Part 1 - Taormina

This blog is composed of excerpts from a hand-written journal that I kept while on a tour of Southern Italy and Sicily.  I've combined these excerpts with photos of the trip.  This was our first ever organized tour.  The tour company, Odyssey Unlimited,  did a very good job and we will probably travel with them again.  Our Tour Manager, Gaetano Salemi, was excellent.

Arrival in Taormina

Our flight into Sicily was supposed to be into Catania.  But, Catania is closed for repairs so we flew into a US Navy air strip and were bused to Catania.  The problem seemed to be busing the luggage too.  This was the first day that Catania closed so they had not yet gotten their process worked out.  We waited maybe 2 hours for our luggage to appear.  This was a mixed blessing.  People on our tour began to speak to each other,  We could recognize each other by the white Odyssey tags on our carry-on bags.  This wait in the relatively chair-less drab airport terminal was a kind of trial-by-fire and began the bonding of the group.

After we each, one at a time, got our luggage through scanning and customs, we walked out through sliding glass doors that opened as we approached.  I was one of the last ones out.  And after such a long flight, and such a long wait, and such little sleep, the walking through the doors felt like a 'coming into the light' to a large group of people cheering each time the doors opened.  Gaetano was there in the group with a big smile welcoming each one, waving an Odyssey sign.  When everyone was out, he counted us all (in Italian) and we all walked through a shopping mall to a bus to drive to Taormina.  It felt so good to be taken care of.

The Bella Angela Hotel is almost at the top of the mountain that Taormina hugs.  Each room has a balcony looking out on the magnificent Mt Etna.  One of my favorite parts of the tour is being able to sit on our own balcony each morning and look at Mt Etna; different each day.  Cloud formations all seemed to relate to the bulk of Mt Etna in some way.  One day was cloudy and a bit rainy and you could hardly see the mountain.  Another, the whole mountain could be seen clearly.  

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 Sometimes a plume of steam would be rising from the crater.

Taormina 

Our local guide, Mellina, led us along the Main Street in Taormina through the ancient arches of the old walled city and through the city squares.  

Naxos, the town we could see across the Bay of Naxos, was the first town founded by the ancient Greeks in Sicily.  The Greeks settled Sicily 2500 years ago much as the Europeans settled the Americas more then a millenium later.  Taormina was founded by survivors of Naxos after it was invaded by Carthage.

The Greeks built temples, as they did everywhere they settled, and theaters which were first used as adjuncts to the temple worship.  Taormina has a large theater overlooking the coast.  Greek theaters were minimal structures and used the scenic beauty of the  location as the background for the events held there.  This theater was later rebuilt by the Romans who had a very different idea of the use and form of such spaces.  

They created an amphitheater with columns and marble backdrop hiding the gorgeous scenery.  Here they held typical Roman circus events with wild animals and gladiators.    Lucky for us, most of Roman-built superstructure has not survived and we can see the coastline much as the early Greeks must have enjoyed it.

 Bill, Joyce, Don, Jewel, Danny,  Anita

We had lunch in a little bar, enticed in by Sebastian - the waiter/owner (?).   Some of us had rice balls, an ancient common-man's lunch, stuffed with tomato sauce and peas and fried - about the size of my fist.

He serenaded us with Sicilian love songs, flirted with Jewel, and was generally a very memorable character. 

Agrigento - The Valley of the Temples

Gaetano and Bonita in front of the Temple of Concordia

Rainy day today at the start - can't see Mt Etna at all - but it began to clear up by the end of breakfast, and by the afternoon it was beautiful, chilly and windy.  A 3 hour bus ride to Agrigento was well used by Gaetano talking about the agriculture, history, mythology, history (lots of history), politics, literature, etc of Sicily.  He is a font of knowledge and a great story teller.  Think of the best history teacher you ever had - and then some.  What do you expect from a PhD in Comparative Literature?

More Pictures of Taormina:

found a sweet little dress for Lily

Sebastian serenading Jewel

Joyce and Bill had the balcony right next to ours

Joyce got serenaded too

Part 2 - Matera

The Strait of Messina

Today we cross the Strait of Messina  like Ulysses did in the Odyssey.  We drive north along the Ionian Sea coast to Messina.  The air is so clear we can see several of the Aeolian Islands:  Stromboli and Vulcano (a volcano named volcano!!).  The Aeolian Islands are a string of 8 volcanic islands in the Tyrolean Sea north of Sicily.  They are named after the god of the winds.  (I remember an italian pastry named Stromboli, but Gaetano says that the Italian immigrants to the US used many of the names from home to name things - there are no counterparts in Italy!)

