Food, glorious food.
Have booked myself in for a week's Italian lessons in Sicily. stopping overnight in Catania near the fish markets. The small hotel is in an apartment, high ceilings and beautiful tiled floors, shuttered against the searing heat even in September. I can't not go to the markets for a visual of what's in season, so off I go in the afternoon heat and come upon different coloured seasonal eggplants and amazingly diverse squash. I eat at a restaurant skirting the markets. It's swordfish with a caper, garlic and anchovy sauce is rich and smells of the sea.
Breakfast is a table spread of various homemade cakes. I've still got the Moroccan bug but I'm sure cake is a cure for all. And then I'm on the train to Syracuse. This 2,700 year old city was the birthplace of the famed mathematician, Archimedes but it's very name for me has a mythical ring to it as I studied ancient history and this was a major power in the Mediterranean in it's heyday.
The Italian school is run by an Irish woman and her sons, one of whom picks me up and drives me to the apartment. The area looks dusty, grim, buildings in various stages of renovation and lengthy decay but my little studio is lovely. It's in Ortygia, a small island off Syracuse, connected by two bridges. I settle in and have an early night.
Next morning, I meet a lady in her late sixties, an anxious American widow who is braving her new life, studying and next week, going on a bike tour. That inspires me. She has been here a week but gets us lost on the 30 minute walk to the school.
I do a brief test and am put in a beginners class where I meet my companion for the rest of the trip and another charming young man, both from the US. At break, we're given the traditional Sicilian breakfast of brioche and granita and then my new found friend and I go off for lunch together. We bond over tragedy and trying to heal from grief. We both agree that it wasn't by chance we met. She's slim, energetic, runs every morning and loves food. We walk back together and by chance, her place is just across the small piazza from mine.
We quickly establish our routine, walking through the backstreets, past the markets, alongside the old ruins of a temple in the city centre, stopping at what would become our favourite cafe, ordering at first the large size croissant stuffed with sweet ricotta and a macchiato or two, and as the week went by, swapping to the smaller size and then walking across the bridge to our school.
We struggle with studying, it's been such a long time and grief has slightly addled our memory and brain power, nerves play a part as well as we have to speak aloud in a class situation but luckily there's only six of us and there's plenty of laughter with a great teacher. Lunches are amazing. We try different trattorias, our favourite is where mama has been cooking in the kitchen for 60 years, her sons at the front of the bar. The food is regional, rustic and delicious.
Each day there's an excursion with a lot of walking involved which counteracts the food being consumed. We head off in the afternoon to Pantalica, a cliff walk to a necropolis dating back to the 13th century BC. Up to 4000 tombs are built into the hillside here as we walk down into the valley to bathe in a swimming hole in the limestone. It's freezing but all the girls take the plunge.
We're a mixed bunch, a couple from Brazil working in the US Embassy in Milan, an English woman from Bath, two lively and beautiful girls from Peru and a young Democrat full of enthusiasm as only the young have. Cooled by our dip, we head back up the steep incline, past carob trees, the bean pods full of the sweetest seeds and flowers that strangely smell like pancetta, fig trees with the last of their fruit and prickly pear clinging to the cliffs. I can smell tiglio blooms, sweet and drifting on a slight breeze and then to an Agriturismo for an early dinner.
The table is laden! Everything is made on the premises, prosciutto from their pigs, cheese from their cows, homemade jams from their fruit trees which they serve with the cheeses. Homemade breads and wine. The courses just keep arriving. We buy some goodies from their shop and home, stuffed and exhausted.
The anxious American lady appears as soon as I open my door in the mornings and we join up with my friend across the way, buying fruit at the market, smelling the sweet scent of the capsicums roasting on the braziers, cats patrolling every corner. Pumpkins are appearing, long greenish zucchini type curly vegetables which are cooked with tomatoes and potatoes, then we breakfast on our ricotta cornetti.
