Ah, my legs hurt! What a long uphill hike that was! Solunto was a city close to Santa Flavia, on the north-western coast of Sicily. It was founded by Carthaginians (from the city that is now called Tunis) when they colonised Sicily in the 11th century B.C. That was an awfully long time ago to…
Tag: Travel
5 Top Tips: How to Park like a Sicilian
Can’t find a parking space? Sicilians can. Take a leaf out of their book. Parking Idea # 1 – The Forty-Fiver So-named because you park at 45 degrees to the pavement, this technique is ideal if the available space is not actually big enough for your car, if you know you’ll need to make a…
The Sicilian fishing village of St. Elia
St. Elia is a small fishing village on the north coast of Sicily, a short drive from my home. Their fishing boats, made entirely of wood, are blue, white and orange. Each village along this coast paints its boats a specific color scheme. The fishermen sometimes row silently, but sometimes plonk outboard motors on the…
Knickers and Pants
I have discovered that my new-ish digital camera has much more memory than my vintage, steam-powered computer. This means I cannot upload all my lovely photos of Siracusa until I get a new one, because plugging the camera into the USB port made the computer have a kind of epileptic siezure. Since this situation is…
The Do-Good Brothers
I had to have a little operation recently. It was preceded by some blood tests in the nearest hospital, called Ospedale Buccheri La Ferla Fatebene Fratelli. The Sicilians are good at coming up with catchy names that way. Buccheri and La Ferla are the names of the founders. The Fatebene Fratelli translates as “The Do Good…
A Narrow escape from the Fashion Police
In Italy, it is against the law to emerge in public with bad hair. Italians remain housebound on bad hair days. In the summer, having white skin is also considered a serious fashion gaffe. There is simply no excuse. Strangers repeatedly threaten to report phosphorescent Celtic people like me to the fashion police. Sometimes gangs…
Sicily vs. Australia
A wonderful guest post called Sicily vs. England, written for my blog by Pecora Nera, turned out to be so popular that it inspired another great Sicilian blogger, Rochelle Del Borello of Unwilling Expat, to write this article – Sicily vs. Australia – for my blog. ***** The beauty of experiencing different cultures is seeing how they…
A Shop on Wheels
Do you like this Sicilian Greengrocers? If you look carefully, you can see its wheels. His weighing scales are hanging off the brake light. They hold them up with one hand and slide the ball weight along a metal bar to get the weight of your fruit and veg. if you query the sweetness of…
Seven Top Tips: How to cook pasta like a real Sicilian Godmother
When I got married, I was given a 35 person dinner service which had belonged to my husband’s grandmother. Not just a 35 person dinner service, but a nine-course 35 person dinner service. “I’m sorry a couple of items have got broken over the years,” my mother-in-law, The Godmother, apologised. A couple of pieces missing? Did…
A Summer Vacation in Sicily
I have been devilishly busy lately, doing translations, writing a book (in Italian! Yoinks!) and eating ice cream with my little lad, whose school has broken up for the summer. Luckily for us all, my gifted friends are still writing wonderful guest posts for your entertainment! This gorgeous PHOTO ESSAY is a gift from Rochelle Del…
31 Mafiosi Arrested in my Town Yesterday
They arrested 31 mafiosi in my little town yesterday, and two of them were neighbours of mine. The newspapers are saying that this has practically demolished the Mafia in this town. Personally I am not so sure. Fighting the Mafia is like trying to eliminate cockroaches. You can stamp on a couple but there are…
Are the Sicilians Africans or Europeans?
The Arabs and Normans ruled Sicily in medieval times, and left a legacy I see all around me in Sicily today. I see Arabs in the girls with big dark eyes and thick black hair, or in the little boys on the beach with nut brown skin. I see Normans too, in the fishermen with…
Sicily v. England
Today’s fabulous guest post is from one of my favourite bloggers, Pecora Nera (which means Black Sheep). I think of him as my male counterpart, as he is an Englishman married to a Sicilian lady, known only as Mrs. Sensible. I sometimes wonder which of us is more bonkers. ***** I received an e mail…
Sicilian “Pupi” – The Soldier Puppets of Charlemagne
Most cultures have a puppet tradition, and the International Museum of Puppets in Palermo probably has a few examples of them all. It houses a truly marvellous collection. I loved their South East Asian section and the beautiful collection from Japan. Their African collection was evocative and haunting. I was highly excited by their Punch…
How Three Hellish Holidays in Sicily led to the Invention of Democracy
As I am having an operation, I am offline for a while. However, I am delighted to have friends who have offered to entertain and educate you with some cracking guest posts. Today’s guest post is written by Thorwald Franke, an expert on Plato, the lost island of Atlantis and many things historical. He has…
Lo Zingaro Nature Reserve, Sicily
Lo Zingaro nature reserve, in San Vito lo capo, was Sicily’s first. We visited recently, and spotted a falcon flying overhead. There are also buzzards, ravens, hooded crows and thrushes. The wild flowers include ferns, cyclamen, hollly bushes, lots of yellow mountain broom and this lovely flower. Does anyone know what it is? There were…
Sicilian Enigmas part 1: Road Signs
Sicilians often complain that their road signs are ridiculous, hopelessly misleading or simply wrong. They are probably just using this as an excuse for their wild driving. Or are they? This one got me so confused I even swerved onto the wrong side of the road. Is there an underground cinema? A tiny weeny cinema…
A sing-song at Segesta
Today, dear readers, I proudly offer you a guest post written by an actual, professional journalist! His own blog, DorsetDaze, features his witty writing and gorgeous photographs. Here, he describes his trip to the ancient Greek temple at Segesta. His day involved the classic Sicilian blend of sublime and ridiculous, in equal measure. ***** ACCORDING…
Sea Urchins, Anyone?
