Our family took its Easter vacation this year in Sicily. Although we are 16 persons, four of them could not come due to school and work obligations. Nonetheless even with 12 people restaurants often had to reorganize their tables for us. But why Sicily? Did we expect to run into some Mafia? Or was it Mt. Etna, or the sea, or the fascinating mountain villages, or the good food and Sicilian wine? Actually it was all of those things. Three of us had been to Sicily before, for the rest it was the first time and we wanted to see everything that we could. But we were only there nine days, so of course, we couldn't go everywhere, we couldn't get to know Sicilians, and if we happened to pass by any mafiosi we didn't know it. This essay was in the the online portal Ytali.com

Sicilian towns are generally made up of a old center which inevitability has a cathedral, and any number of smaller churches, a number of government buildings, and a plaza with a fountain usually with quite a few people strolling in the sunshine. Remembering that this was March, none were overcrowded. The buildings are mostly sand colored and built in the same style, but some may be other colors. Taormina looked old, but well taken care of and clean. And it was also the town with the most people during the day, though at night it was pretty empty, and never overcrowded. This according to the tourist books was not the case in the main season, so I guess we were lucky.

The land across the body of water is Italy proper as seen from the greek theater.

Greek theater


Greek theater

My first lunch in Taormina was a surprise. Sicily is known for its food. For me however, it was not the newness, but the strangeness. I ordered pasta with octopus. When my dish arrived all black, I stared at it in disbelief. The noodles were black, the octopus was black and there was black sort of sticky sauce. So I said, why is it all black? Is that what Octopuses squirt out? Well I didn't know that. But I dared to try it. I didn't really like it very much and I thought the noodles were awfully hard. No one else had black food though and they were happy.

In Taormina we parked our rented car in a public parking lot at the bottom of the mountain and then went up on a local bus which cost nothing. That way the town is able to keep the masses of cars somewhat reduced. Our accommodation that night was a bed and breakfast located in the middle of town. The man running the B&B spoke excellent English and was excited about the town. He told us where all the best sights were all of which we could reach by foot. For breakfast he said he would bring each of us a croissant filled with a number of different flavors, so each of us chose what sounded good. I had a pistachio croissant which indeed was good. Croissants are common enough in Europe, but I'd never seen a pistachio one. One of the oldest places there was the Greek theater. But many of the churches were from the 12 and 13rh centuries. Since it was Palm Sunday, the natives were getting a bouquet of olive branches which a man was distributing on the street.

After being in Sicily for a week during supper in our lovely villa we asked everyone in our group what they enjoyed most in Sicily. Here are our answers: I'll start with me because I'm writing this: I said Sirakusa, Line said Mt. Etna and the company of the whole family, Hosea said Sirakusa, Henrietta said Mt. Etna, Marek said the beach at Villa Dalya, Kalinka said everything, Alfred said the ice cream, Luise said Mt. Etna, Julius said Mt. Etna, Michael said Mt. Etna, Luna said Mt Etna and Polly said Mt. Etna and the beach. After that people added a few things that they also liked such as Ragusa, and more Mt. Etnas. Mt. Etna won by far. Perhaps the very idea of a volcano that explodes every so often is fascinating. We could even fear that it might explode when we were there. Though it didn't. On our first day arriving in Catania we could see the whole mountain to the top where a small amount of smoke was discharged from the highest point. But by the time we actually went there there were clouds surrounding the mountains. Actually in the town Nicolosi the sun was shining, but as we drove higher and higher we'd be surrounded by a cloud, then driving through it, it was sunny again, and it remained that way, a cloud, sunshine, a bigger cloud, less sunshine. But the very top of the mountain clung to its clouds and we couldn't see the highest point. Nonetheless when we arrived, the sky was blue in many places and there high above the mountain was smoke. Not just smoke. It had been ejected from the mountain in the form of a huge perfect white circle stark against the blue sky. We were astonished. How could it do that? Like a monstrous giant smoking a cigar and blowing circles as big as a mountain. But the circle didn't last long and soon a cloud rolled over it. The rest of the mountain and its various peaks always had sunshine and clouds rolling over them.