On our way, we pass the very modern cathedral of the Madonna of Tears, where strange, huge trees full of incredible lily like flowers grow. This cathedral was built in honour of the Virgin Mary. The story behind it was that a couple were given a painting of the Virgin Mary for their wedding and hung it behind their bed. When the woman fell pregnant, she developed toxaemia and one night she had a seizure which left her blind. In the morning she awoke and was able to see again and looking up at the painting of Mary, she saw that there were tears coming from her eyes. She called in her husband and family to verify it and there they were. If the tears were wiped away, they would return. It was hung outside the house and people would come and collect the tears and miracles would occur. Samples of the tears were taken and after that it wept for another 51 minutes and then stopped, never to tear up again. The tears were scientifically evaluated and were pronounced to be human. It was declared to be a miracle in 1954.
The next afternoon is Mt Etna. I have no hiking clothes as per me...the guide looks at my silvery, gemstoned sandals and shakes his head and I'm taken to a place to be fitted with boots and then we're off. The mountainside is like nothing I've seen before, a barren place of wind and low slung clouds. We troop up the first of the mountains but the pathway is a metre in diameter and we look down into a crater on one side and a cliff on the other. I tell the English lady that I'm too scared to go any further and she agreed but also said that we have to try. So we take each other's arms and I look ahead without looking down and we come to the top of one crater. Etna herself is covered in clouds and is erupting more than usual today so we don't go any further. I'm hugely relieved but also proud of myself for conquering a fear of heights.
My friend and I go for dinner in old Ortygia, we have swordfish caponata and we talk forever over a glass of Sicilian wine, grown in the shadow of Etna, in her beautiful rich volcanic soils. The restaurants here are incredible. We eat at a different one each night and they're all good.
The man across the road wakes me every morning, packing his three wheeled ape with vegetables for the market. That day, I book for another week and after our classes, I go through the alleyways and discover the heart of Ortygia. Through tiny streets, full of artisan shops, quirky and beautiful.
I return to our square to meet up for dinner in the 1918 restaurant. The meal is huge, caponata to die for, eggplant parmigiana and light potato croquettes. Kids play around us and a little girl is fascinated by us, probably with our English. Again we talk until late, about our lives, our philosophies and return to our studio apartments.
Lunch the next day is risotto with zucchini, soft cheese and candied orange peel and that night we meet up at the harbour at the back of Ortygia where the hero Aeneas sailed into. We watch the sunset and walk through the streets that are lit up, buying papyrus paintings. Papyrus grows on this island and in one other place in Sicily. We eat tiny fried fish with salad and then amazing dark chocolate gelato with cacao nibs and pistachios and agrumi, a type of orange/lemon with white chocolate.
The weekend has arrived and I go that evening on an old diesel train to some towns inland. There are more Italians than tourists. The train is wonderfully old fashioned but with no air con. We sweat our way through and wander two towns, the first Scicli and the last being Modica, the chocolate city where we have a very late dinner and arrive back home at 2. The Italian babies and kids are still up and chatting merrily away even though it's way past my bedtime. Walking back through the markets, I see they've just covered the stalls in plastic and some of the stallholders are sleeping there - security.
My friend has convinced me to go snorkelling. There was a mention that the boat was a sort of raft, with no covering and no lunch provided but the rumours were untrue. A proper boat! We headed out to sea and then stopped for a swim. I took a deep breath, adjusted my snorkel and lowered myself in. This is a woman who hates deep water, who won't put her face in! This woman got in with the group and refused to look down until we came to a cave and then I thought, this is ridiculous! I looked down and my whole life shifted three gears! I became a mermaid! I forgot how deep it was, I looked and looked and swam as if the sea was my playground. We swam back to the boat and I just floated amongst shoals of fish. It was like flying but being supported. Another fear faced and conquered.
Lunch was prosciutto and mozzarella panini and beer that was dark and sweet. I celebrated myself, having the courage to do something that has always terrified me. I book in for another week of studies.
The next day it poured, driving rain and crazy wind. We were almost blown to the school. Later that evening we met up with a new student from New York and she took us to an amazing shabby chic restaurant where we dined on pasta with pistachio pesto and shrimps. Musicians serenaded us with a flute, accordian and a singer with tambourine. Ah,Italia! I felt I was back in the fifties.
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