Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
November 10, 2008
Do you see that? That means that it is November, I cannot believe it. I do not want to leave this country, it is beautiful. I think when I get home, I might just wander around, trying to find old buildings and espresso.
Do you also know that that means I have returned from SICILY!? Are you ready for this blog? No seriously, are you READY for this blog? Because I don't think anything could prepare you for sicily. Everyone reading this needs to go…no exceptions. Here it goes.
So Friday sara, alex, and I woke up at 5:30…5:30am on a Friday, that's dedication people, dedication. We walked to the mini-metro, which didn't open till 7:30, so we called a taxi. We saw a bus where we were supposed to meet the taxi, hoped on, and then saw our taxi and got in it to the train station. From there we went to Pisa Airport, where we met Kelley and Katy who had spent the night in Florence. As we were checking in, the attendant told us you could not get on the plane without your real passport…which only katy and I had. It all happened so fast…but all of a sudden only katy and I were in line to get on the plane. I was so excited for Sicily, and so sad that they other girls couldn't come! Getting off the plane, literally I had tears in my eyes. These aren't mountains, they are enormous rocks jetting up from the ground, there's no slope, just straight up beautiful mountains. Unbelievable. We took a bus, and missed our stop. But we bought a map where we were and got some lunch. Katy asked me on the plane what I wanted to do in Palermo…and I said eat. I had a sausage, mozzarella, and tomato Panini…really good. Then the old man swindled us into buying two cannolis…but we really weren't going to fight a man offering us cannois from Sicily, would you?
After lunch, we headed to the hostel. On the way, we stumbled into Piazza Carmine' where there is a big market where the old men play cards behind their stands. We walked around the Albergheria section of Palermo. It is a section that had been destroyed by WWII, so there are bombed buildings, beaten streets, and small apartments that colorful laundry hangs out from. It was not the wealthiest of sections, as we could tell by the people we walked by. Past this, we saw San Cataldo, a 12th century chapel that has red golf ball domes on top. 12th century! Then we found the 16th century Florentine fountain that was flanked by the municipio and Santa Caterina, a Sicilian Baroque church. Eventually we came to Quattro Cani, the four corners. It was where two streets met. At each corner there was the same building only with different statues and a fountain on each. These Baroque statues were built in 1161. 1161, that's not a typo. Between the buildings were huge snowflake looking festival lights. We finally found the Teatro Massimo that was in front of our hostel, a Casa di Amici. For two nights, katy and I slept in freedom. Or that's what our bright pink room was called anyway.
Then we walked up Amedeo street through a beautiful lit archway to the public gardens behind the Parliament building, keep that in mind, public gardens. Well the pack of stray dogs scared us across the street where we were astounded by the cattdrale. It was huge. That's its name, cattedrale. It's so old and big that it is just named cathedral, done, stop, basta. It's a norman relic from 1185. It has norman, catalan-gothic, and Neapolitan influences. First we got un café and some cookies, and then we went inside. Along the sides of cathedrals and churches in Italy, there are little inlets. They are the private family chapels. Being in sicily I couldn't help but wonder which ones belonged to families in the mafia. Also inside, there was "the treasure", jewels from Constance of Aragon, from the 18th century, and pieces of saints. One of the chapels was gated and behind it were embellished tombs. Afterward, we did some shopping. I bought a gift for the entire family from the first store established in sicily that was mafia-free! On our way back to the hostel, we stumbled upon a beautiful carpeted church whose walls were covered in marble carvings, but were difficult to capture because of the lights. It started to rain, so we headed back to the hostel. We changed before we went out to dinner, just katy and I. We went to Le Tre Sorelle, which means the three sisters. We ordered wine, a rustico antipasto, and I ordered nero pasta with speggia (black pasta with squid, ink and all), from the hand written menu that was only in Italian. The antipasto had homemade caponata, foccia bread, fried potato things, green olives, chilled roasted yellow peppers, zucchini bread, eggplant, sun dried tomatoes, and some other veggie mixture. The bread they served had sesame seeds on it…and salt in it! Which is very different from the bread we are used to here in Perugia, or not used to in Perugia for that matter. After my black pasta, we were stuffed but HAD to order dessert, which turned out to be some sort of praline gelato covered in chocolate. We rolled ourselves back to the hostel and into our beds.
Saturday, we got an early start at 8. We had the included breakfast at the hostel, though I only had a yogurt and American coffee (!) because I knew what Sicily had to offer. Our first stop was the Capella Palatina in Palazzo Normani. The Palatina is where the Parliament meets. We bought our tickets and walked around the outside because there was a crowd at the entrance. We walked into a parking lot that said no entrance, which we figured was for cars because it wasn't very big. All the cars were the same make, size, and color. To the left, there was a gated garden that was open. So we went in. The garden was really pretty. It had two green houses, exotic trees, well maintained flowers, and a balcony over looking the street where we saw the video cameras and realized we were not supposed to be there. As we were scurried out, the gardener pointed to the gate and said something very loud in Italian…oops! So then we went into the Palatina. It is set up so there is a courtyard in the middle of it. The first floor had a Picasso exhibit that I found very interesting. The second floor has the royal chapel. My jaw dropped. It was a chapel built in 1132 that was entirely covered in mosaics. in those pictures I took, all the walls are mosaics not paintings. Some of them are byzantine mosaics that date back to 1150. It was the most incredible chapel I have ever seen, and by now ive seen many. I kept thinking of Christina and mom's face had they been there. The 3rd floor had tours of royal apartments. We first saw where parliament meets, where the presidents sites and all that. then our very fast Italian speaking tourwoman led us to an adjacent apartment. I wish I could tell you more about it, but frankly, I barely understood a word she said. One room had paintings stolen from it, another had couches and was blue with a full four wall mural that had women and columns, and another room was red with an asian chandelier and asian people painted on the full four wall mural.