As we approach Messina, Gaetano talks about the monsters in the Odyssey: Scylla and Charybdis.  Scylla is a giant whirlpool at the junction of the Ionian Sea and the Tyrolean Sea.  Each sea is a different depth and the movement of water between them causes a constant whirlpool.   Today there is a turbine there producing electricity.  A larger turbine could produce enough to power all of Sicily.  Charybdis is a cliff wall full of caves where the wind whistled just across the straits from the whirlpool.  Sailors had to carefully steer their ships between them.  this part of the Odyssey could be read as a navigation manual for ancient sailors.

The ferry ride across the strait is uneventful - we avoid both Scylla and Charybdis.

On the drive through Calabria we pass groves of bergamot.  Bergamot is a citrus fruit with a terrible flavor but it contains chemicals that act as a fixative for fragrences.  This fact was first discovered by a Calabrian named Farina  who was living in Cologne, Germany in the 1700s.  He became rich (eau de Cologne!) - and Calabria found a valuable new export.  In 1830, Earl Grey visited Calabria and started flavoring his tea with bergamot.

The land is turning green here.  In the summer everything is dry and brown.  By November, the rains have started and everything turns green.  We are VERY lucky that for these 2 weeks, the rain has only fallen at convenient times.

We stop for lunch at a rest stop on the highway - and the food is excellent!!  I had a salad with good italian tuna, wine and very good bread.  We should import whoever does the food here to the I95 corridor!!!

Since we will be driving most of the afternoon it is time for another of Gaetano's history lessons.  Unlike most countries, Italy had a common language, a common literature, before it became one country.  The unification of Italy was a disaster.  Garibaldi made promises of land ownership to southern Italians that were not fulfilled.  Hence the growth of the Mafia - bandits who became 'men of honor'.  Fascism kept them down, but after WWII, they were the only ones who could organize.  they got lots of money from the Marshall Plan and became powerful.

Now, there is an attempt to root out the Mafia.  Any company with connections to the 'bandits' loses their contracts.  But now the highways being constructed cannot be finished because everyone has some connections.  We drove through highway worksites on weekdays and no one was working.

The real unification of the Italians happened on Ellis Island.  In Italy they saw just their differences.  In America, surrounded by Russians, Germans, Irish,... they see their commonalities, their kinship.  America made 'the Italians'!

Matera

We are driving to the region of Bassilicata - the poorest region of Italy - the 'shame' of Italy.  Many anti-fascists were sent here in exile.  One of them, Carlo Levi, wrote a book of his experience called 'Christ Stopped at Eboli'.

We are going to Matera - the town he wrote about.  Geographically this area has deep chasms running down to streams.  

From prehistoric times until the 1950s, people in this area lived in caverns along the sides of these chasms.  The town of Matera grew up on the land surface and was relatively prosperous, while an entire civilization of desperately poor people lived beneath Matera in these caves.   There was very little interaction between the two worlds.  In the 1950s the Italian government forcibly moved dwellers of the caves, known as The Sassi (The Rocks) , mainly because of the attention the area was getting from Levi's book.

The Sassi is now a UNESCO site and the dwellings seem to have become a trendy place to live, with restaurants and hotels using the same system of caves that once were the shame of Italy.  We are going to stay in one of these hotels, Locanda di San Martino.

The bus leaves us in a parking lot in Matera and we walk to the town's center plaza.  It is beautiful at night - looks very prosperous, lots of people walking around.  At a sign that says 'The Sassi', we start going down 2 flights of marble stairs, walk a few paces and descend more stairs.   The buildings line the faces of the cliff walls on either side - a vertical city.  Lots of lights are on lighting the facades of the buildings which are all a soft yellow stone.  The whole place just glows.  This place has been used as a stand-in for ancient Jerusalem in more than one film - and I can see why it was chosen.  There is a large church up on the surface in Matera and the church bells ring every 15 minutes.  We are in a different place and I'm not sure it is still the 21st century.

We sleep that night in a cave - large for 2 people, but not large for a family of many children and all of their livestock!  

