Catania!

Our last stop in Sicily was the city of Catania. We were a little worried about this, as we'd read all the warnings about pickpockets and muggers in the large cities, but we forged ahead, figuring they must be exaggerations, which of course they were. 

Our bus from Siracusa dropped us off near the Catania fish market and our Air Bnb apartment. It was a slightly seedy area -- with some humorous graffiti -- but we stayed in the top floor of this building built on lava (as is all of Catania, following the same earthquake that demolished Ragusa in 1693) . . .

. . . with a view from our penthouse patio that couldn't be beat, of Mount Etna and double rainbows.

We never did get a full view of Mount Etna due to cloudy skies, but we saw enough to appreciate knowing it was there. 

We had just one full day in Catania, and our goal was to experience buying fish at the famous fish market, and making a Sicilian dish. This endeavor took all day and was our favorite day in Sicily (which is saying a lot). 

The sights and sounds (lots of Italian men yelling!) and colors and smells of the fish market were out of this world. It wasn't only fish, either: it was poultry, goat, pork, probably horse (they eat horse meat in Catania, our Air Bnb host told us), sausages, fruit, vegetables, breads, cheeses, even refrigerator magnets. I'll just post some photos and let you enjoy it, like we did. It's hard to believe they pull off this show every day of the week except Sundays.

While we were out and about in Catania, we also saw these  nice things:

A graceful door-knocker . . .

 . . . and a lovely old mandolin

I also found this pastry, which I absolutely had to buy, to see what was inside . . .

I hoped it wasn't fruitcake, and I was happy to see that it wasn't . . . 

. . . however, it was so tooth-achingly sweet, even for me, that I couldn't finish. Very sad. 

Our main focus on our day in Catania, though, was on buying the ingredients for our dinner. Here is Gary looking over squid, which was selling fast:

. . . and here I am with our singing, cigar-smoking prawn salesman. He saw me eyeing the prawns in his stand, and took my arm, very gentlemanly, and led me back to scale, which he started piling with prawns by the handful. Our recipe called for only 8, so when I cried, "No more!," it only made him pile in more! Maybe "no more" means "more" in Italian? Or, like Gary said, maybe he thought I was saying "No! More!"  I highly doubt it, but he was so darn cute he knew he could get away with anything. And, as it turned out, eight prawns wouldn't have been nearly enough anyway. He knows his stuff, and he knows he's irresistible, too!

After a morning of wandering through both open-air markets (there was another one about a kilometer away that we also visited), we were ready to go home as everything started to close around 1:00 p.m. One thing I never got used to in Sicily was the siesta time, when mostly everything closes at 1:00 and doesn't open again until 4:30 in the afternoon. But on this particular day, we had to get home and start preparing our dinner anyway, so it was okay. Maybe that's how siesta time got started in the first place?

Gary found this recipe for Spaghetti Ai Frutti Di Mare on a  wonderful Italian cooking blog called Ciao Chow Linda, so this is what we made:

Spaghetti Ai Frutti Di Mare

(Spaghetti with seafood)

(for two people)

8 medium prawns, shelled and deveined [we ended up with about 20, thanks to our savvy salesman]

8 medium calamari (squid), cleaned and cut into rings [we only bought 2 squids, as we felt this was a great plenty]

8 clams  [we bought way too many clams and paid too much, due to my bad shopping skills, but they were small and very pretty, like colored rocks on a beach, so I have no regrets]

1/2 pound scallops [we only found one place at the fish market offering scallops, and by that time we had already bought way too much of everything else, including a volleyball-sized bag of mussels, so we skipped the scallops, sadly]

1/4 cup olive oil

1 T. butter

1 medium shallot, minced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup dry white wine

minced parsley [they threw in fresh parsley for free at the fish market when we bought mussels. They must know you'll need it]

white pepper

red pepper flakes [we just used black pepper for both of the peppers but next time, we'll follow the recipe, as it's bound to be just that much better with the right peppers]

1/4 cup Olio Verde al Limone olive oil [we just squeezed a fresh lemon into olive oil and mixed it up]

Get the water for the pasta boiling before starting the rest of the recipe since it takes only about 10 minutes to make start to finish. You’ll have three pots going at once – one for boiling the pasta, one for making the sauce and one for steaming the clams.

Place butter and 1/4 cup olive oil in one pan with shallot and garlic. Cook over low heat until wilted. Add the scallops and shrimp and cook for a couple of minutes over medium heat. Pour the white wine into the pan and add the calamari. Cook for another minute or two, then remove the seafood with a slotted spoon to a bowl or dish. Add the red pepper flakes to the liquid. Turn the heat up to high and let the sauce reduce a bit. This should take a couple of minutes. 

While you’re reducing the liquid, you should start the pasta cooking in boiling, salted water. 

While you’re cooking the pasta, steam the clams in another pan until they open – it should take about three or four minutes.  Remove from clams and set aside.

