We got up early the next day and I saw Koleta off at the airport. At breakfast I had met a Swedish woman, Karin and her friend another Karin. She needed a lift to the airport and came with us to pick up her car. They were heading towards Syracuse and hiking around Etna for a few days. Another man Landers and his family were also staying at the B&B and later I dropped him at the airport for his car. He told me about a couple of films about the area I should download. So I have the site and will download them when I get a chance. One about the mafia, 100 steps, about a guy who was murdered for interfering with the mafia. It sounds interesting and happened right around the area where I was living near Palermo.
I decided to stay at the B&B another night and explore the area in my car. I randomly chose to Salemi, a small hilltop village only 30kms away. I try to use the secondary roads wherever possible and stay off the vast highways that only take you from A to B. I love to drive slowly through the villages and farmlets, you see so much more of the country and the people.What started as a good road only a few kms from the B&B turned into a goat track so I was literally 4X4 driving in my Renault Panda trying to follow the beaten up road signs along the way. Stopping to ask farmers and passing cars for the right directions in my bad Italian I finally made it to this beautiful historic village. I again negotiated the narrow streets till I got lost heading towards the Duomo (cathedral/church). In my travels I try to find the Duomo or the Porto (port) which is usually where settlement began and the most historic parts of the towns. They are both easily spotted from a distance so I know I am heading in the right direction, if not lost amongst the one way streets.
On my way, and now completely bamboozled which direction I need to go to get to the Piazza, I eventually spot a gentleman walking through the abandoned streets. Its lunchtime and most of the shops are shut and the people inside from the blazing heat. I ask which way to the Duomo and he speaks perfect English. His name is Angelo and works for the municipal office and says he is heading that way, so he could jump in and direct me. Get in! Of course! He is probably the best looking Italian man of his age I have seen. Get and lock the door, I am not letting you out!
He directs me to the Piazza after giving me an Historic tour of the small village. He asks would I like coffee at the squares only eatery/bar. Of course! I try to shout the coffee for his assistance but he insists no. He introduces me to an Englishman who now lives in Salemi. In fact he lives in a beautiful terrace house across the square. Angleo and I sit and chat for a while. He flies light aircrafts as a hobby and has travelled quite a bit in Europe with that. A charming man, perhaps late 40’s and seems well respected in the town as a few people come to greet him while we sit.
He has to go to a meeting so we bid ciao and sadly my tall dark and handsome Italian man is gone off down the cobbled streets never to be seen again. Hmm may have to work on my “keeping an Italian man” manual! ........................Or maybe not!
I get talking to another, OMG almost too good looking to be true Italian guy called Nicola. He speaks beautiful English with a that Italian movie star accent to die for. Sadly he is only 26, half my age. Why are all these beautiful people living in Salemi? Have I come across the beautiful people town of Italy?
Nicola has been working in London as a chef and will head to work in Barcelona for the summer like a lot of young Sicilians. He says he would like to go to Australia sometime and find himself a wife over there and settle down. We chat for a while and I say how I have the perfect girl for him, Kathy, my friend back home. I couldn’t resist taking a photo of him, for her of course, not for me! Its getting hot in the sun and I want to explore this beautiful village of ruins and cobbled streets lined with terraced houses so I bid ciao to my movie star and leave wishing I was at least 20 years younger.
I walk towards my car and am addressed from above in the small terrace house across the square. Its David, the Englishman. He asks would I like some coffee or a cold drink, to come on up and view the square from his balcony. He seemed safe enough and afterall it was a small village, I could be found pretty easily if I was captured and kept like in the book by John Fowles “The Collector”!
