Sicily Part V: An “Oh-My-God” Pause

  

Sicily at the Tip of Mainland Italy

Sicily Part V:
           An “Oh-My-God” Pause

 There is a yearning in my soul that keeps returning me to Sicily.  Augusta, Ortigia, and Taormina linger as vivid memories, and now, too soon, our days in Cefalù evaporated as well.  Regretfully we departed.  In a remarkably short time, we had grown agreeably accustomed to its art, history, and palate, all perfectly paired with its Mediterranean setting.  Yet, at the cost of leaving its many charms behind, we reluctantly turned west along Sicily’s northern coast wondering what might possibly top what we had already experienced.  With each passing mile, we were about to find out.

Palermo lay ahead, but it was not our destination.  Instead, we would spend the next few days in Carini, just west of the city, staying at Flower Villa Con Piscina, Privata & Wellness.  As we approached, we entered a puzzling huddle of homes hidden behind tall walls that ran unbroken, on both sides of the road, block after block, forming a grid that sharply defined each property.  I imagined that from above, the view might resemble a cluster of walled cells neatly packed beside one another like the cells of a honeycomb. 

Our Carini Hosts

    Anticipation quickly muddled with uncertainty.  Here was something more than the typical disparity between the on-line wide-angle and cropped advertisement photos and reality.  Honestly, we wondered what we’d gotten ourselves into.  But moments like this are simply part of a classic AirBnB adventure.  

Faithfully obedient to our GPS, we crept through narrow walled and rutted lanes threading this maze of private enclosures.  Although not immediately flattering, a sense of cozy imperfection somewhere on the cusp between romantic decay and decrepit abandonment prevailed.  While “shabby-chic” is usually reserved to describe interior décor, here the shabby clearly characterized what lay outside these walls.  We could only hope the chic was hiding within.

Rounding a bend, in the distance at the far end of the lane, we spotted a man vigorously waving toward us.  We had phoned Roberto and Floriana, our hosts for the next few days, only minutes earlier.  As we neared their gated compound, his radiant unguarded smile reassured us this had to be Roberto.  And frankly, even if by some

Sun Baked Pool

mistake it wasn’t Roberto, we immediately wanted to stay, for once the motorized gates swung open and we maneuvered inside, the unpolished distressed look of abandonment outside had vanished.    This honeycomb, it turned out, had honey. 

Inside the self‑contained property stood a white multi-story home, surrounded by an olive tree dotted garden, and most inviting of all, a swimming pool basking in generous sunshine.  The pool stretched out in a sweep of clear, shimmering water that mirrored the sky like polished glass.  At one corner, a four-posted shelter by the water’s edge promised shade and cool relief from the Sicilian sun.  Lounge chairs beckoned, perfectly positioned for reading, napping, or simply listening to the

Patio Escape Built by Roberto

gentle ruffle of water as light breezes, playing a game of pong, bounced inflated rafts off the pool’s sidewalls.  We hadn’t even seen our rooms, and already the pool, like a mythological Siren, called our names. 

Another feature caught my eye.  In another corner of the yard, a patio blended rustic warmth with Mediterranean elegance.  At its heart stood a wood-fired fireplace, its wide hearth ready for crackling logs and glowing embers, accompanied I imagined, by the shuttling scrape of a paletta (pizza peel).  I could almost smell the scent of grapevine and olive tree branches crackling in the night air.  Would that a paletta might serve up its magic in such an inviting retreat, designed for slow meals, and glowing fires.  Picturing

Under Olive Tree 
Branches

unforgettable gatherings beneath the dappled shade from the outstretched branches of nearby trees, I envisioned this cozy focal point hosting evenings of stimulating conversation, filling repasts, and certainly vino in mind.

Following our orientation, we were shown to the informal elegance of our two-bedroom apartment.  Ours was a tastefully converted basement unit at the end of what had once been a ramp for autos to enter.  Through a glass wall entry, once hosted garage doors, we entered a spacious living and dining area that created a restful, homelike atmosphere.  We shared a large bathroom and generous kitchen space.  Still, the appeal of what lay outside dwarfed any thought of remaining inside.  Sleep, we suspected, would be its primary function. 

While Lenny and JoAnn ventured into Palermo one day, Maria Elena and I, having already explored the capital on a previous visit, chose a different itinerary: the pool.  That said, we didn’t spend the entire visit like sunning lizards.  One morning, Roberto announced he was taking the day off and insisted on showing us his Sicily. 

Our Apartment's Interior

It became one of the highlights of our stay. 