Add the drained pasta to the pot with the reduced sauce.  Put the seafood back in and season with white pepper. Add the parsley and mix everything together. If needed, add a little of the pasta water. Drizzle the lemon olive oil on top and serve.



Here are our ingredients, fresh from the market in Catania:

We had never prepared squid before, so had to look it up on YouTube. It's surprisingly easy, but it was essential to have a guide. I never knew there was a clear plastic-looking thing inside a squid!

Later that same day . . .

Here's the happy chef . . .

. . . and the best meal on earth!

Fantastico! What an unforgettable meal, and an unforgettable day, from start to finish.

We ended our Sicilian trip with a train ride back to Palermo, along the sea and through tunnels. We had to leave early the next morning to fly back to Hamburg, fetch our luggage in Lübeck, say farewell to Peter, and start heading for home. We are ready. It's been a fabulous two and a half months here in Europe, and we will head back to Minnesota tomorrow, March 1st, for 2 more months of winter. 

Before leaving for the airport, I squeezed the last of my blood oranges for a glass of juice, next to a lemon tree. Arrivederci, Europe! We hate to leave but we are happy to be going home, all at the same time.

Siracusa and the island of Ortygia

We had so much fun our last few days in Sicily, I didn't have time to write! It's like a magical little kingdom filled with lemon trees and adorable people. 

It rained and rained most of the time we were in Ragusa, so we didn't do much but read and relax and enjoy this view:

It rained all day and all night -- so much rain that flooding and landslides were reported in the next morning's paper:

Fortunately, it didn't affect our train trip to Siracusa, on the east coast. The pretty, hilly countryside on the way there was webbed with handmade, ungrouted stone fences -- miles upon miles of them that must have taken many farmers centuries to build. It makes a person realize how stony the land is here, and how hard it must have been to make it productive. But I've never seen such productive land: it seems they can't not grow things in Sicily. There's a lemon or orange tree in every cranny. I didn't do the math, but I'm pretty sure there are millions, maybe billions of lemons ripening on trees in Sicily right at this moment. What they do with them all is a future rainy-day research project for me, but I have the feeling that Sicily must provide all the lemons for the entire planet. (Okay -- I'm back 2 hours later. I couldn't wait for a rainy day: I learned that Italy comes in 10th in the list of top-lemon-producing countries in the world. China, India, and Mexico are the top 3. I'm stunned. How many lemons do we need?).

At any rate, Siracusa is known for its Greek island, Ortygia, and also for St. Lucia (the same one who inspired the strange Swedish custom of Santa Lucia Day), who was born there. 

Our accommodation was conveniently close to the train station, and it was a short walk from there to the island of Ortygia. Our sweet Air Bnb host, Marco, greeted us with a very good bottle of handmade syrah, and had lots of good tips for what to do in Siracusa. We only had one afternoon there, and it rained intermittently, so we just walked around, gawking and eating and thoroughly enjoying the sights. 

My favorite sculpture in the stunning Fountain of Diana.

Another baroque cathedral. I can't keep them all straight, there are so many,
but uffda, are they ever pretty in person. 

Along the sea wall around Ortygia

The streets of Ortygia were paved like this or with marble pavers -- no cobblestones, which was a welcome change for walking upon. 

A surprising building along an otherwise normal alley in Ortygia

Fishing boats and styrofoam. We have to stop making styrofoam, that's all there is to it! (Where is styrofoam made, anyway? I need to find out.... [2 hours later] ... I'm back. I should have known: it's made by Dow Chemical.) 

The next morning, we visited the Greek archeological area, and were greeted by this cheerful guy at the gate, who showed us where the ticket office was, and also attracted feral cats.

The Greek amphitheater in Siracusa was built in the 5th century B.C. to accommodate 15,000 audience members. From here, they would have had a beautiful view of the island of Ortygia. Nice planning! The passages at the center here would have originally been underneath a stage, and were used by actors for sudden exits and entrances. They still give performances here -- Greek tragedies, naturally -- in the summertime. 

. 

From Siracusa we again entered the mysterious world of bus travel in Sicily. Some say this is the best way to travel here, but it's not for the faint-hearted or the untrusting. The posted schedules have little to do with what the bus ticket agent predicts will happen or with what actually happens. At any rate, we managed to find the bus, and headed to Catania.

Ragusa Ibla

A dog at Palermo Central Station. He was fine, just very, very sleepy,
and obviously having some good dreams.
Even suitcases being rolled close by didn't faze him.

We left Cefalù by train yesterday morning, headed to Palermo to catch a bus to Ragusa. The bus terminal is located next to Palermo Central Station, so this part was easy. 