David is from Manchester, like most of the Brits I have met over my journey the past two years. He has been living in Italy for around 20years, mostly in the North and now in Sicily for the past 2 years. He bought this quaint terrace last September and has renovated it to a comfortable 3 storey apartment. We sit on the balcony overlooking the square and beyond to the rolling hills and steep mountains in the distance. Its idyllic, I can hardly believe I am sitting here. He works in real estate here. Its the town that a couple of years ago the mayor had an idea to restore the old ruins of the historic town by selling them off for 1euro each. Yes 1 euro! However, there is a promise attached that they will be restored and rebuilt within a few years. How interesting? Hmm I don’t know anymore details about it at this stage. We talk for a while about what we are doing in life and where we have been. I explain about my 5 month sojourn and how I hope to spend most of it in Italy. How I am working now and then with helpx people, not so much for free accommodation but to actually live with families and in communities to really get to know the place.
He is interested in my concept and before long offers for me to come and stay there for a few days at least and “work” for him or others that he knows. Wow! That would be fantastic, to return to this village and get to know the area. Its such a beautiful place where time has stopped and people are not only very friendly but beautiful too!
I accept and arrange to email back as we swap cards and David needs to do some work as I have kept him long enough. He shows me through the apartment and where I will be staying and that I will return on Wednesday to stay for at least a few days. Great! Who knows what is ahead of me. He will arrange a list of things for me to do while I am gone. I hope it works out okay. He is quite a gentleman and I am looking forward to hearing more about the 1euro houses and Salemi life.
I make my way back to the B&B through the backroads again until I am lost somewhere again in the vicinity. I stop and ask the Cabinerie parked alongside a road who have pulled over a driver for a check, as usual. In my bad Italian I ask for assistance and they decide to lead me to where I need to go. Some 15kms as it turns out, I follow them until I reach the SS115, a road I get to know really well as it skirts the southern Sicilian coast line, I spend most of my driving on and off it over the next week. Home at last I am tired from the beating sun and driving and fall asleep for a few hours.
Next morning I am heading back to Palermo to Balustrate, to Antonio’s, the helpx place. I had promised to return to help with the changeovers as he has guests leaving and new ones arriving for a full house on the Saturday. He said he didn’t have any helpers or cleaners and because he let me stay on after our argument an extra night I felt it was the right thing to do. It was just an hour or so away from Marsala so I enjoyed the drive back after a quick lunch and packed up my things. I have accumulated a lot of stuff on my travels for cooking and eating al fresco. Saving money and also eating some foods I like, not as rich as the Sicilian diet contains. No ice cream, but pomodore (tomatoes) and sliced meats, pickled onions and of course the numerous jams I have made along the way. A mandatory jar of oregano. I will never eat tomatoes without it now. Just sprinkle a little on top and taste the difference! You will never taste better tomatoes than those found in Sicily, the home of tomatoes. Rich in flavour and sweet enough to eat as a fruit. To die for! So lucky I have a car at this stage to cart around my numerous belongings.
Back at Antonios, Andrea is lazing by the pool and Antonio is glad to see me back. His younger brother has arrived for the weekend. Marchello, a sad looking soul, but speaks some English and over the next few hours I get to know more about him. He was a physical education teacher but apparently was laid off with the crisis. I later find out he has suffered with depression from a relationship and that explains his sadness. He is around 45, though he said 28, but nice to talk to and a beautiful smile that is shown rarely. I say to him a lot over the time I am there to smile more and he does. I make myself at home back in the same room, then go for a dip in the pool. I want to go to Castellemmere again for dinner and ask Marchello would he like to come, but he is hesitant to leave Antonio his host for the night. He is shy and threatened by his presence I notice while I am there. So I head off alone back to the portside cafe I visited with Koleta. Its around 9pm and the port is beautifully lit like a fairy town. All the terraced houses encircling the harbour high up to the ridge of the mountain. It is one of the most picturesque harbours I have ever seen. Postcard perfect, even my camera cant capture all the magic it has to offer.
