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Last month I got to see the vintage recreation of the running of the Targa Florio in Sicily. We were traveling south down the coast of Sicily between Catania and Syracuse when a group of vintage cars went racing in the opposite direction. I couldn’t identify them all but I did recognize a Ferrari and a Fiat. An older gentleman driving an open wheel antique racecar was dressed in period costume. He smiled and waved to the bus riders. He looked like he was having a good time. That unexpected sighting while I was on vacation is one of only two car/driving related connections in this article. The other is this: The drivers in Sicily are the craziest! Believe every outrageous thing you’ve ever heard about drivers in Rome or any other Italian city and you’ll have an idea what they’re like in Sicily. First of all the cars are tiny. The smallest cars here are larger than the average car there. Motorcycles and scooters are the mode of choice for young people in the cities. Lanes are not a recognized concept in city driving. Parking on the sidewalk is. Parked cars on the narrow streets cause drivers to swerve and merge with reckless aggressiveness. The margin of squeeze is often less than two inches. I didn’t actually see any contact being made but I saw lots of evidence of it in the dents and damage left on the bodywork. I do have to give Sicilian drivers some credit; while they are more daring in their attempts to get ahead in traffic, they also seem to be more aware and responsive to situations that arise. Still I wouldn’t want to drive there. That’s the last mention of anything driving related. The rest of this column is my impressions of Sicily. Mom and I went together. She has been saying for years she wanted to see Sicily since her father’s family came from Caltanesseta. We had a good time. The weather was perfect for sightseeing. Mostly sunny with some clouds or haze before noon and comfortable temperatures. We were on a fully escorted tour, which means everything is taken care of. We saw a lot of the countryside from the bus since we covered nearly 1,000 miles, most of it along the coast. It's very pretty country, covered with vineyards, citrus groves, olive trees and fields. I was surprised at and how tropical and how green it was. Palm trees, hibiscus and bougainvillea all over the place. I was not surprised to see prickly pear cactus growing wild everywhere since my prior impression of Sicily was that it is desert like. The island is a big rock; jagged mountains are always in sight. Yet agriculture is still the number one industry, even bigger than tourism. We drove up many mountains for our visits to ancient cities, temples and ruins. As we drove up the mountains we got fantastic views of the coastline below. It made me wonder why so many towns were built on the tops of mountains. I can understand wanting to build the temples in a prominent spot, somewhere they could be seen from all around. It makes them more important and imposing if you have to look up to them. But it had to make life difficult living on the top of a 2000-foot rock. You certainly couldn’t go fishing in the morning to bring home dinner for that night. We got plenty of history lessons in our visits to churches, temples and ruins. Every civilization in the Mediterranean set up shop there at some time in history. Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Muslims, Normans, Spaniards. It really is amazing when you’re standing inside a Greek temple that was built in 500 BC. The one in Erice was preserved because it was buried for thousands of years and only recently excavated. Many of the churches started as Greek temples, were taken over by the Romans, then remodeled into churches with decorations and additions from all the different periods. The church on Ortega Island in Catania was a perfect example of this evolution. From the outside you see the columns of the Greek temple and how it was turned into a church by filling in between the columns with walls. The inside walls are covered with mosaics done by Byzantine and African craftsmen so the purely decorative designs are in the styles of their cultures. Since Norman Kings built the church, the mosaics depicting the saints and stories from the bible are more modern in design. The figures are in motion and are rendered with more subtlety than is typical of Byzantine icons. But the use of gold in the mosaics was lavish. The backgrounds are completely gold, so the whole church glows. The facade of the church is where the latest period styles are applied. Either due to damage from earthquakes or simply as a statement of power by the rulers of the time most of the facades have been updated. Renaissance statues and baroque ornamentation overwhelm the ability of humans to absorb all the details. Considering my appreciation for history, art and architecture, I was properly entertained. I didn't take enough pictures or buy enough postcards of the places we went. Fortunately the guidebook I bought before the trip has nice pictures and plenty of historical and cultural background. It was the first time to Europe for both of us. The language barrier aside, everything is just a little different, just enough to let you know your not in Kansas anymore. Unless you’ve been there you wouldn’t believe how many pastry and gelato shops there are. It seems there's one on every block. And the pastry - I saw so many kinds that I'd never seen before. The store windows were a feast for the eyes. We didn't have much time to shop. On the last day in Palermo we didn’t even have time to buy postcards at the sites we visited. That’s the only drawback of taking a tour this way. You sacrifice the freedom to explore something that’s not on the itinerary or to linger when something interests you. I only bought one pair of coral earrings and a tiny plate to use as a spoon rest. The plate is on my stovetop to remind me everyday of the sunny days we had in Sicily. |
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