We had read that the Sicilian bus system is confusing, and now we know that this is no exaggeration. Most of the bus companies have ticket offices where you would expect them to be: at the bus terminal. Unfortunately the company we were looking for (AST) was nowhere to be found. One of the bus employees told us to go back to the train station to find AST, but we didn’t find it there, either. Finally, a kiosk clerk, using sign language and Italian, indicated that AST was somewhere down the street. We finally found it a couple blocks away, tucked inside a coffee shop. If I’d been traveling alone, I would have gone to the airport at this point, and flown home. But Gary is a tenacious traveler: he searches until he finds things, and I gratefully trot along behind. 

The 4-hour bus ride from Palermo to Ragusa (in the southeast corner of the island), bisects the island of Sicily, and we were eager to see what the inner part of Sicily looks like. We were surprised to find that the middle isn’t dotted with picturesque little villages and farms, as we had envisioned, but is a vast unpopulated area of green hills and even a couple of snowy-topped mountains. Sheep are the main inhabitants. It’s stunning and green, and nearly treeless. It was impossible, though, to get good photos from the bus, as it was a bumpy ride. 

Toward the end of the bus trip, towns became more frequent, and the ride became even more arduous, with all the things I dread in a bus ride: switchbacks, bad roads, land dropping down away from the road. I trusted our driver, though (for whatever reason; he just looked reliable, I guess), and whenever my eyes were open, I was treated to the sights of fields of artichokes, olive orchards, lemon and orange trees full of fruit, grape vineyards, mysterious and lovely ruins of stone buildings in the middle of sheep paddocks. 

We arrived intact in Ragusa, and were picked up at the bus station by a young Italian man with the finest eyebrows and eyes I’ve ever seen. He is on the staff of the Pomelia company, a local Air Bnb firm, and we got a ride in the little company van to our apartment: an all-white, IKEA-inspired wonder of a place that looks like this:

and this:

and this:

and, best of all, it has a balcony overlooking the town of Ragusa Ibla (the old part of Ragusa):  

After showing us how everything worked in our apartment, Dream Eyes kindly offered us a ride to the supermarket, which we accepted.  We bought bread and sharp provolone cheese, a scoop of olives, tomatoes and basil and butter and milk, and walked back to our apartment to relax and enjoy the view the rest of the evening (and watch Downton Abbey on YouTube). 

(I just have to say something more about the cheese. It’s possible that everyone knows this already except us, but we have just learned that auricchio provolone is an aged, very sharp  — it bites you back! — excellent provolone that we discovered by accident at the tiny supermarket near our B&B in Cefalù. We didn’t know what we were buying at the time, but it looked good, so we got some. We’ve since learned that it’s regarded as one of the best-tasting provolones in the world, and we can vouch for that. It’s the cheese you see dangling by a rope in Italian markets.)  

This morning we awoke in our all-white apartment, and after a leisurely morning we set out to explore Ragusa Ibla. 

The history of Ragusa goes back to the 2nd millennium B.C. — that’s millienium, not century. To put it in perspective, the 2nd millennium B.C. was when the alphabet was developed, the chariot was invented, and Athens was founded. Ragusa was settled by the Sicels (the ones who gave Sicily its name) around that general time. The town’s history is the history of Sicily in a nutshell:  at one time or another it was run by Greeks, Romans & Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, the Kingdom of Sicily, a noble family called Chiaramonte (who claimed they were descended from Charlemagne), and a few others. In 1693 the city was hit by an earthquake, which nearly leveled it, and killed over 5,000 residents. The city we are now looking down at from our all-white apartment was rebuilt on top of the ruined city, mostly in Baroque style. It's beautiful, and they light it up at night to show it off. 

To get to Ragusa Ibla, we walked down a series of twisty stairways and steps and under archways and bridges, to the bottom of the deep ravine that separates the old town from the “new”. We saw interesting architectural touches . . .

. . . this woman getting her groceries delivered by dangling a basket from her balcony . . .

. . . this little shop where the adorable proprietor was offering 3 hand-painted refrigerator magnets for 5 euros, and where we bought our first Sicilian souvenirs . . .

 . . . and eventually we found ourselves in front of the Cathedral of St. Giorgio at the top of the hill. 

This cathedral honors St. George,the dragon-slayer:

and has the biggest beeswax candles we've ever seen.

From there, we found a gelato shop and took a selfie:

. . . and made our way around the town on a maze of narrow streets, finding visual treasures around every corner.

There were very few tourists in town, just a couple of American tour groups and a handful of stragglers like us. Ragusa itself is a museum — a labrynth — and we spent a couple hours just walking the streets and discovering what’s here. 

Partly to our disappointment and partly to our relief (because Gary has a sore foot), it began to sprinkle while we were out, so we headed back to our apartment, arriving just in time for the start of an all-day rain. The forecast is for this weather to continue the rest of the evening and into tomorrow. So, we are likely apartment-bound for the rest of the weekend. Being "stuck" in Ragusa with this view is just fine with us!