Italy

#13 Arrivederchi Italy – We’re Alberta Bound

We are in the final day of our 30 days in Italy and are relaxing poolside rather than walking 10,000 steps.

The southern sun has warmed. We’ve driven for miles and miles around villages and farmland, walked through steep hillside towns climbing to their centres  and grandiose cathedrals.

Strolled through gardens and orchards with even M, a non-gardener, trying to help me identify sweetly scented blossoms. 

  And we’ve dined morning, noon and late at night.  (A 7:30 dinner reservation is early, most restaurants don’t get guests until 9 pm.) We even discovered what Italians do when all the shops close from 12:30 til 4:30 – they go home and cook big meals and rest, before restarting their work day late afternoon. 

    Though we planned this day to be chill  before our return to Alberta’s late spring we don’t sit still. We wander through a museum created from a restoration of La Posta Vecchia, a grand home first built on a then already ancient site in 1640! Destroyed in a fire in 1919 it evidently sat ignored until purchased and restored by the famous magnate J. Paul Getty in 1960 with the guidance of the archaeological societies of Etruria. But then, presto(!) – artifacts of all kinds, including finely crafted mosaic floors were discovered under the basement dating to the … hang on … first and second century AD!!

Trying to get our heads around that we took a beach walk along the shores of the Mediterranean. I had to pause and consider the history of what we’d just seen – trying to feel the spirits from 2000 years ago!

It makes me want to cry and be happy at the same time. Being close to works of art so ancient makes me think we have to get the most out of our time here on earth, create art,  put down our iPhones, lol, love the ones we’re with,  and be present for each other. It’s what we have.

As we watched the fishermen  on the rocky ledge I couldn’t stop considering how I might make life at home  more Italian.

I’ve decided I need to build a stone wall, install huge (maybe ancient – 1st century) terracotta planters, shine a light up my apple tree, plant a lemon tree (ha!), drink all my future cappuccinos from a pretty pink china cup, eat more bread and gelato and somehow be thin, wear pungent floral perfume and gaze at it all through popular crazy-huge black rimmed glasses. Prego. Prego. We’re soon to be Alberta bound. 

#12 ‘I Must Go Down To the Sea Today’

Do you ever feel as if you’re in a dream? You’re having an experience so foreign to your everyday life you wonder how you came to be where you are? Those were my thoughts seated with M on the sunny terrace of an ancient stone farmhouse, eating an Easter Monday lunch, looking over the green hills of Basilicata, Italy, while being serenaded by the most charming group of folk singers. 

   I closed my eyes to absorb it all. We left that comforting lunch of vegetable lasagna, grilled meats and fresh picked oranges to drive down the ever winding roads of Southern Italy towards the sea and Apulia. 

(M is getting accustomed to these Italian drivers, where they hug each others speeding bumpers until they make their daredevil passes. ) 

Farmhouses were on theme that day. We stayed in a romantic recovered farm property, at Masseria Montenapoleone, on part of a plain of centuries old olive groves.

The food this trip has been exquisite but made so by the atmosphere. We breakfasted on a terrace surrounded by a stunning array of geraniums, rose bushes, cacti and fruit trees and were hardly able to put down our iPhone cameras to eat our poached eggs and cream filled croissants. 

   Despite the beauty surrounding us we ventured out each day to hillside and seaside towns. 

       One day it was to visit Alberobello, famous for  the funny circular peaked roofed houses (called trulli), another to climb amongst the stairways of Ostuni, stepping into the magnificent basilica. We paused at cafes to refresh ourselves with gelatos or a cool glass of vino. 

     Other days we traveled to the seaside towns of Monopoli and Polignano a Mare. Staring out from the stone walls at the Adriatic Sea, I felt so far from my foothills home in Calgary. It was the end part of the trip where I had a greedy need to smell more Alpine roses, enjoy more pistachio gelato, and gaze longer at the sea. 

