. It was an Octagonal formed at the intersection of the two principal streets of Palermo. Four sides were streets and four were buildings with near identical facades. Each facade contained a fountain with statues of the four seasons, the four Spanish Kings of Sicily and the four patron saints of the old town areas.
At the time the piazza was built, it was one of the first major examples of town planning in Europe.



Piazza Vigliena, Palermo centre.

Further again up the Corso Vittorio Emanuele sat the 12th century Cattedrale di Palermo.
This building was immense in scale, a visual feast of crenellations, arches and geometric patterns. It has been said to have suffered aesthetically from multiple re-workings over the centuries but remains a prime example of Sicily’s unique Arab-Norman architectural style. The boy’s patience was over so we made a quick dash in and out. Less ornate inside, we did not have time to visit the Norman Royal tombs or climb to the cathedrals roof for a city view.



Cattedrale di Palermo

Dinner at Buatta was a good place to try a few Palermo specialities, although we weren’t keen to try them all (pasta with spleen!).  We ate caponata salad (aubergine), panelle (fritters with chickpea flour), arancine(stuffed rice balls), crocchette (mashed potato and egg in breadcrumb), pizza bread. Ollie’s fried fish proved too adventurous, even for him - baby octopuses, tiny unidentifiable fish. Like its architecture, Palermo’s food seemed to be a fusion of ingredients, not all Italian.

The next morning we ate breakfast sitting at a long shared table.
Three choices of sweet cakes, two types of biscuits, meats and cheeses, this was our last slightly odd breakfast in Sicily, the boys were still complaining. We packed up our bags with the intention of retrieving them and our car by early evening for our overnight ferry crossing to Naples. Unfortunately we had to deal with our car immediately. No car parking buildings were open on Sunday, there was nowhere for it to go, we had to take it back. With no other choice available we left it, packed with all our possessions, down a side street amongst the signs and locals telling us that we couldn’t and shouldn’t.
We walked away nervously with our fingers-crossed.




Galleria Regionale della Sicilia

Heading a little further down ‘Via Alloro’ we came across Palazzo Abatellis or Palazzo Patella. This 15th century Gothic-Catalan Palace was the residence of Francesco Abatellis, the port master of the Kingdom of Sicily. It now housed the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, works by Sicilian artists from the middles ages to the 18th century.  It was widely regarded as Palermo’s best art museum. We were all quite captivated by its greatest treasure, the Triunfo della Morte( Triumph of Death). A fresco in which death was mounted on a horse leaping over his victims, the aristocrats of Palermo, while the poor and hungry look on. The exhibition space itself was impressive, it was designed in 1957 by Carlo Scarpa, one of Italy’s leading architects.

Running short of time we jumped on a horse and carriage to the Norman Palace only to arrive 5 minutes too late. The area around the Norman Palace had long been the seat of Kings and rulers and today it played host to the Sicilian Regional Parliament.
We walked across the road sat down outside and ate gelato.

Fuelled with sugar we managed to encourage the boys to walk back to the Ballaro market. At 1000 years old, the Ballaro is probably the oldest of Palermo’s Arabic markets. These Arabic origins were still evident. The noise, smells, narrow streets, colours, foods and goods on display provided a ‘souk’ like atmosphere in this hidden market. Life here didn’t quite fit the 21st century, it was a great way to see local life. We enjoyed lunch at trattoria Franco Franchi in the middle of the Ballaro market. Full of Italian families it was a great spot to observe tradition and celebration. A Holy Communion party of 20 was to one side of us a large family gathering to the other. The standard of dress was quite extravagant and uninhibited, more like ‘fancy’ dress to us. There was a lot of enjoyment, eating and laughter. Mountains of food were piled up on the party table beside us, baby octopuses eaten as finger food, and mounds of seafood. The women on the other side were dressed in diamantes and spangles with big blow dried hair, I was fascinated. We ate and dressed far more conservatively.
A starter of chips, panelle, and croquettes followed by cabonara pasta, tuna style pasta, calzone and pizza (buffalo mozzarella, rocket, prosciutto). All accompanied by a goblet sized glass of wine, one was more than enough.

Ballaro market



Ballaro market

Last on our list before we headed for the ferry was a visit to Teatro Massimo.
A fitting end to our stay, we sat on the steps where the final scenes of the film, The Godfather Part III were filmed, replaying the scene to the boys on our mobile phone. A re-enactment wasn’t on the cards.  The Massimo Vittorio Emanuele Theatre is the third largest theatre in Europe, the largest in Italy. Built in 1875 it has more than 1300 seats and is renowned for its perfect acoustics.

Teatro Massimo

We wandered back to the B&B to retrieve or car, exploring some other parts of the old town.
Some are said to remain untouched since they were bombed during the war. We were relieved to find our car and contents as we left them.
Conveniently it was only a 5 minute drive to our ‘Tirrenia’ ferry bound for Naples. At 20:15 we left. Standing on the outside deck we looked back fondly at Sicily as it disappeared into the distance across the Tyrrhenian Sea.