The hotel has all the modern conveniences.  Our room is up 4 levels and has a small patio outside the door with a table and 2 chairs.  The Sassi glows below us. 

More pictures of Matera

Our local guide, Giovanna, in one of the many many churches in The Sassi

Our merry band of travelers...

... at a group dinner...

... in Matera

One former church  being used for a modern art exhibit - about insanity

interesting juxtaposition

The door to our room in the hotel

The hotel created a pool out of an underground cistern

Part 3 - Lecce

Leaving Bassilicata today and busing through the region of Puglia to the city of Lecce.

Puglia is a very stoney area,  Much like in New England the farmers dug the stones out of their fields and built walls with them.  Actually they build everything with them.  The saying is: "everything starts from the stones".  One nickname for the area is Puglia-shire since there are so many British who have bought homes, and land here.  It is very like the English countryside.  

Alberobella

We are headed to Alberobello a town famous for one kind of stone constructed house called a Trulli.  Trullis are conical roofed houses constructed with no mortar. 

 In the Middle Ages at some point, taxes were collected, not based on number of houses, but based on the mortar used.  So, the resourceful Italians here, built their houses without any mortar.  They could also dismantle their houses one step ahead  of the tax man - since they were like a giant erector kit - and reconstruct them in a different location.

Alberobello has thousands of these houses arranged along narrow winding paths - looking very like a hobbit-ville.

Lunch today is at a very good restaurant called Il Poeta Contadino. Here is the menu:
   .  fava bean puree, potato dumpling with sausage and chicory, dried tomato
   .  orechiette (pasta) with turnip tops and cherry tomatoes
   .  chocolate cake with orange cream and fresh oranges

Typing this out, it doesn't look nearly as delicious as it was in real life.  Yum!!

Ostuni

Side trip to Ostuni - a white city on a hill surrounded by millions of olive trees.  Ostumi is a walled city with a strong Arabic influence.  The buildings were white-washed every year - a practice that probably saved them from the plague.    The people attributed the fact that the plague seemed to have passed them by to the intercession of their patron saint, Saint Oronzo.

Olive trees live a long time here.  Many of the trees we are seeing in groves as we ride the bus from city to city look ancient - maybe 500-600 years old.  The trunks are gnarly, thick and have frequently split into two pieces spiraling around an empty center.  These old trees still produce lots of olives.  You can really see why people thought that trees had spirits - the trunks, so gnarly and complex.

Lecce

Lecce is full of baroque buildings - called the Florence of the South.  Our guide in Lecce is Daniella.  Here we see more churches than we've seen in the whole first week of the tour.  Daniella seems more religious than our other guides and talks quite a bit about Saint Oronzo.

from our hotel window

The gargoyles and other stone figures I see on the buildings here in Lecce, have a different character than on baroque buildings in other cities.  Many of them seem more cartoon-like, less threatening and monster like.

See what I mean?

Perhaps one of the highlights of the trip for me is a visit we make in Lecce to a Palazzo built in the 1500s.  We walk there in the evening, are greeted by several young women when we enter the courtyard.  Then we climb a flight of large stone steps into the private rooms of the current owner, Mr Fernando.  He inherited this large house from his mother.  We sit in his library and he talks to us about the house, it's history, and tells some stories about it's inhabitants.  Gaetano translates - so there is a musical back-and-forth between the two men, Italian, and Italian-accented English.

We are led through a few more rooms and then descend the stairs again to the former stables of the house where we have a tasting of local wines, and a buffet dinner.

After dinner, musicians enter the room playing loudly on accordion, 2 large tambourines and guitar.  The sound is huge.  Then they sing they lift up their faces and produce a full-throated, dense sound.  It reminds me of the 'throat singers' from parts of Eastern Europe.  The vibrations are felt all around the room.  They immediately captured the crowd with their passionate sounds.  The name of the group is Criamu.

They also got most of us up and dancing the Pizzica - a kind of local tarantella.  My kind of night!!


Busing today along the Adriatic Sea through the region of Apulia (which means 'no rain'!) to Otranto, then west to Gallipoli.

In Otranto we visit the Basilica de Annunciato, an 11th century mosaic floor covering the entire church depicting a 'tree of life'.  

A side chapel in the church contains the bones of 80 men martyred by the Turks.