# 11 Prego. That’s Old

We were in the boot of Italy staying in the absolutely charming town of Bernalda, at a very special small hotel built by the Cópala family. The gardens were exquisite and though my family had told me there had been another spring snow storm at home in Calgary, I was still overwhelmed with plans to up my Canadian garden game. Whisteria hung over the garden walls, fig trees climbed around the breakfast veranda, and the geraniums had grown  into bright red geranium bushes.

  Still, we were tempted to drive out of Bernalda, passing families enjoying gelato on their Easter weekend strolls, to discover a true wonder of the world. 

The green hills of Basilicata

   After a trip through hills of the greenest farmland we gathered in an ancient building  to be brought by van into a valley and then carefully led into a cave, or crypt,  where it’s said a shepherd revealed that visible on the walls where he sheltered his sheep were some sort of paintings. Mama Mia! Paintings indeed! Under  special lightening (no photography allowed) we were staring at stunning frescos dating from the 8th and 9th century!

This rupestrian church was discovered on May 1, 1963 by members of the Circolo La Scaletta of Matera.

In 2001, the Zètema Foundation of Matera launched an exemplary, scientifically-based full recovery project of the rock monument with the support of the Central Institute of Restoration.

Called the Crypt of Original Sin – this cave was the “cult site of a Benedictine rock monastery from the Lombard period. It is embellished with a cycle of frescoes painted by the artist known as the Painter of the Flowers of Matera and expressing the historical characteristics of Benedictine-Beneventan art.” 

Sitting in the cool dim cave, listening to an audio presentation accompanied by low gorgorian chanting and imagining the monks painting a thousand years previously, left me feeling enraptured but also very small – ready to jump back out into the light and remembering to keep smelling the roses. 

Quotes and photographs are from the La Cripto Del Peccato Originale website copyright 2023. 

#7 – Oops! Back to Sicily – The Post About Dining!

M and I are on a long holiday to see how much we can eat! … I mean to celebrate his retirement. We’re in the boot of Italy but so much bread, olives, pasta, sausage, calamari, pizza and gelato has gone to my head and I’ve left out this post penned in Sicily.

Back on Sicily we left the Baroque city of Noto, and traveled toward Catalina pausing in Syracuse, the birthplace of Archimedes and home of Pythagoras and Plato, to walk the seawall above the Ionian Sea  and lunch at an outdoor cafe. Beside us a chic and thin Sicilian couple ordered a big plate of crispy  calamari, just as we did. Full of the fat rings of fried squid, we were ready to pay and continue exploring but noted that the Sicilians were  now indulging in big plates of tomatoe and olive covered rigatoni, and you bet they’d finish with gelato and/or cannoli. Observing so many Sicilians dine that excessively I was desperate to know the secret of binging like the bourgeoisie and still mirroring skinny models. Behind us an American told his server the portion was too large to finish. The waiter declared rather emphatically, “This is Sicily. We only have big portions. Enjoy it.”

When M and I weren’t discussing how locals packed away so much fine Italian grub and remained fit, we were back to being blown away by their driving. They flew past us on rough stone roads, with garden walls boxing us in, maneuvering the blind corners with moterbikes overtaking us all. M exclaimed and I gasped and gripped the door handle, convinced the Sicilian drivers had some sixth sense combined with a strong faith in the afterlife. 

Drivers and diners aside,  what I’d like to bottle and bring home is the the delightful transcendent scent that filled the air when we arrived at the country inn we were booked into, situated in an orchard of lemon and orange trees. The afternoon that we’d heard there was a spring snow storm back home in Canada M and I competed for the best lemon tree photograph. I got into bed that night intoxicated not by wine or eperol, but that sweet aroma of lemon blossoms.

#10 My Geography Lessons Didn’t Do Justice To The Boot of Italy

On this special Italian holiday we’ve said arrivederci to Sicily, and Bonjourno to the boot of Italy. M and I flew from our tour of Sicily through Rome, back to Bari in the boot of mainland Italy. We drove the winding highway to a small hotel in Bernalda,  whose wisteria filled gardens made me want to stay forever and also to get home and wake up my Canadian flower beds.