 

 

 

Ferry to Naples.

Sicily-Agrigento

Agrigento 30/May/2015-06/June/2015

We were a little surprised by the punctuality of the cleaners knocking at the door at 10am on the very dot. Their arrival sent us haste fully fleeing from the lovely accommodation we had enjoyed for a week in Modica. Fortunately Chris could now stand, he had been very unwell the previous day.  So once again we made multiple trips lugging our car load full of gear over the cobble lanes, up and down wonky steps to then be squashed into the bursting boot of the Land rover discovery.

The neighbours looked on. Three very curious young children just opposite us that had called to us numerous times on our stay now sat in the doorstep watching us. They appeared to be especially fascinated that Chris was carrying Lachlan who was still suffering from his injured foot.

Most of a day was spent in the car travelling from Modica to a spot in the countryside of Raffadali, a commune 10km northwest of Agrigento. This was where we were to spend our next week in Sicily.

It was a fascinating drive passing through the rocky arid landscape which contrasted with flat fertile valleys, full of greenhouses. I presumed this was where some of the fabulous food we had been eating was produced. I had never seen such a large scale concentration of outdoor greenhouses, lots of different styles but mostly quite low semi-circles covered in a white sheet materials with entrances on both ends and aeration holes along the sides. Three-quarters of Sicily’s land is used for agriculture. Huge solar panel setups covered the hillsides.

We u-turned a couple of times to try and catch some sites, but they didn’t eventuate. Somewhere was the ‘Valley of the Temples’ we had heard and read about, but where? While discussing its whereabouts with Chris we rounded a bend to see the most incredible exposed view, ruined temples dramatically situated on a ridgeline ahead – wow! It occurred to us that the term “valley” was a misnomer, the ruins of the seven ancient Greek temples being nestled amongst the olive trees high on a ridge just south of the modern city of Agrigento.

Eagerly we drove up the hill to sadly discover there was no-where to stop of park, we shouldn’t have been surprised. At 1300 hectares, the archaeological park and landscape of the Valley of the Temples is the largest archaeological site in the world and one of the most popular attractions in Sicily. I consulted my kindle online ‘fodors’ Italy book(which had been extremely useful), to read that we must park at the bottom of the hill and walk or taxi up and then spend at least 3 hours at the site too. We would revisit again tomorrow, it was not really a quick pit stop.

 

Trying to then get to the small town where we were to meet Tarek, the manager, was a mission – strangely all the main roads were closed – just barricaded off. It took a very long time to find probably the only possible route around Agrigento.

Almost at our destination we got the wave over signal from two Italian police officers standing on the side of the street. A little surprised, this was the first time we had been stopped anywhere, we pulled over and awaited instructions. “Documents and Ownership papers please”. Opps, we had discovered from our border crossing in Morocco that we didn’t have the ownership documents (just an initial receipt). I nervously searched for a digital copy of this on my phone, but by the time I had done this the police officer’s discussion had changed to the topic of gelato. It was a most amusing scene, two police officers peering in at us with full-on dress (hats, badges, tight blue shirts …) and huge wide grins on their faces. “We must try pistachio and pecorino, flavours from ‘Le Cuspidi’, the gelato shop in Raffadali, the best in Sicily’”, was deciphered from their English-Italian dialogue. A little ‘Police Academy’, they were certainly not the intimating force I had imagined, but this is Sicily and people constantly surprised me here, they had so much interest and time for you. Not worried about our lack of documents we were ‘fare welled’, a rather positive and humorous experience.

Tarek meet us at the Q8 petrol station in a rather beaten up French licence plated car. Speaking a little English, French, Italian and Arabic we followed him by car out of the town and through the countryside till we eventually turned down a very narrow lane to our wonderful destination for the next week. The lack of signs made ‘leading’ mandatory. ‘Villa Mozaic’ was located high on a rocky hill overlooking the ups and downs of the landscape. A beautiful 16x3m pool sat near the cliff edge. Tarek showed us around. The house while architecturally a little strange had been decorated beautifully inside by Tarek in modern Balinese style. This was his business, interiors and rental management. The art, painting and furniture were beautiful, hence the large bond required. We were further delighted by the complimentary food and Barbera wine supplied, even soda for the children – such a lovely welcome.
 

 

The following morning we headed off again for the Valley of Temples, this time we located one of the carpark. The carpark stalls, impossible to avoid, managed to sell us sunhats for what was now quite a warm sunny day, maybe 24C.

We stood patiently in the queue for tickets, ‘Sicilian time’ applied at this basically unattended ticket booth. The American tourists in front of us didn’t remain so patient and probably demonstrated unacceptable impatience. The boys found this all quite amusing, we were now fully immersed into go-slow time.

What lay ahead of us was the remains of seven ancient Doric Greek temples from the 5^th and 6^th centuries BC. The best preserved of these was the Temple of Concordia. It is ranked amongst the most notable edifices of the Greek civilization existing today. The perfect conservation of this temple was mainly due to its transformation into a church in the middle ages. It was almost entirely intact, only its roof was missing.

