Entry #18: Milano, November 1: Kate

Right now, we're sitting in a hotel room less than a kilometer away from Milano Linate Airport. The walls are covered in gold-flocked wallpaper. It's pretty fab for an airport hotel. We got in this morning from Palermo and have spent most of the day vegging here, with one outing: a walk around this industrial neighborhood, sort of looking for a large park that is supposedly nearby, but really just trying to get some air. It being Sunday (and a holiday--All Souls Day), everything is shut tight. We got excited when we passed a church and there were lots of people parked across the street, heading towards this large grassy area. My American brain automatically thought, "Ooh, harvest festival!" Then I thought that perhaps they were heading to the cemetery to make offerings to their dead relatives, even more exciting. So we walk in and soon see some young guys inspecting a large semiautomatic rifle. Then we realized that everyone was going to a gun show. We turned around. But, hey, we were able to give directions to other people looking for the event.

So we left Sicily this morning.

The Palermo airport is situated right on the sea, and as we took off, the sun was lighting up the mountains and sparkling over the water. It was a nice send-off. Even nicer was the fact that we spent the last two days at Mary and Tonino Simeti's home, staying in their new guesthouse, sharing dinner with them, even carving pumpkins with them last night as a nod to Halloween. (When we pulled up on Friday afternoon, we overshot the driveway and drove up to one of their sheds that was lined with shelves and shelves of pumpkins. So many honey-hued pumpkins. It reminded me of one of the Gourmet Thanksgiving menus from last year, but to the nth power.)

Our last two days felt a bit like the best of the rest of Sicily. We left late Friday morning, after cleaning up our little house, packing the car, saying goodbye to Giovanna and Pompeo and Salvatore and Giuseppe. Made the twisty drive up the 121 to Palermo and then west on the A29. We realized that we would arrive at the Simetis' smack in the middle of lunch, so we motored on to Scopello, pulled randomly out of the guidebook, which turned out to be the happiest of accidents. Scopello was an old tuna fishery that closed in the 80s. It was one of the most breathtakingly picturesque spots I've ever been, and we had it mostly to ourselves and about seven cats. The water was crystalline, the light ever changing. Elio splashed in the water, gradually stripping down to just a t-shirt, shouting, "I'm having lots of fun!" It was a very special afternoon, one that will replay in my mind's eye for the rest of my life.

The next day we went to Érice, a medieval town set high, high above Trapani. We took the cable car to get there. Wandered around, shocked at how cold it was up there compared to down below. Peeked into castles. Ogled the sea. We didn't stay long, but of course sampled the famous pastries of Maria Grammatico (whom Mary Simeti wrote about in "Bitter Almonds"). My favorites weren't the ultra-moist almond paste pastries, but instead the thin amaretti that were displayed simply in a tall glass jar on top of the display case. I wish I would have gotten a kilo of them.

And of course, we were staying at Mary's, an American who has made Sicily her home for almost the last 50 years and who has written so much and so well about it. The woman who, with my friend and former colleague Diane, is the whole reason we are here. I have more to think about our visit before I write, but we are so grateful to her generosity...

Sidetrack: Oh, the day before we left the three of us went into Vallelunga looking for the mysterious Antonella, who is supposedly THE woman to go in town to for massages and manicures. We wanted to get thank you presents for Giovanna and Enza. We had a phone number for her but realized that with our mangled Italian, it would be almost impossible to convey what we wanted. So we headed into town (forgetting the phone number), planning to go to the tabacchi to ask there. But as we parked, I remembered that the woman at one of the panificios was Romanian and spoke pretty good English, so we headed over there. Of course, she wasn't there, but we talked with another woman who eventually called Dora, who quickly came down. They made a few calls, the guys in the back of the bakery came out, and it became clear that we had to talk with Giovanni, a man who owns the alimentari just as you get into town. So Dora walked us over there, and on the way she told us that she and her husband (whose family owns the bakery, I believe) met over the Internet and got married last October, and that she is an icon painter. Fascinating. So we go to Giovanni's, Dora explains that we're looking for Antonella, he motions us to the back of the store, and we weave our way through the piles of pasta and bottles of water to the back door, which opens out to an alley. We step outside and he motions up to a building. Ah, Antonella. Fortunately, she was home and after several minutes of trying to explain the idea of gift certificates, we all understood each other. It felt like something out of a movie, a treasure hunt of sorts. We felt so ridiculously triumphant afterwards.