Rome to Bernalda

   After being up close to Mount Etna, Sicily’s active volcano, we might have felt we were finished with astonishing sights – until we took a short drive from Bernalda to neighbouring Matera. This incredibly picturesque town has its roots in the neolithic period and was occupied essentially by cave dwelling people right up until the 1950’s when it was forcibly evacuated by decree of the Italian government. The decree was necessary because of sanitation and health considerations made necessary by the fact that the people, the children, the chickens, the donkeys, the pigs and everything else all lived in the same caves together.

Museum Depicting Traditional Cave Home

Alarmingly, these people relied upon animal manure to heat their homes, which gives something of a view of why in modern times, an end to it all was necessary. 

While the cave houses were condemned and empty for years, under strict regulations, they are now being renovated. Plumbing, sewer and electricity now adorn fashionable apartments owned by a younger generation, at considerable expense. The result is a picturesque and unusual location in southern Italy.

The location is sought after by filmmakers, including the James Bond folks who filmed No Time To Die here. We were told they poured gallons of Coca Cola on the slippery rock streets to make them sticky rather than slick for the speeding car scenes. The clean-up afterwards made them even more shiny white. If you ever are so fortunate to visit the south don’t miss Matera. 

# 9 Damn! That Volcano Is Errupting!

We had an odd experience on our Sicilian travels – M and I were in our lovely hotel room hearing perhaps  thunder – there was an incredibly loud ‘huffing’ outside.  I opened the door and gasped (lots of gasping on this trip). “Mama Mia!” (Okay, my exclamation was in English and more explicit). “M get out here!” I cried. “There are  (another bad word) flames coming out of that volcano!” We rushed to the reception to find out if we needed to scurry for our lives. A hotel employee told us Mount Etna suddenly erupts with flames many times  a year, but agreed that it was frightening, before going back to casually serving drinks. Be still again, my Canadian heart. 

Mount Etna

By morning the flames had stopped and (more scariness)  we drove up, up, up to view the rich black lava rocks high on Mount Etna (with a zillion tourists), hiking over red and black lava rocks. Some believe the volcano is the gateway to the underworld, others credit it for making the hills down to the sea a Mecca of fertility. 

M’s Italian barber back home insisted we must visit the town of Taromina – we wound our way there next, more narrow roads, speedy drivers, ridiculously steep climbs with switchbacks – so more freaking gasps. (Of course). 

   M swears it hasn’t been intentional but we’ve saved loads of Euros by always being in the villages from 12:30 to 4 pm when shops are locked up. But nothing closes in the tourist meca of Taromina. With enough lemon printed linen I focus on the perfect Italian leather hand bag, explaining to M how it’s too well priced to NOT  buy it. Prego. Time to wind back down away from the volcano – a few chunks of lava rock in my new bag. 

Below Mount Etna

# 8 The Godfather

It was the big tour day!  And it was fantastico. To recap: M and I are on holiday in Italy. Our route through Sicily has been created with the suggestions of a wonderful travel agency in Canada aptly called “Quench” but we are driving on our own, except for two scheduled tours. 

We were again steadily changing elevation, this time in our tour guide, Vitorio’s car, rising high above the sea on switchbacks. M and my kids are huge movie buffs, and a favorite film is The Godfather. Vittorio was driving us to Savoca, the tiny mountaintop village where Michael Corleone hid in exile and where he met and married the beautiful Appolonia. Savoca is at the top of a perilous peak approachable only by a goat path road that winds around like a child’s mindless scribble. Vittorio, a local, drove always with one hand while gesturing to us with the other; this so even as he remarked at a passing truck “woo-a, that was a close”. And he nevertheless expressed amazement at Coppola choosing to shoot in that remote, hard to reach village recalling the antiquated cargo and cameras from that age of film.

The view of the sea far below was stunning, as was the revelation that we were being invited to order drinks and granita, (a Sicilian iced dessert), in Bar Vitelli, the actual bar where Coppola filmed Michael convincing the father of Appolonia, that his intentions were honorable. 