Afterwards, we stopped for some more coffee and pastries, we also bought marzipan for the girls. Around the corner was the President of Sicily's house, which I took a picture of. And then we went into San Giovanni degli Ereniti, which is an Arabic inspired church established in 1132, but was not extensively decorated. My family sent me all this way so that I could enjoy the food here and be able to report and compare it to food back home. Not only is the Arabic influence apparent in sicily's buildings, but they brought over the idea of flaky pastries and disguising food, which the Sicilians are fantastic at! Disguising food as in molding marzipan. The last place we wanted to see before we headed to Monte Pellegrino and the beach, was the teatro Massimo. The teatro Massimo is the largest theater in sicily, and inevitably Italy. It has a magnificent gate that open to marble stairs that have a large statue of a person on a lion on either side. Apparently the line we were standing in was not for tickets for a tour, but for actual event tickets. The American woman behind us asked us if we were going to the concert that night. Katy and I looked at each other, looked at the information about the concert, and looked back at each other. Going to a concert that played music katy's mom loved in the biggest theater in Italy?! We said that we would go as long as they were under 60euro. The wonderful man behind the counter told us that for students it would be 6 euro. Sold American(s). We bought the tickets and headed to the bus station, the concert wasn't until 6:30pm and it was only 2:00. We decided to skip Monte Pellegrino, which is a bus ride to a mountain where you can take a 40 minutes hike and see a church and statues of St. Rosalia. So we hit the beach. The beach! In November! It sounded crazy. After realizing that not much was around the stop that we got off at, we dared to enter the building that was literally on stilts in the water. It had a wrap around porch where people were sitting and eating, but the front part of it was full. So we opened the door to the restaurant and asked the men in white suits if we could see a menu. We sat, ocean view, on the eater eating fried baby seafood (squid, octopus, and shrimp) and cheese and strawberry risotto while the waters insisted that they pour us our wine and water from the metal bowl it was in next to us. Remarkable. We didn't want to leave, so we ordered dessert, a real cake with coffee frosting. Cakes in Italy we have found to be dry and not as sweet. And we got two pastry cups filled with orange and lemon cream, clearly with more coffee. P.S. to all my aunts out there who said, "eat some for me," know that there are plenty of calories being sent to your hips right now. I ate enough for everyone.
In the fancy bathroom, we changed into our bathing suits. It was 3:30pm, the sun was still out, the weather was BEAUTIFUL, and there was no one on the beach. You could see right through the water, crystal clear. I wasn't going to put my hair in because we were going to the theater soon, but I couldn't resist. I totally thought of mom. It was gorgeous!! We dried off on the towel I brought from the hostel and watched people walk by and the sun start to set. We caught the 806 bus back to Piazza Politeama. While we were walking back to the hostel, we picked up an arancini and a tiny sfogladella (which is how I'm going to spell it). Apparently here they are not common, smaller than we are used to, and are stuffed usually with cannoli cream. This one was stuffed with pistachios on top. We changed and ate a bit, even though we weren't hungry, and went to the theater. We hadn't planned on going when we packed, so I wore rolled jeans and flip flops and tried to blend in with the over-perfumed Sicilian women who were wearing their flashy bulky jewels, heels, fancy tops, and had their hair curled and sprayed into place. Hey, my 6 euro was just as good as there's, as uncle joe would say. We walked up two flights of stairs and found a room where if you whispered in the middle it sounded like you had a microphone on. We also saw some ballet dancers practicing for Sleeping Beauty, katy said. 6 more flights and one nose bleed later (I kid), we found out seats right next to Candice.
We saw Lothar Koenigs direct 2 pieces. Giuseppe Andaloro played the piano in Concerto per pianoforte e orchestra n. 2 in do minore op.18. after the short intermission, the orchestra played Sinfonia n.2 in do maggiore op.61. it was amazing to hear a performance in such a grand theater. All the boxes of red chairs, the molding on the sides, and the lights with the painted ceiling, bellisimo. We got out around 9. I was looking around, but all the stores were closed. I decided, that eventhough I wasn't hungry, that I should probably eat something before I went to bed, though we had bought pastries for the next morning. The place that we sat down at apparently had a fixed three course menu. What were we to do but suck it up and eat? Tough life we live, I know. We helped ourselves to the buffet style antipasto. I had caponata, eggplant parm, a sweet roll stuffed with some meat, cheese, and spinach, a breaded tomato, a stuffed piece of eggplant, and a pice of mushroom pizza (like nana makes), broccoli that I had been craving, and best of all fried cauliflower. It was good, but dad's is still better. Those crazy Italians sure know how to cook the crazy apple. Crazy Italians being Sicilians and crazy apple being the literal translation of melenzane. We drank our white wine and were served a plate of pesto pasta with baby shrimp and seafood risotto. It was all so fresh, especially the pesto. We were dreading the third course as we hadn't been hungry to begin with. The 3rd course was an entire white fish and fried prawns and calamari. We struggled, but made it through to dessert, which was fruit salad and lemon slush.
We waddled to the hostel. I showered, and fell into a food coma.
The next morning, Sunday morning the 9th of November, we got up at 5…5…and took a bus to the airport and arrived in Pisa at 10. I had tears in my eyes as we landed. Then we got on a 3 hour train ride to Perugia. Oh to be home.
-Angela
- comments