Sicilians absolutely love sea urchins – as food, rather than as wildlife. They crack them open and eat them raw by scooping their insides out with a piece of bread. This is why, off many parts of the Sicilian coast, sea urchins are becoming rare. We went to the stunning Lo Zingaro nature reserve at the…
Ten ways to tell you’ve been living in Sicily too long
1. You wear an anorak when it is 25 degrees centigrade and you don’t even feel hot. 2. You sometimes give your child an octopus to eat for dinner. 3. Whenever you get in a draught you just KNOW you will have a cervicale the next day. This is an exclusively Italian type of headache…
PHOTO GALLERY: Palermo and other Sicilian towns
I am delighted to have permission to reblog this from dorsetdaze All the pictures, and the article, are by Dave, a talented photographer with an eye for the unusual. Sicily: a land of many faces March 13, 2014 Traffic and graffiti: two of Palermo’s trademarks. SICILY, eh? One minute it can make you smile, the next…
Brain Drain, Sicilian Talent, and the World’s Oldest University
Did you know the world’s oldest university was founded by a Sicilian? It’s in Cairo, and he actually founded the whole city, too. This shows the terrible problem of Brain Drain has existed in Sicily far longer than most people realise. To get a concept of how big an issue this is, consider that there…
Blessed by a Pregnant Nun at Sciacca Carnival
The Carnival of Sciacca in Sicily may not be as famous as the Venice or Rio carnivals, but it is just as much fun. The day started with such heavy rain there was even talk of calling it all off, but in the end the rain stopped and the festivities started. All the children were…
Happy Valentine’s Day with some Kinky Chocolate
Sicilians are a romantic lot and they love St. Valentine’s Day. Rather than give their girlfriend sweets or champagne, most Sicilian men are more likely to take her out for a delicious organic Italian ice-cream. What better way to wish all my readers Happy Valentine’s Day than by sharing this marvellous advertisement I saw in our local…
Sicilian Amber – the Tears of the Sun God’s Daughters
On some of Sicily’s beaches after a big storm, if you’re sharp-eyed and lucky as well, you can find pieces of a rare type of amber called simetite. Some pieces of simetite have recently been found to contain hitherto unknown types of prehistoric insect. It dates from the Miocene, a later period than the more…
How do you get Edible Salt out of the Sea?
We are so used to being warned not to eat too much salt nowadays that it may be hard to imagine how life in the past involved a constant effort to obtain enough of it. Not only does it render any food tasty, it is a vital nutrient and death is the inevitable consequence of…
What’s the Use of Modern Art?
In Castel di Tusa, you can sleep in it, sit on it, eat off it and even take a pee in it. Seriously. In the old days, art was mainly a way of preserving moments in time and, especially, commemorating or glorifying certain people for posterity. Nowadays we have photography and the Internet for that, so…
The Hanging Gardens of Bagheria
The legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. They were supposedly created by the Emperor Nebuchadnezzar II, the king of Babylon, for his Persian wife, Queen Amytis. We have a hanging garden in my home town in Sicily, too, and this post has photos of it. The…
Festival of St Martin: Time for Children to Drink Wine and Play with Naked Flames
Throughout early November, the weather here in Sicily is often still warm and summery enough to go for a swim in the sea. We Sicilian housewives are still walking about in our boob tubes and hot pants (or something like that) while our poor fellow Europeans, up in Germany and England, are getting wet and…
Sicilian Maiolica Ceramics from Caltagirone and Taormina
Maiolica is Italian tin-glazed pottery made in dazzling colours. New methods for making varied colours of glazes were initially brought to Sicily by the Arabs of North Africa in medieval times, and the art of making Maiolica then spread from Sicily throughout Italy during the Renaissance. Nowadays the art has shrunk back down again and…
The Sicilian Art of Arranging Yourself
Have you ever wondered how you’d cope if you were stranded in the wilderness with nothing useful at all? Tom Hanks in “Castaway” lived on a desert island for several years, using an ice-skate as a multi-purpose cutting tool, part of a heinously tasteless party dress as a fishing net, and a football with a face…
Water water everywhere… and all in the wrong place
Sicily sits on the edges of two completely different weather systems. The edges overlap. What this means in practise is that Sicily gets way more weather than other places. This weekend, for example, Africa blew the Scirocco wind at us. This starts in the Sahara desert, builds up to 150 degrees centigrade (I never exaggerate)…
The Dangerously Truthful Diary of a Sicilian Housewife 