We drove westward, with stops along the way.  With each surprise destination, our excitement rose.  We paused first at Segesta.  There, perched high above a sweeping valley stood one of the best-preserved Doric temples in the ancient Greek world.  Its isolation is so dramatic that the obvious question arises immediately: why here?  The answer, as it turns out, is tangled in myth and history.  Seeking an answer, the history of this once city quickly leaked onto my pages.

My guidebook pointed out that while Segesta boasts a magnificent Greek temple, it was not a Greek colony in the traditional sense.  Its origin traces to the beginning of the 5th century (around 430–420 B.C.).  Ancient Greek historian Thucydides claimed the

Roofless Greek Segesta Temple

Elymians, an indigenous people of western Sicily, descended from Troy, fleeing their destroyed homeland after the Trojan War.  

While this Trojan origin story is likely mythological, archaeological evidence suggests they were a distinct local culture deeply influenced by contact with Greek and Phoenician settlers.  Aside from this legendary connection to Troy, the city was not ethnically Greek.  Yet the Elymian people adopted Greek art, architecture, civic customs, and religion as Hellenic influence spread across Sicily and maintained close political and cultural contact with neighboring Greek cities. 

Among the Temple Bones

        Their language remains only partially understood, which along with the temple’s setting, only deepens its mystery.  In contrast to sites like Paestum, not too distant from Calitri where protective barriers limit access, I could freely move among these columns.  I also recall once sitting on a toppled column segment in Olympia, Greece, though not for long.  History had forewarned me: There had once been a woman who, following her husband’s death, took over training her son.  Women, however, were forbidden from watching Olympic Games.  Determined to see her son compete, she disguised herself as a male trainer and entered the stadium.  This was incredibly dangerous: women caught at the Games faced the death penalty, typically being thrown from Mount Typaion, home to early Olympic games and sacred to Zeus.  When her son won, she leapt in excitement, and her disguise fell away, revealing she was a woman.  The judges spared her only because of her family’s long record of Olympic victories.  Afterward, officials required all trainers to enter the stadium naked to prevent future disguises.  Thankfully, my reprimand was simply a whistle blast.  Not waiting to learn the penalty for sitting, I immediately relocated. 

 Segesta’s 6 by 14 columned Doric temple is remarkably intact.  Interestingly, it was never completed, evidenced by columns left unfluted, the significant cella inner chamber where the statue of the deity is housed was never fully built, and it was never roofed.  Unfinished, it still tells a story of how construction proceeded.  Why construction halted remains uncertain—politics, shifting alliances, disease, frequent clashes with nearby colonies? 

Roberto and I were free to wonder and wander unimpeded through history, able to touch the ancient stone surfaces, silently urging them to tell us what had happened here.  The temple, however, chose to remain silent, its incompletion part of its 

Foundation Remains of Segesta

enduring puzzle.  

Gradually, we made our way to the back of the temple.  Navigating a steep-walled, muddy path from the back of the temple, we were able to get a glimpse of a once navigable river that led to the sea, now tame and lost deep in a ravine.  Roberto slithered and slipped his way across the V-shaped path with me close behind.  It wasn’t pretty, but we made it.  Returning to the others for refreshments, I noticed a man diligently at work cleaning mud from his trousers with napkins and bottled water—one out of three—he clearly hadn’t made it.

There was more to Segesta than the temple.  A convenient shuttle bus ride away, up a dusty adjacent slope, brought us to the remains of the fortified settlement of Segesta that included its amphitheater atop Monte Barbaro.  Segesta’s strategic position overlooked key inland and coastal routes, making it politically 

Empty Seats of the Segesta Theater 

and militarily important, reflecting both strategic awareness and regional instability.  Older than the temple, Segesta was founded as an Elymian settlement around the 9th–8th centuries B.C.  It was composed of simple domestic structures, now no more than outlined foundations with storyboards depicting their purpose and what they may have looked like.  

A well-preserved highlight is the Greek theater carved into the hillside late in the third century B.C. and rediscovered in 1822.  Here theatrical presentations took place during religious festivals.  Modern performances began in 1967, and since 2015, performances have occurred annually.  Capable of seating 4000 spectators, it features an amazing panorama of the surrounding countryside and a beguiling blue sea off in the hazy distance.  I sat for some time on one of the stone seats imagining those around me filled with attendees to some religious enactment, pantomime, or classic Greek tragedy of Sophocles or Euripides.  Would that these stones, that heard them all, might reprise their rhyme, rhythm, and music once more.  I closed my eyes to dream what the birth of theater may have been like:

The air carries the buzz of the throbbing crowd through the open bowl of stone—people greeting friends, vendors moving through the aisles offering cushions and fruit, the rustle of cloaks and sandals scraping the stone floor. The noise fades into a tense quiet as the penetrating, reedy tone of an aulos preludes the measured rhythms of the chorus, something close to a chant.  Shortly, the resonant voices of the actors take up, orating poetry with the occasional stamping of feet in ritual dance.