Vittorio told us the villagers were the extras, including his grandmother, during that thrilling time in Savoca 53 years ago. Myself, I couldn’t stop thinking about our movie aficionados back home and how I’d love to show them this curious exotic world we’d time-travelled into. Honestly, so many in my family can recite The Godfather from Vito Corleone’s first, “Why did you go to the police? Why didn’t you come to me first? To Michael’s final “Don’t ask me about my business, Kay.”

 Next Vittorio drove us even higher up some more goat paths (ineptly translating to English for us, he mistakenly called them “roads”) which were made of glassy volcanic stone, to the church Michael and Appolonia were wed. He showed us the now tattered robe, hanging (unprotected) on the church wall, that the preist in the movie wore. The priest’s red prayer book, also a prop in the actual movie (presumably rather valuable for this reason alone) lay on a chair like a discarded pamphlet for us to pick up and leaf through.

It was difficult to believe there was civilization any further up the mountain, but Vittorio drove us still higher yet. Our ultimate, even more precarious, destination felt like a village out of a Dr. Suess story, the breeze circling up over our heads in a place close to heaven while the beach and bars beckoned far, far below. M was already texting our kids his photos and exchanging famous Mario Puzo lines.

This tour had all the intensity of “going to the mattresses” coupled with a perfectly reasonable apprehension of “sleeping with the fishes.”

      

#6 Greetings Cheek to Cheek

On a sunny afternoon M and I wander the Baroque city of Noto single file, as the sidewalks are comparable in size to Canadian curbs. A crosswalk is barely a suggestion. Ie. drivers might consider slowing here, but hey, probably not. I lag behind M, staring at the array of doors that personalize the look-alike  storied townhouses constructed hundreds (and hundreds) of years ago, remembering to glance up, so as not to miss the boxes of geraniums, the ancient swirly cornices, and ok this seems silly, but even the crisp laundry flapping in the Sicilian breeze looks artistic, rather than messy to my foreigner’s eye.

We pass containers planted with small wonderfully cheery lemon trees. I’m a sucker for the popular sunshiny lemon-printed fabric and worry about how many pretty tablecloths,  runners, and cloth shopping bags I’ll go home with? Thank goodness the shops close from noon to four preventing me from purchasing a pile of them. 

The highlight is strolling Noto at night with the shop doors open, and locals calling out greetings to each other, Salve! Buona Sera! When they meet, they touch each other cheek to cheek. So much energy and enthusiasm but M and I wonder what do they do during those four hours in the afternoon? 

  What we don’t question and want to emulate back home, is the Italian talent for outdoor lighting. It’s another world after dusk, eating our pistachio and stracciatella gelato under the illumination of the ground and twinkling accent lights brightening  churches and historic walkways.

From the grand steps of the Cattedrale di San Nicolo – I wonder, can I light up my Canadian poplar tree and lilac bushes to shimmer from the bottom up? Prego, I’m going to try. 

# 5 We Dare To Drive in Sicily!

Driving! Mama mia! After three days in Palermo we rented a car to drive through the middle of Sicily from the north coast to the south coast. First nerve racking task – leaving Palermo. The roads have lanes but no lines. Motorcycles, and there are plenty of them, seem to be exempt  from all rules of the road, and where in Canada other vehicle drivers might catch your eye with a look, or even a nod, here it seems like the attitude  is to avoid indicating intent, rather it’s “I’m just going where I’m going. You watch out!” 

Mama Mía!

Finally we’re on the open (skinny) road winding through the Sicilian hills. Unlike on a trip through the Canadian Rockies, we rarely lose sight of farms, villas and orchards. Amongst the greenery, the houses in the fairytale hillsides are exclusively shades of yellow or gold. And the magnificent vistas! – layers of hills, farm land, and then the Ionian Sea.

  Looking for a pizzeria in the city of Caltagirone, we found the streets quiet and shuttered.  Settling for a Italian McDonalds (no Big Macs or Quarter Pounders) we learned that Monday is the only day of the week that Caltagirone’s businesses ‘take a rest’. 

Back on the highway to Noto, our next destination , the landscape levels somewhat to an impressive variety of vegetation: palm and cypress trees, whole groves of prickly pear cacti, orchards of olive and lemon trees. M got used to me gasping at each hairpin turn, with drivers passing us to head straight for oncoming traffic, like why wouldn’t they? 