This time I try the Spaghetti with Tuna, Koleta had eaten it and it looked delicious. It was! I think its the best meal I have had in Sicily and has the true taste of tomatoes you would expect to find here. Cooked with all the love and attention as the previous time by the family chef. They were happy to see me return again and greeted me with big smiles. I returned to Balestrate for a late night coffee again, as usual to the Piazza and watched the soccer game between Uruguay and Ghana. Exciting enough because of the atmosphere of a cafe in Sicily surrounded by enthusiastic followers of the game. Not Collingwood and Essendon’s, Anzac Day match, but nonetheless exciting! Andrea and his friend joined me for a drink and offer to head to a nightclub, but I was tired and had to work for Antonio the next morning so I passed on the offer. I found my way back to the villa around midnight.
Next morning I wake to hear voices of the cleaners returned to do the changeovers! OMG this man is incredible! I was slightly annoyed that I had bothered to do the “right thing” and drive the 100kms back to help, especially after he told me I wouldn’t do a good job like they could! So I soent the morning pottering around and trying to make myself look reasonably useful. I strip the beds, iron some sheets and arrange the cupboard of linen.
Antonio has some plums for me to make more jam with, so I do. Marchello loves my jam and watches carefully over me as I make it. Asking questions and saying how he loves fruit and only eats a little meat. He scoffs all the fruit residue from the colander as I strain the juices from the plums.
Its almost lunchtime and I am given the task of going to the supermarket and pescheria (fish shop) with a list of supplies for lunch. Scibbled on a piece of scrap paper, I am to get 2kgs of Cozze (mussels) cleaned and should be around 2.34euros, 500g of Sardina not more than 3.00euros for the gatto (cat). Directions on how to get there scribbled with a few lines in a main street drawing and told not the little 6mtrs wide street but the street 16mtrs wide. He doesn’t know the name of the street or the shop but to look, use my eyes. An impossible man! Also a few things at the SISA supermarket, I knew it, I went with Andrea on Monday for supplies (before the ice cream we had). I am to buy 1 Spiedino, classico its basically a skewered kebab shape of Mozzarella cheese and wrapped in prosciutto ham, I ailio (garlic) 1 romana lettuce. If there isn’t any spiedino I must get trinka! The thicker one not the thin one. Thankgoodness they had spiedino I didn’t have enough information about the trinka! I head back with my all my shopping pleased I was A)Finding the right fish shop B)able to get all the right ingredients, though the fish was slightly more expensive for the cat than he expected to pay C)I had none or little that is trouble in shopping by myself. A job well done I thought, but no “thanks that was a good job you did” nothing..... Antonio is not one for saying thankyou much! Marchello and I washed the mussels again then I watched as he cooked the mussels, taking note for my future reference and posting his “secret recipe” on here for all to read!
Antonio’s Secret recipe for Mussels! (all his recipes are secrets apparently!)
Wash the mussels in cold water and remove all the beards. Rinse again in cold water before putting them in the pot. Dont add any water to the pot. There is enough from the mussels to broil them. Now this is something I didn’t know. I have always added some water, fearing they might burn but there is enough that comes out naturally. Dont add any salt either. Lace on a low heat and steam them for around 15mins. It seemed too long for me, but its his secret recipe!
Slice thinly an onion (I was able to do this “perfecto” he said) and sauté in some extra virgin olive oil until transparent. Add a can of baby tomatoes (the best in the world he says.... from Sicily of course) and simmer away until they are cooked.
Drain the steamed mussels to remove the juice, then remove most of the mussels from the shells, leaving just a few good looking shells for presentation on the plate. You can add just a bit of the juice if necessary to make a soup and serve with stale bread to soak it up. Dont think about adding any pepper, herbs or spices! “You vill not taste the mussles”! It was delicious! So we ate complete with two glasses of wine, it was a long lunch with a discussion afterwards about how he should be nicer and not so aggressive to his helpxers. I don’t think I got through to him but I tried! After lunch a swim then a sleep before I packed and dressed for my drive to Marsala and the Lido Fiesta!
I drove the almost 80kms to Marsala and found the Lido. Luckily I had done a reconnaissance drive the day before as I would never have found it in the dark, to arrive at around 9.30pm. On arrival I parked my car in the carpark and saw just a few people there. Not much of a fiesta and definitely not the wahoo party I was expecting. However I paid my 15euros to Clara the manager and she directed me to a table of her friends I could join for the dinner.