Blog Entry # 17, Our Life Here, Case Vecchie, Sicily, October 2009: Guy

Call it what it is, but our last night here at Case Vecchie (at least for this year) is upon us and I am feeling nostalgic. So excuse any sappy prose below. (Simon and Garfunkel's "My Little Town" streaming endlessly through my head is not helping the feelings of nostalgia.) I should be packing, cleaning, resting but instead I feel compelled to write about a few things, sounds, faces, people, land, gardens, experiences. Details.

A few weeks back I mentioned to Kate about the way things are not overly refrigerated here and how we have easily adapted to that. Eggs from the chicken coop left out on window sills, cheese, vegetables, some leftovers from dinner (inevitably eaten the next morning for breakfast). Things we just would not do back home. And, knock on wood, we have not gotten sick.

A few weeks back Kate had the good sense, (she has a lot of that), to go around and photograph details from little apartment. (I love these pictures, is there anything she is not good at?) A normal life lived in a small place, but it is nice to see them now as we approach leaving here.

We already wrote about the wine shop that is attached to Case Vecchie (which means Old House), where locals and some restaurants come and fill up jugs full of good table wine. But it is the sounds now, and the people that I remember. From our apartment you can here the sound of empty plastic jugs bumping together, that hollow low base sound. It will always remind me of this place now. Then the "buon giorno" from Maritzio or Giuseppe (the brothers who work at the wine shop), the customers go in through the beads hanging in the door way, they rattle and click together. Five minutes later they come out with their weeks or months worth of wine.

The beautiful light in these big stone buildings. There is this room that is mostly just full of old tools and baskets, displayed like a museum of the history of this vineyard.

There is a picture below of Salvatore walking in the courtyard. (Elio took it. He also took the picture of me and Kate up on our stoop. We leave Brooklyn to get a stoop, finally!) Salvatore has been a huge presence here for us, he is charming, curious and open. Playful with Elio. He and all the people who work here are one of the main reasons Kate and I are seriously considering coming back here to live and work next year. Pampao and Giovana (last name Pacino, no joke) are the people who keep this place running. Working hard, dealing with two teenage kids, back and forth to town at least 4 times a day. Enza who works here when it is busy with the cooking school, Rosa as well. I wish I had pictures of all of them!

The view out of our bedroom window. (I have shot it about every week and a half, watching the landscape change.) The landscape has not so slowly bugun to look like Spring is about to start. Flowers and grass growing between the olive trees and rows of vines. Grass growing in the fields. Sicily is turning green in November. The roses in the garden are starting to bloom.

And then, again, the experience of being able to photograph the life here. For most people here harvesting, making food and planting a garden is their daily life and I do not want to romanticize it. But I do find a beauty in it. The last picture is me trying out the vibrating tool they use to knock the olives off the tree. I loved trying it, but what was even better was the guy I gave my camera to started shooting like me, squatting down, looking for the best angle. I may try to get a job next year harvesting olives.

Our time spent in the gardens, picking vegetables or eating pomegranates or walnuts from the trees. Seemingly idyllic, maybe idyllic, but, at the same time we really appreciated it. We did not over think it, or try to fill it with more meaning than what it was.

There is no doubt that this has been a unique time. What else can I say about that... there is no way to really sum up the time here. We feel fortunate.

Entry #16, Case Vecchie, October 28, Boy oh Boy

I had to put this up right away. Elio seems to be in a growth spurt the last 2 -3 days and this picture seems to capture him a bit older. There is a big boy look about him. I know this is truly a parent interest only, but it is hard to see the physical changes as Elio grows older. I think I have seen it today. Sad and exciting. I was shooting this delicious Scaccia Ragusana when Elio came out of the kitchen and wanted to be in the photo. I asked him to make a serious face and this is what I got. He is very interested and sometimes upset by all the shooting I am doing here, so this is a way he can be involved. I am happy about that.