Though we had driven to Mt. Etna in the three rented cars which we needed for our 12 people, when we got there we took the cable car as high as it went. It brought us from spring to winter where there was snow and nothing green. But then maybe there was never anything green there. Some of our group climbed the first crater near the cable car. It was steep, there was some ice and I didn't go to the top. Instead Polly and I took a bus filled with tourists which drove higher to other craters. There we still had to walk up quite a way to get to the edge of the craters. There was even more snow, but as the guide told us, this year there hasn't really been much snow in spite of the fact that we were almost 3000 feet high. For me the trek up to the craters was not so easy. I am 82 years old, and although we were among the last to the top, we made it. The guide found it so amazing that he took a photo of me. On the way down the guide kindly gave me a hand so I wouldn't end up skiing on the lava which was very slippery.

Mt.Etna consists of many craters, each having created a small mountain as it exploded at some time, strewing the area for miles around the mountain with masses of black lava, some of which had apparently recently been bulldozed to other areas, probably to clear the roads. Recent eruptions occurred in 2006, 2007-2008, January to April 2012, July to October 2012, December 2018 and in February 2021, then again in May 2022, when the Southeast Crater collapsed, again on the afternoon of August 13, 2023, and the most recent eruption occurred on December 1, 2023 which was 3 and 1/2 months before our visit. So we saw no fire, but the vents, and there there a number of them, which allow the heat and smoke to escape, had hot ashes in them which we could pick up and hold, they didn't burn, but were hot and of course we had to try holding them. Because Etna is so active, it is also the most thoroughly monitored volcano. An impending eruption will be known before it happens. And amazingly in the couple thousand years observing the volcano, only about 77 people have been noted to have been killed by it in spite of the fact that a large city Catania exists nearby. In 2001 the cable car was destroyed by a volcano, but has been replaced in the meantime.

Marek liked this place the best, the Villa Dalya, and it was certainly a beautiful place. It was the villa where we stayed most of the time. To get there we drove through fields filled with plastic green houses which covered most of the area. In these there were tomatoes growing which where ripe and we could seem them through the plastic windows and wished we could take a few as they looked so good. Where the plastic green houses were not in use, they were filled with flowers which also grew outside. Most of the flowers were various shades of yellow and grew together or near each other so the field looked yellow. The green houses ended with a tennis court, then came the Villa itself a large stone house of two stories with room for all of us. In front of the house was the biggest private swimming pool I'd ever seen, wandering through palm trees and stone paths, so you couldn't see from one end of the pool to the other. One of the first things most of us did on arrival at the house was to jump in the pool. Well, it was March and the pool had just been filled for us and it was cold, but oh well. The end of the huge garden was right on the Mediterranean Sea. Not so many actually dared to swim, not because it was dangerous, it was in fact a beautiful sand beach reaching into the water which did not become deep quickly. Marek, Henrietta, Luise, Julius and Hosea and Polly did go swimming there. Marek and his family had partial wet suits, so they could stay in the water without freezing and dive into the waves.

Line was glad for the company of the family and this was something we all liked. Our family is scattered in Germany and Denmark, so we aren't often together. But here we were all living in one huge beautiful villa where we could swim, play tennis, read in the huge garden or in the living room, in the evening play Uno and prepare our meals when we didn't eat out.

Scicli, Ragusa, Noto and Modica were towns built, as many were, on the mountain sides with curving and narrow streets and many stairs. This was not easy for me to navigate, but hey, I'm not here often, so I did it. At the top was the cathedral, the duomo, whose highest point was often also the highest in the town. In this area of Sicily most of the buildings were build after 1693 when a huge earth quake destroyed most of what was there before. Thus the public buildings are of the same style, baroque, two or three stories high and look old. Most have black mold on the outside. I am not quite sure why that is, although in the week that we were there it rained twice at night. In Ragusa we did see ruins of an older church, the portal of the Gothic St. Giorgio Cathedral from the 12th century which survived the earthquake. It was a fantastic portal with St. Giorgio and the dragon carved over the door but that is all that survived. We wondered why people would worship St. George. One tale has it that he was offered the king's daughter if he killed the dragon, but St. George said it was God who did this therefore refused the marriage, and instead told the people who were pagan to believe in God.