    For a distance we followed a giant semi and worried what impatient Italian might try to pass us both. On a hairpin turn it wasn’t a vehicle slowing traffic but rather  a horse and buggy. Mama Mía! 

Semi and horses

At last we were inside Noto,  where I thought we’d be stuck to this day! The cobblestone roads, shrunk in width as we drove. Back at home we might call them sidewalks. The strident voice of Google maps, demanded we turn left in between two ancient buildings a few feet apart. Seriously!? Behind us three drivers were waiting for us to get on with it. The walls of the buildings on each side of our rented KIA’s supposed path were scrapped with paint from non-Italian drivers who’d passed this way before. 

Seriously?

M now insists it wasn’t so big a deal. (What?!) My solution,  cried out between bad language, was to just let the Italian guy in the car behind us take the wheel in our car and get us out of the jam. M is far too much of a red blooded male to have considered that – and he persevered, manoeuvring by inches until our car could move forward. With adrenaline still rushing through my Canadian veins we made it through Noto to where the Google maps lady said, ‘Your destination is on the right.’ And Prego! A giant double door opened to a courtyard with parking for our hotel. Be still my heart. It was time for an afternoon cappuccino and an Aperol Spritz! 

#4 Take the Cannoli

My husband, a guy not always crazy about organized tours suggested one dull winter day, as we planned our month long Italian adventure, “Oh go ahead, book us a few tours.” Prego. I picked one I’d love. And one he’d love. Mine was for our second day in Palermo, Sicily  and was fantástico! Discover Sicily has been an exotic, sometimes scary adventure. It has a rich history marked by centuries of conquest and influence from Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans. Our tour was called Ten Tastings of Palermo and went beyond our expectations in culinary delights!

Mercato di Ballaro

The aromas! Oh the tantalizing aroma’s! And the vivid colours! Michelangelo, our guide with a company called WithLocals, was too good to be true. It sounds corny but it was as if we’d met an old friend – an Italian history foodie-type old friend – our kid’s age,  but stay with me! 

   He described Palermo as being layered like a lasagna. It’s Sicilian cuisine has been influenced by Arab countries, the French, Spain, Greece, and North Africa and to explore this Michelangelo took us to the historic Mercato di Ballarò. Located in the Albergheria district.

Our first delight was a piece of fluffy Arabian style salted bread hot off the grill. Our taste buds were awakened. From their we let him deliver us through milling customers to a booths selling tuna crouquettes, and lightly battered asparagus, mushroom, and artichoke where described the artichokes as as being as big as a baby’s head. Michelangelo then insisted we’d never tasted egg plant parmigiana if we had eaten it in Sicily. So true – it was an alluring mouthwatering mix of the ‘aubergene’, tomato sauce and gooey cheese.

Sicilian Artichokes

From there we stepped through a bottleneck of people, to an open area with American music blasting, and all ages of folks dancing and laughing in a square crowed with food booths, and plastic tables and chairs. Michelangelo called out an order to a  woman behind another grill and soon presented us with our last plate of hot delights.

Since our arrival in Palermo we’d noticed people everywhere, seriously everywhere – sipping on bright orange drinks, resembling orange Fanta – but not. It’s an apéritif known as an Aperol Spritz, a mix of Aperol, prosecco, and soda water. On that sunny afternoon we discovered its refreshing appeal to accompany our thinly battered, crispy fried sardines and the best ever lightly spiced potato croquettes. 

With our bellies bursting Michelangelo suggested we stroll to a wide seaside boulevard when we walked amongst local parents and grandparents pushing little bambino’s in fancy Italian strollers, kids on scooters, cruise ship passengers, and dog walkers of decidedly Italian dogs. 

In the afternoon sunshine, we were treated to creamy Sicilian gelato and the popular cannoli. Prego.

The tour I booked with M’s heart in mind won’t be for a few days, but here’s a hint – ‘leave the guns take the cannoli.’ Ciao for now.