Last Dance in Sicily

Our time in this charming place is winding down, but our love affair with Sicily remains.  Already we are dreaming of returning here in the future and with an even longer stay. 

I am just so glad that sweet Cody was able to spend a wonderful week with us here.  We packed her days with good stuff so that she too is falling in love with this place. 

This island, a good-sized one, just off the coast of mainland Italy, is a jewel.  In every corner there is beauty, except in places where people illegally toss their trash.  That happens everywhere but still it’s disappointing to see.   

The sky here is Mediterranean blue, and the colors of the sea are multiple shades of blue that can only be described as made in the Mediterranean.  And the mountains!  Mountains rise directly up as if catastrophically pushed up in one enormous, painful emergence from the flat floor or green valley below.  The mountains are steep, rugged, and hint at stories about their past.  Like our continents that retain the coastal shape formed when one body of land broke off from its motherland millions of years ago, we often see a mountain with a smaller rocky mountain just below whose outline surely looks as if it fell from its mother above in one enormous and disastrous natural event. 

It’s not just the scenery that romanced us.  Sicilian food is enough to make anyone want to stay.  After all, Italy is famous for its food.  While we have certainly enjoyed our share of Italian food, I must candidly say that it’s really no more spectacular than the Italian cuisine easily found on the Hill in St. Louis.   

I think I knew this before, but I was reminded with our stay here that every pasta shape has a descriptive name, and its shape is not just for eye appeal, its shape is deliberate, to enhance the intended dish.  For example, some shapes maximize the ability for the sauce to stick to the pasta, some tubular shapes are designed to be filled, while others are designed to lie flat and be baked.  There is an untold number of pasta shapes.  I knew only maybe five or six pasta shapes and names before dining here or before perusing the pasta aisle at the market.  Usually, one entire aisle is devoted to dry pasta in every supermarket.  One other note, while diners can order cured meats for antipasto, and meat, chicken, or fish for secondo, most people eat very little meat here.  Most diners make their meals of wine and a primo of pasta with selections prepared in dozens of ways.  Many opt for the dolce as well. Like my man, Sicilians love their sweets.

Sicilian Olives are amazing.  We loved olives in Spain, but Italian olives doused in olive oil and chopped herbs are old-world delicious. 

Italian wine is good too.  Most good wines here are inexpensive and cause no headaches because they contain no sulfites.  Stan and I have had our share. 

Meeting people in places we visit is one of the great joys of our travels.  Because of where we are living, about an hour from Palermo and 20 minutes from the city of Castellammare del Golfo, we did not get to meet many people.    Our repertoire of new Italian friends includes our Airbnb hosts, waiters and chefs from favorite restaurants, and the absolutely lovely couple we met at a lunch-time restaurant in Trapani – Senore and Senora Ferrari!!!  They showed us photos of their family and of themselves when they were younger.  Both were handsome, very good-looking people, but had no relation to Enzo.  Oh, and after returning to the stazione di polizia three or maybe four times, we became fairly acquainted with the police officers in Castellammare del Golfo when we tried to pay our parking ticket. 

OK, as often said, all good things do come to an end.  On Friday, we will begin a new adventure . . . in Malta.  We think the island will be a warmer, but a brown contrast to the green colored landscape we’ve found in Sicily.   

We are excited that Shea will visit us there which means we are on tap for a whole lot of laughter and fun!   

Oh!  A rain shower just came along and gave us a good-bye kiss, a rainbow. 

A huge, rather flat but beautiful rainbow. Thank you, Sicily. Arrivederci.