They were a group of 3 couples and two children, obviously from the 25+ upper class of Marsala, and members of this private club. They were all sweet. Lucca introduced me to his wife, Marilana, his friends Viledia, Alessandro and their beautiful 3yo daughter Asia, Elvira and Danillo and their son Auroura. They all lived locally and Viledia could speak quite good English. They made a place at their table, filled a plate full of pasta and poured me a wine. The DJ played mostly English speaking songs from Michael Buble to House music. Next course was again mussles, the same as I had for lunch followed by fresh fruit salad. We sat and talked and I showed them photos from my iPod of my son and his girlfriend and pictures of my cottage. It was difficult to communicate at times between my lack of Italian and the blasting music. They were intrigued at my gypsy life journey, where I had been and where I was going. They stayed until around midnight and had to go. I stayed a while longer but felt a little uncomfortable by myself so I made my way to my car. My accommodation for the night! You see I hadn’t booked anywhere to sleep because I was led to believe the fiesta would go to the wee small hours of the morning, perhaps 5am. So I bought a pillow the day before, had my quilt and made the back seat of the Fiat Panda sort of comfortable enough, though a little cramped in the legs. I slept on and off as the fiesta continued on below me on the beach. It was safe enough, on a main road and well lit, so I wasn’t too worried about it. It was hot and the windows fogged up blanketing the inside of the car like well made curtains!
I drove through Mazarra Del Vallo, an awfully uninteresting town mostly industrial and oil refineries. I guessed that people around here had to work somewhere and that must be it. Then onto Selinunte, built on a promontory overlooking the sea, now an Archeological Park to wander around in with ruins of the huge city built in 628BC. I parked the car and wet to buy my ticket, it was only 8.30am and it didn’t open until 9am. I grabbed a copy of a book about the Mafia and sat and read until it opened. There were only a handful of people before opening which as it turned out was perfect for exploring the site and photographing the ruins without Hawaiian shirted tourists climbing all over the ancient relics. It took me almost an hour in the hot sun to walk around the site.For two and a half centuried it was one of the richest and most powerful in the world. It was destroyed by the Carthaginians in 409BC, then finally fell to the Romans around 350BC. I marvelled at how they would have built these huge structures and lugged them up these hilltops all those years ago. Massive columns, most of them unearthed by archaeologists, and are still discovering relics where the areas are taped off. Fascinating to see the remains of an old village, planned cobbled streets and hewn out stone troughs. Eerie to walk around by myself knowing that almost 3000 years ago it would have been a thriving metropolis.
Next I drove to Sciacca. Another seaside city that has been overtaken by many civilisations since 300-400BC. It has a busy port famous for the worlds best sardines. (I guess I will have to try them). I made my way again to the port to take a short rest from the drive so far and get out of the sun for awhile. I lay on the stone sea wall, just beyond the street market, made some cornflakes and dozed for a while. I liked it here. I felt safe and wanted to return for at least a few days. I noticed some affatasi signs along the street overlooking the Mediterranean azure blue water and asked someone who owns them. Luckily the owner, Michael as it turns out, was walking just down the street. He showed me through a basic but comfortable apartment and to my surprise said it was only 20euros a night. Wow! I jumped at the chance to stay there and arranged to return on Wednesday. Yes another idyllic spot. Almost what I had in mind, short of a balcony was all.
I headed off again towards Agrigento just 50kms away, I was getting tired and ready for a swim in the pool. I checked into the Grand Hotel Dia Temple, after spending almost an hour and numerous round about here and there directions from people I finally found it. I swam, cleaned up and went for dinner at San Leone another beach resort 10kms away. I find it much better by myself to eat at resort places where people are friendly and happy to chat away. It had a night market and so many restaurants to choose from, I spent an hour or so before returning to Agrigento. It had been a long but eventful day. I love Sicily!
No comments:
Post a Comment