 

Temple of Concordia

We didn’t get too far without a stop for Gelato. Choices included ricotta (cannoli mix) , pistachio, pistachio and almond mixture and fortunately lemon granite, Lachlan would have been unimpressed otherwise. Fortunate too, was that Lachlan managed to walk the majority of our exploration. Chris’s back took a sigh of relief.

We were grateful for the lack of tourists and heat during the off season. The final day of May made for a peaceful and comfortable walk up and down the ridgeline exploring ruins and enjoying the views.

 

 

 

A slightly too cool pool awaited back at the villa as did the unexpected surprise of folded washing with another load on too. Tarek had come by and spoilt us again.

 

The following morning Tarek popped in and offered to take one of us for a navigation and supply mission around the local town of Raffadeli. Off I went, rather amused by the state of his car. No seatbelt, ‘no worry’ in Sicily he told me as I tried to fasten the non-existent belt. He clutched his broken gearstick and with all windows down (I wondered if they were broken too) off we zoomed. A bit wild, but quite the fun ride. First stop bread, second stop fruit and veges (was great to have some insider info, choose the fresh garlic and onions this time, choose some Sicilian varieties too, Tarek kept passing me things to eat “It is good to try”, he said in French). “Look, notice what the locals are buying”, Tarek said as he turned my gaze to the tied bunched of onions that the locals were walking out with. “They have just been pulled from the ground and are sweet and delicious”. As was the massive fresh garlic bulbs, tied in a bunch with wet earth still clinging to its roots. Prices were very reasonable, more so then the mainland.

Third stop ice cream at the amazing Le Cuspido (first gelato maker in Sicily), where I greedily gobbled perhaps the best gelato (chocolate and pistachio) I have ever had. I watched as people choose the brioches lathered high with gelato– too much for me. As much as I loved brioche I couldn’t risk filling up on it at the risk of decreasing my gelato consumption. I was to return here a few days later with the boys who were equally impressed.

Lastly the supermarket (on Tarek’s request my chicken drumsticks where butchered off the whole chicken, not the already butchered ones which were apparently ‘inferior’).

Quite a different level of service, it all took time though so patience was required, seems patience wasn’t required for the roads though!

I did feel rather odd and unsure of what was really happening on this shopping/orientation trip. Tarek ‘waited’ on me with huge kindness and patience. It was quite hard to know what to make of all this niceness. But as Tarek said, well in my deciphering of his French and more poetically, ‘I do not wish to just take your money for staying but to offer you service’.

That evening I could confirm that the onions and garlic were very very sweet and delicious.

The following morning he popped in again with ‘Fruits des bois’ that he had just picked, mounded decoratively on leaves on a plate. They were delicious, three colours of boysenberry-like fruit (white, purple, red) but tasting sweeter and milder. “Very good added to yogurt”, Tarek suggested, as he took his right fingers to his lips and formed a blown kiss to signify that it was fabulous.

Armed with a whole lot of possibilities for adventure (mainly supplied by Tarek who emailed me pdfs and handed me a pile of guidebooks) we headed off to Torre Salsa. The beach of Torre Salsa is part of the Regional Natural Reserve, managed directly by the WWF, covering more than 750 hectares.

Having no idea what it was about we headed off with our phone map leading us. We spotted a turn off and followed other people that looked like they were heading the same way. They stopped in front of us and decided to turn back. We ventured on to find ourselves in no-man’s land, we turned back too. OK, we thought, let’s try the no-fail option and head for the Bovo Marina (large beach, reserve area). Off we went in the wrong direction and as we turned back on ourselves (navigating around a couple of snakes sunning themselves on the road) we spotted a different sign for ‘Torre Salsa’ so decided to give it a go, this time following another car that looked like it knew more than the last. The Land rover was pretty happy on the rugged dirt road passing through bog and water ways. We passed the first car we followed again they had stopped again, we went on again, why? We finally reached a probable carpark where we stopped and walked a little further through a track to the beautiful secluded beach. Still unknown to many, and obviously difficult to navigate to, we now enjoyed a mostly deserted beautiful spot, there were only a handful of people scattered across it.

A visit to Scala dei Turchi on the coast of Realmonte, proved far more remarkable than expected. Here Chris had what he described as his most incredible swim ever, swimming in the Mediterranean Sea around the “Stair of the Turks”.
 

Scala dei Turchi

It was quite the sight, a white rocky cliff of Marl, sculpturally eroded into a staircase, dramatically contrasting with the blues and greens of the Mediterranean Sea. We accessed this from one of the sandy beaches which itself wasn’t very impressive. But the cliffs themselves were spectacular, totally unique, I see why some people review this as their best experience in Sicily.

 

Scala dei Turchi

 

 

We packed up the car which was now even fuller with the purchase of four paintings from the walls of the villa and its neighbour, which Tarek had rolled into two large drawing tubes for us.
It was nice to have slowed down for a week in this quiet beautiful spot, as things were about to pick up pace again.
  

 

‘Villa Mozaic’, Raffadali