Travel Blog – 13th May 2023

After Carmel and Ian’s harrowing bus ride to Paris, they made it on time to the airport (with only seconds to spare) and flew to Rome where we met up again for our trip to Sicily!

We arrived in Palermo and took a taxi to our hotel, Palazzo Natoli. The hotel was in a perfect location, smack bang in the centre of the old town. We were lucky enough to be upgraded to their suite, with a balcony overlooking the busy central street, abuzz with activity. Our concierge, Davide was delightful, and gave us lots of recommendations for attractions, lunch and dinner. He probably thought I was an idiot when I thanked him by saying “Merci!” My brain was still in French mode!

We wasted no time getting out amongst it, and walked along the main street looking for a place to have some lunch. Our concierge recommended a famous street food place and we went there to see what was on offer. Sicily is big on arancini and this place was very busy. It was pretty much all a variety of crumbed and fried foods. The chick pea pancakes, similar to potato cakes, were probably the only thing worth eating.

The old town of Sicily is alive with energy and mostly a pedestrian only zone, although cars, motorbikes and scooters do try to drive around, the pedestrians largely ignoring them. In actual fact, we stood right in the middle of the main intersection, where a band was playing on the street, a huge crowd gathered around listening. The occasional car had to crawl through, dodging the crowd. The main square, called quattro canti, is impressive, with imposing, ornate fountains and statues on each corner, stretching four stories up into the sky.

We went out for dinner that night to a restaurant recommended by our hotel. Davide had recommended we try the local plonk, a red wine called Etna Rosso, which is very popular here. We could see why. It was delicious! I ordered a grilled cheese dish that is a local specialty and it was also delicious. The girls both had an traditional eggplant dish called caponata, that they really enjoyed as well.

The next morning, we went on a food walking tour of Palermo. Our guide, Domenico, had a very dry sense of humour and had us laughing for the whole tour. He took us to a church that was built in the 1100 BC and still contains incredible solid gold mosaics. We also walked through the open air food market, where we sampled some of the local fare, including a delicious arancini ball, the chick pea pancakes we had already discovered, fresh orange juice, olives and cheese. He then took us to a stall that sells intestines and spleen. We passed on that because it looked like anus. A few of the people on our tour tried it and one of them jumped on Lidia’s offer for a mint afterwards, so I think we chose wisely in abstaining. We finished the tour with fresh, ricotta-filled cannelloni, which took Lidia to her happy place, and the rest of us for that matter.

That afternoon, we went to see the “No Mafia Museum”. Apparently, the mafia is still an issue in Sicily, but they are quite open about discussing it. There is an anti-mafia movement that tries to raise awareness about the problem and they have started the museum, which shows a lot of confronting photographs of past mafia assassinations. We spoke to one of the staff there who explained that the mafia still charges protection money to most businesses in Sicily and those stores that refuse to pay have a sticker on their windows with the words “Addio Pizzo” displayed, which means “Goodbye, protection money”. He also explained that they are not happy about all of the souvenir stores selling “Godfather” paraphernalia, which you see everywhere on t-shirts, aprons, etc. He said that due to the terror that the mafia has inflicted on Sicilians, those souvenirs to them are like wearing a swastika in Auschwitz.

After this, we went to see the opera house. It is the third largest opera house in Europe, behind Paris and Vienna. It is very impressive and we took a tour of the interior, which included the royal box, where parts of the Godfather film were made. Outside the opera house, there was a car rally on and about 100 prestige, classic cars were parked all around the opera house. There were old Triumphs, Porsches, E-Type Jaguars, an old Rolls Royce and many others, including a 1935 BMW sports convertible that left me drooling.

We then wandered over to an ex-convent where, 700 years ago, the nuns invented a cake called “minne della vergine”. This translates to “breasts of the Virgin”, and it basically looks like a boob, so I don’t know what the nuns were thinking about when they invented it. They have a bakery in the convent where they still make cakes and pastries, including the minne della vergine. We dubbed it “titty cake” and shared a couple of them. They looked like an apple cake with white icing and a red cherry and were filled with sheep’s ricotta and candied fruit.

At 5:30 that afternoon, we decided to go and watch a puppet show. Sicily is famous for its puppet shows and we had already seen an old guy tucked away in a tiny shop making puppets. It turns out he runs the puppet show and learnt the craft from his father and grandfather. His children and grandchildren are now involved, so it is a huge, multi-generational affair.

The puppet show was all in Italian and entertaining in a corny way. We were kind of glad it only went for 45 minutes, but it was interesting having a look backstage afterwards.

That night, after a detour for a drink at a rooftop bar with expansive views across Palermo, we went for dinner to another recommended restaurant, where most of us had lasagne. We also tried a glass of Sicilian prosecco. It was lot sweeter than the stuff we’re used to and not very bubbly. We didn’t enjoy it that much, and when we returned to the hotel, Ian started to give the concierge his opinion on Sicilian prosecco. We have decided that when Ian speaks to some people, he stands on the precipice of the chasm of wrongness, then starts to run headlong into it. As he begins to speak, he unintentionally begins to insult their culture and then trip-a-trip-a-trips his way down the chasm, trying desperately to pull himself up, but somehow just making it worse. This was no exception. I love to watch him pelting down the chasm, but Carmel always manages to cut him off just before there is an international incident.

The next morning, we went to the airport to pick up a rental car for us to circumnavigate the island of Sicily. We had a conundrum on our hands with regard to getting our luggage into the car. You see, when Carmel bought her suitcase for the trip, she basically walked into a shop and pointed to the largest suitcase available. We dubbed it “the Beast”. Our conundrum was probably better suited to someone with the physics intellect of Einstein, ie: when you can fit the car into the suitcase, how do you fit the suitcase into the car? We briefly considered strapping an engine to the beast and driving it around Sicily, but with lots of reorganising and squashing managed to finally shoehorn our two large suitcases, the beast and two backpacks into the back of the Audi A4 station wagon. Ian’s smaller suitcase had to go between him and Carmel in the back seat.

With that sorted, we were finally on the road! We drove an hour and a half to a seaside town called Cefalu. The town was OK, but probably more popular as a beach getaway for Italians. It didn’t hold a lot of interest for us, but it was nice buying some prosecco and wine and sitting on Carmel and Ian’s balcony watching the sunset.

The next morning I went to get the car from the carpark outside the old town and drove in to get our luggage. The streets in the old town were extremely narrow: so narrow that I actually hit the mirror on one side driving down our street, then realised two cars had parked opposite to each other, making it impossible to pass. I had to reverse 200 metres out of the street and find another way. I finally found my way to the hotel, we loaded the car up again and headed towards a port town called Milazzo. This is where the ferries leave for the Aeolian Islands and we were booked to stay on Lipari for the next three nights. I had booked a carpark for the Audi in Milazzo, so the previous night we all consolidated our luggage down from 4 suitcases to 2 and left one of our cases and the beast snoozing in the boot for three days.

Milazzo is a dirty city without much going for it. In fact, it had become apparent to us so far in Sicily that nothing we had seen to date was in good repair. Although the roads have toll booths on them, the money is obviously not being spent on the roads. There were a lot of lanes on the highway closed due to damage where weeds were growing out of the potholes, indicating that they had been that way for quite some time. The buildings and footpaths were similarly in terrible condition. Either the island is very poor, or the money is being channelled into other areas (or pockets).

We were happy that we only had to spend an hour in Milazzo waiting for our ferry. Then it was off to Lipari!