Buona Sera,
The wind is fierce just now and has been all day; here in the marina! Our schedule has never been so impacted by weather as it has been here in the Mediterranean. It will be days before we can leave so we’ve signed up for the Linda Szerdahelyi Palermo tour. Linda is another cruiser we met recently. She and her husband Frank were planning a 2 day tour to Palermo and we’ve joined with them, sort of. We’ll meet them 6:30 am tomorrow morning to go catch the 7 am bus to Palermo. We’ve booked a room at the Moderno Hotel which Linda had found. They have their vague plans and we our vague but it will be fun traveling together. Linda and I walked this morning visiting a lovely church, the local fort and the huge cemetery. Linda’s mother and father are from Sicily so she was actually hunting for possible relatives. We especially had fun with the castle staff and some of the cemetery workers as Linda chatted with them in Italian about her family. Much more sensible to visit Palermo by bus than by car.
Ru
S. Stefano Di Camastra
“The buildings of Santo Stefano are pleasant but undistinguished. What is remarkable is the flood of bright colors that pours out of store fronts on the Palermo-Messina road.”
http://www.initaly.com
At 55 Euro ( $72 U.S.) per day renting a car in Licata isn’t cheap. (Mr. Din junkers on Langkawi cost 40 ringgit for the basic junker and 50 for the one that had most parts working. $15.61 tops! In Turkey it was 50 Lira which was about $27 off season and $40 in high season. ) Amazing to us, there’s actually no rental car company in Licata so it has to be brought here and that also adds to the cost. The price of gasoline is typical for what you find in Turkey, Greece, Europe : 1.79 Euros per litre = $8.50 per gallon back home. So Randal and I were pretty choosy as to where we would go and how long we’d keep the car. And we hoped to only be in Sicily for about a week or 10 days tops; we only have so many Schengen days. We’d both seen enough Greek and Roman ruins in N. Cyprus, Turkey, and Israel so skipped places famous for those sites. Ours was a very personal tour of Sicily. Randal wanted to see the mosaics in the Villa Romana del Casale just outside Piazza Armenia and also Mt. Etna. I wanted to see Enna and also S. Stefano Di Camastra for its ceramics. Palermo was actually an afterthought so the fact that we didn’t see it; well maybe if we ever come here again. Palermo has a Jewish past and tours are offered.
S. Stafano was full of ceramic shops and I did find my souvenir 3 legged Madusa fairly similar to the one I’d seen in Siracusa, but it took a lot of hunting to find it. We also became fascinated with the trash collection system they have. Like I said, it was a personal interest tour of Sicily.
I’d actually gotten the idea to visit S. Stafano from the Sicily book we’d bought in Siracusa.
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“S. Stefano di Camastra is located in the same area as Sant’Agata Militello. It is a small farming and fishing town famous for its ceramic crafts, with its related art school which attracts many of those who come here on holiday. Sights include the Chiesa Moadre from the 18th century with a simple architecture but lovely renaissance portal; it contains important paintings by G. Patania and a beautiful seventeenth century statue depicting the Madonna col Bambino. “
Sicily : Art,History,Culture and Folklore no copyright date given.
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Windmills topped many inland hills
We actually were on our way to S. Stefano instead of staying in Enna the first time. That got us there about 4 pm which was good as most shops were just reopening from their afternoon siesta. We always felt that half the day was wasted because of this schedule, especially if you don’t have tons of time.
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Main road into town.
We’d already visited two large shops about a mile back from here. It was in one of these shops that I found my Triskele after hunting through all of them. Some were too cartoony or the wrong color or terre cotta. I wanted one like the one in Siracusa. You’d think they’d be all over the place. Not a big deal to most tourists I guess. And I couldn’t find a pomegranate in Enna, so go figure. Someone is missing a big opportunity.
Siracusa Triskele …… I didn’t buy one here because I hadn’t yet become addicted to them. But this one must have stuck in my head because the one I bought is similar; though definitely not so lovely.
Triskele made in S. Stefano di Camastra (it says so on the back.)
She is mounted over the entrance to our galley. Mine is not so lovely as the one in Siracusa, but if she falls off the wall during a rough passage and needs to be glued together, my heart won’t be broken. If I find “the perfect triskele” I’ll get one for our “someday home.
Reminders of other places
The seahorse from Miri, Malaysia; the wood tray from Tana Toraja in Indonesia. The photo is my mom and dad in Provincetown, MA, 1947 on their honeymoon. And the mezuzah is from their trip to Israel.
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After looking in several shops we got back into the car and went driving around the center town looking for a B & B or hotel. Good luck there! We finally found the one B & B that had a sign posted, but it was locked and no one answered the buzzer. Then we drove around some more and found signs for a hotel down the hillside, behind the railroad tracks, on the waterfront. As it was the only game in town, we took it. They had AC and it was clean; and by then we’d gotten used to paying Sicily hotel prices. Also the management was actually very accommodating. And dinner overlooking the Mediterranean sunset was quite lovely.
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Randal’s discarded muscles from his pasta dish and the dregs of my pasta with vegetables.
At this point I prefer pasta just with olive oil and herbs, but the pasta with vegetables comes with a light tomato sauce. This tasted quite good.
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Watching the sunset
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Even the waiter was impressed and took photos.
Our room was the second balcony behind the waiter, behind the trees.
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Randal asleep in our pink room.
Sunrise was very early and I got up to take photos. We were under the impression that breakfast was not included (though we may have been wrong) so we were packed up and ready to leave by 7:30 am. We wanted more time in S.Stefano and we also still had the plan to drive to Palermo, visit, and then drive to Enna so an early start was important. No, we were not locked into our hallway, but the office wasn’t open for us to pay our bill. There was a woman working in the kitchen whom we met the previous evening when we arrived 7:30 pm for dinner. We’d thought we’d been told that’s when dinner started. She told us 8 pm. But she called someone and the next thing we knew there was a man to take our order, bring wine and bread….and then dinner. We saw her again 7:30 the next morning and she again told us 8 am for the office (or maybe it was breakfast) but she again got on the phone and the next thing we knew there was someone arriving to open the office. So, though we chose the hotel out of necessity, it was a pretty good place to stay.
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My souvenirs from a walk along the beach: stones, a weathered piece of copper and a piece of ceramic something. The stones have complete circles around them some are wishing stones. The pipe is the first piece of future wind chimes and the ceramic is a canvas begging to have something painted on it.
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How to gain 4 pounds in 3 days: pastry for breakfast and pasta for dinner.
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“Pleasant but undistinguished.”
We felt really at home here walking the narrow friendly streets; very walkable.
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The main street lined with ceramics shops and small cafes.
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Ingenious, simple, sensible trash collection
People from second floors would hang lower their trash down and it would be collected! No giant trash cans on the street (where there was no room for them or where they fall over and everything blows out.)
The small trash truck could fit into tiny streets and collect the hanging trash.
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Water drained down this love culvert into a bulls eye at the foot of the street.
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Lots of truck farmers. We saw one truck full of garlic!
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Amazingly these monster trucks could get around too; in streets that seemed just the right size for our tiny Fiat.
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