Viva Panini, Viva Sicilia!

After touring Catalan’s architectural marvels, dodging fireworks at Spanish medieval faires, admiring old churches, and freeloading off our pals in Barcelona for a week, it was time to head south – to Sicily. Sweet Sicily – cappuccino, sardines, mafia, and crumbling infrastructure.

We landed in Trapani on the northwest corner of the island, and then caught a bus from the airport into the oldest part of town. Our hotel was in a great neighborhood just off the main pedestrian zone – an area filled with charming cobblestone streets, old churches, and tasty panini dealers. Well, the panini were tasty, I don’t know about the dealers – they looked a little oily.

During the evening we threw caution to the wind and strolled around the old city, along the sea walls and out to an ancient Spanish fort. We looked all over but couldn’t find any Cosa Nostra – they must be in a convention or something. Either that or they’ve moved somewhere where they can get a decent internet connection. 5.4kbs!? Now that’s a reason to break someone’s kneecaps. We also got reacquainted with this time honored European equation: cobblestone streets + dark nights = break an ankle. Ok, ok – we didn’t really break any ankles, but it was touch and go there for awhile – especially when racing for the gelato stand before it closed.

The next morning we were up early for our cable car ride to the gorgeous town of Erice. It’s a walled medieval burg overlooking Trapani – often used as a landmark by ancient sailors that plied the North Africa - Sicily - Rome trade routes. This city-fortress is on top of a high hill that dominates the northwest portion of Sicily and was considered impregnable for hundreds of years. That must be why Erice was conquered by Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, and Normans – everybody loves someone who plays hard to get.

Luckily our guide book gave a lot of attention to the features of Erice, because when we arrived the fog was so thick we had trouble finding street signs, let alone the key sites of Erice like an espresso or panini dealer – we nearly fell off one side of the city. After admiring the medieval lanes and the charm of the freeeeeezing cold streets we spent the obligatory five minutes looking at the oldest church in town (the church was similar to the one pictured on the left which had a great “Light of God falling on Jake Blues” vibe) then high-tailed it back to the cable car for our ride back down to the sun, sand, and surf of Trapani.

Soon after tumbling off the cable car we packed up and caught a train (or more accurately, trains) to the interior of the island – aiming for a town called Caltanissetta. I was shocked to find the trains leaving on time – wow, is this Italy? There was gorgeous scenery from the train of which I failed to take any good pictures. Indeed, we arrived in Caltanissetta just when the timetable said we would, and got a room in a sweet B&B down a nice pedestrian street that was not far from some lovely old churches.

Dinner that night was at a very small restaurant run by a husband and wife team. The husband was loaded (did I mention there are grapes in Sicily?), so he focused on making sure all wine glasses of the patrons were full and little else – other than side-stepping the disapproving glares from his wife of course.

Since the trains had worked perfectly we decided it was time to switch to the bus, and caught one to Piazza Armerina for the sightseeing destination I had been looking forward to ever since my background research started on Sicily; Villa Romana. This site is the ruins of a Roman senator’s hunting lodge/villa, with what many people believe are the best Roman mosaics “in situ” left in the world. Almost all of it was submerged under a mud slide, and since excavations began fairly recently (around 1950), much of the place is well preserved.

It’s a sprawling villa with the walls either 50% intact or reformed, sumptuous mosaics oozing the imperial wealth of Rome, and the surrounding lands are still rolling agriculture – it’s not hard to get the feel of what it might have been like to spend the summer with Maximus where every room in his sprawling vacation home had a gorgeous mosaic for a floor that you tromped over on your way to the lap pool, vineyards, olive gardens, etc. – while well looked after of course by the valets, cooks, bakers, maids, masseuses, stable boys, aerobics instructors, 50-50 “general purpose” slaves, you get the idea...

Yes, it was gorgeous. Too bad we didn’t get there on our first attempt when we initially arrived in Piazza Armerina. Between waiting for our “agriturismo” hosts to come and pick us up, and finding out that busses were not going to run down to Vittoria (our next destination) on the following day (um, yea… remind me why did we switch from the train?), we had to scuttle our culture plans. No worries, later in the trip we caught up with Villa Romana – saw all the mosaics (hence my extensive knowledge of the site – see above), along with a stop in the charming town of Ragusa Ibla – somehow we snuck away in the middle of our 14 nights at the next mystery destination… We brought along our new pal Fawn (on the left in the last photo) who finally hooked us up with a decent internet connection, although I'm a little worried about these pop-up windows that keep asking me to pay "protection" money...