But there were other things on our list. Sirakuse (Syracuse): The two main things we liked there were the archaeological park Necropolis which contained the quarry where the stones that built the houses, temples, churches and public buildings was mined. It also included the remains of buildings from the Greek and Roman periods and their theaters, the Greek one was bigger, in fact one of the biggest in the world. It was being repaired. The caves existed in ancient times, but are not natural. Archimedes was born and lived in Syracuse. In the midst of the city of Syracuse the ruins of one Greek temple still stands, the temple of Apollo, but unlike temples on the other side of Sicily it is a ruin. There were probably more earthquakes on this side of the island and the large one of 1693 destroyed many towns. Nonetheless the duomo, the cathedral of Syracuse, was build in 480 B.C. as a temple to Athena, but probably on even older foundations. On top of it there came a church, probably christianized by changing a few symbols and removing the old gods when Sicily was evangelized by St. Paul. In the Bible, Acts 28:12 it is mentioned that St. Paul stayed there. In the 7th century it was re-formed more like a church which lasted until 878 when it became a mosque. It was converted back to a church when the Normans took the city in 1085 and became a cathedral which is now partly in baroque style, however Doric columns still exist, and parts of the church stem from the earliest period of Christianity, so it looks quite different than most cathedrals with so many elements from so many periods still part of the building.

And a very difficult maze which we took a long time to master.


Henrietta climbed up to see over the top to figure out how we could get out of it.


Me at the beach


Polly and I took a long walk along the beach to the next town which had some restaurants. Here we had lunch. My lunch was the mussels which you can see.

Alfred liked the ice cream best. And maybe the Sicilian ice cream is the best in the world. We stopped almost everyday at an ice cream store, one in every town we went to and had different combinations of usual or unusual kinds of ice cream. Of course when 12 people pile into a little shop and the ice cream stores were inevitably small, we filled the place. But we weren't the only people to eat ice cream. It looked like it was generally pretty popular. Now one might think an ice cream store is for tourists, but when we were there it was mostly people speaking Italian, The same for all the restaurants we went to.

Alfred enjoying his ice cream.


Luna

And finally Kalinka said she liked everything. I can't describe everything, but certainly everything was fascinating.

Kalinka dancing on the stairs of San Nicolo Duomo of Noto. This church was badly destroyed by the thunderstorm.


In front of the church


all the candlesticks are on their side because it is the week before Easter.

The towns and their inhabitants keep the towns clean, sweeping in front of their homes and clearing the streets. It's not like Berlin. Most of these ancient towns have a a protected center which requires people owning the houses to keep them in their original condition. Since most of the houses in the areas we visited were built after the 1693 earthquake, they are quite uniform and quite old. However, many places do not give any financial help to keep these houses up. Therefore people move out and no one moves in. It may not only be the costs of keeping them up, also the streets are narrow, sometimes so narrow that a car cannot fit on them and the towns are very hilly, so that old people cannot get to the stores at all. The stores might be there, but they are mostly meant for tourists and sell fancy clothes, souvenirs, and food, Italian food. There were no other options. The almost overwhelming number of souvenir shops all sold the same objects, most of which were made in China. The result is that towns often have quite a few empty houses which in the meantime have no windows, cracked and broken plaster and are quite moldy. The people move to the outskirts of the town which are not protected and are filled with newer buildings. These are often taller and have balconies surrounding the outside. And of course they are in good condition. This you see in town after town. First the outskirts with it new buildings, then the center where the tourists come, the duomo and government buildings are there and then the houses. Certainly the ones that have been kept up are charming, often with flowers on the balconies in the front, the streets may be very narrow which gives a certain charm, there are no sidewalks, but then there are also the deserted houses which gives the towns a ghostly look. Of course that doesn't have to be bad. Maybe the ghosts add to the bewitching fascination of a place that explodes, or crashes in earthquakes, or has mafia hidden here and there.

The city hall in Noto.


a war memorial in Noto


in the church


in front of the church


The scene was created inside the church San Nicolo.


Our house on the sea