The Roman Fasces, Evidence
of Rome's Presence in Segesta 

Segesta had been a mixing pot where indigenous Sicilian peoples, Greeks, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and after the First Punic War, Romans, all left their mark.  Beneath the same sky lay evidence of an ancient mosque opposite a 15th century medieval chapel.  Remains of a loom through which a shuttle once moved indicated early industry, while a 12th-13th century castle keep attests to its enduring strategic location.  

We stomped the dust from our feet and moved on to the town of Erice.  We never learned whether it held ancient treasures, for Roberto’s goal here was for us to enjoy the best cannoli in all of Sicily.  He had the advantage, for by this point, we were thirsty and hungry, ready for anything.  Cannolo simply means “little tube,” but in Sicily, it has become something close to a cultural institution.  Food historians trace cannoli to the city of Palermo during the period of Arab rule (9th–11th centuries). 

Roberto claimed they made the best cannoli at Erice Bar in the village of Napola near Trapani on Sicily’s western coast and was out to prove it.  Despite its modest look, it has become one of the most famous cannoli stops in the region, and many Sicilians like Roberto consider it a must-visit for the dessert.  Here, each cannolo shell is piped full of filling when ordered with sheep milk ricotta, sugar, citrus, pistachios, and

Filled & Cut Erice Bar Cannoli

almonds, to keep the fried pastry shells crunchy.  With each about 8 inches long, the pun that one rich cannolo is enough for lunch was clearly proven to be true.  Sheep’s milk ricotta and their “filled-to-order” practice just may be part of their secret of success.  We sat on an outdoor patio enjoying paninis and cooling drinks while the cannoli were prepared.  No question, Roberto was correct, they were spectacular and lived up to being filling, and for the sweet-toothed, worth the stop.  However, they are made, the years have seen them grow to be the globally recognized Italian dessert we know today. 

Trapani Salt Flats

    Cannoli conquered, Roberto declared the next stop would be something far less sweet, but just as Sicilian.  We don’t put salt on cannoli, not yet, but if the people of Trapani had their way, we most certainly would have.  Salt from Trapani has historically been exported throughout the
Mediterranean.  The sea salt is harvested from a network of shallow coastal basins separated by narrow earthen walls.  Roberto drove us throughout this system of lagoons, pointing out how the seawater is channeled from the Mediterranean through these basins and left to evaporate under the Sicilian sun.  They have been producing salt here for over 2000 years.  Long before refrigeration,

Snow-Like Fields of Salt

salt was prized as the primary method of preserving food.

The hordes of salt are so large that tractors ply the rectangular salt pens to corral it into mountainous piles.  From a distance, the piles looked like winter snow until one remembered we were standing in Sicily in the Mediterranean sun.  While they await shipment, these pyramids of salt are covered with terracotta tiles to protect them from rain.  Almost like currency, salt was a valuable commodity in ages past. It shaped trade routes, triggered wars, affected taxes, and even empires.  For Trapani, its link to salt continues, hardly changed.   

Another Pie into the Oven

    Floriana and Roberto were ever slaves to cordiality and kindness.  Without a doubt, our foursome had a wonderful time and a most enjoyable stay in Carini due to the hospitality of our hosts.  They never stopped.  Following our return from Trapani, for example, my fictional soiree surprisingly materialized while we relaxed beneath the olive tree branches.  Gradually, the brilliant afternoon light faded, replaced by a starry canopy and shadows that grew to consume our walled compound.  To the pulsating glint of the pizza oven’s flame, Roberto’s paletta went to work shuttling Floriana’s pies in and out.  By the time the long shadows of evening had approached morning, we were satiated with wood-fired pizza, bruschetta, eggplant, and watermelon.  Spill-over-full of wine and enjoying excellent cigars, we recounted many “Oh My God” moments.  It had become a refrain we’d crafted to express surprised delight at some happening, including those during our stay in Carini.  Like temple singers, both Floriana and Roberto had joined our “Oh My God” chorus.  Would that it could never end, but too soon it had to.

Floriana, Len, and Me Puffing Away
at Evening's End

The following day, we departed for Naples and Calitri, ending an idyllic, hard-to-replicate itinerary that traced the Sicilian coastline.  But not all of it was due to the locations we chose to explore, which in themselves were exquisite, but more so because of the wonderful and extremely gracious people we met wherever we’d hesitated.

Why bother with more?  There is always Sicily, where ancient temples outlast empires and memories linger long after your departure.  After a two-week stint there, we had only tasted the wine.  Don’t wait and confine it to your dreams, after all, graveyards are filled with buried dreams.

    From That Rogue Tourist,
    Paolo