Entry #15: Modica, Noto, Ragusa, Sicily, October 26 - 27: Kate

When my friend Diane came back from a trip to Sicily a few years ago, she told me that the roads here were insane, that it took hours to get anywhere, that her husband didn't want to step foot in a car again for a long, long time. I smiled at her stories but secretly thought, Come now, Diane, surely you exaggerate a leeettle bit? No. It turns out that, if anything, she was being charitable. The roads here are ridiculous. There are three or four autostrades here, one along the north coast, from Messina to Palermo, and another that cuts through the interior from Catania to Palermo. They're OK, though there are parts where they can suddenly become a two-lane road, which isn't your usual idea of an autostrade. But if you're going to down to, say, the southeastern corner of the island, then you're stuck using crazy little unmarked roads that veer this way and that, zigzagging their way up and down mountains and cutting through tiny little towns where you can reach out and almost touch the walls of the buildings. It sounds picturesque, and much of it is, breathtakingly so, but a lot of it is white-knuckle driving, with clenched teeth on the side. Coming back from Ragusa, we had to turn around twice because of mudslides on the road. After our trip to Agrigento a few weeks ago, we vowed never again to drive on unknown roads after dark, but we were caught once more, giving Giovanna gray hairs, simply because getting anywhere takes about twice as long as you expect it to.

Anyways. We drove off from Mondello and headed south, south, south. We stopped in Pergusa for lunch (Lake Pergusa is where Persephone was pulled down to the underworld by Hades; the lake is now surrounded by a racetrack), at a surprisingly fine little restaurant, and then on to Modica. As we entered the area of Ragusa, we suddenly realized that the landscape--rolling and steep hills, dotted with cows (a rare sight in Sicily)--all around us was criss-crossed by low stone walls. Walls would go straight up a mountain, but also branch out every 10 yards or so, creating these otherworldly grids and patterns. It was an amazing sight. Apparently, many of these walls were built centuries ago, when the main landowners divided up their land among their many workers. Plus, the land here is just so stony, that you have to do something with all the rock. It was like seeing a personal compulsion, writ huge.

After a bit of driving around and direction asking, we finally found our hotel, L'Orangerie, in Modica. Lovely little place, hidden back on an alley up some steps. The alley was lined with filled water bottles, which had us scratching our heads, but we later learned that they help keep the stray cats and dogs from peeing around there. Our reason for going to Modica was simple: chocolate. A few days before, a BBC crew had been down with the chef Gary Rhodes to do a segment on Fabrizia, and some of the crew had just come from Modica to do something on their chocolate. We sampled it and were blown away: It was Mexican chocolate, but the best Mexican chocolate we'd ever tasted, and it came from Sicily. It warped our minds. Here is a good piece about it (http://faculty.ithaca.edu/direnzo/modica/). The oldest place in town that makes the chocolate is Antica Dolceria Bonajuto, and believe me, we sampled all their wares (they also make the best cannoli we've tasted outside of Case Vecchie), from cardamom to nutmeg to lemon rind to white pepper. Their candied orange peel and sesame brittle were spectacular. This was a wonderful shop. Elio got a bit strung out on chocolate, as we all did. Now we're suffering withdrawal. At breakfast at the hotel (in their wonderful old big kitchen), they had bowls of chopped chocolate, and it was impossible to resist nibbling on a square or three while sipping a cappuccino.

Though chocolate was the main thing, we also hiked up and down steps, peeked into beautiful Baroque churches (Elio was intrigued by many of the paintings and sculptures in San Giorgio in Modica--lots of spears and horses and action). We spent an evening in Noto and were wowed by the little bit we saw (I was wowed by the gelato we got at Caffe Sicilia: a wonderful flavor made of lemon, local almonds and saffron). We spent an afternoon in Ragusa Ibla, getting there just as everything was shutting down for lunch, but we had a nice wander through the little streets.

It was an interesting little trip and made me realize that there's still so much that we haven't seen here. (We tried to see the mosaic floors at the Villa Romana di Casale, something that has been on my must-do list, on the way home, but they had closed early.) Our own little corner of the world here (Case Vecchie, Regaleali, Vallelunga), we are getting familiar with--I wouldn't presume to say we are getting to know it--but there is so much else out there, the parts that other tourists come to see when they come to Sicily. I like the idea of getting to know this one little place more than the thought of tramping around here and there, but I am still curious about these other places.

And we leave in a week. When will these other places be seen? Not sure. Maybe very soon, maybe not. But I think we are really looking forward to getting back to the States (I typed "home," but then deleted it--this idea of home is so up in the air right now). Looking forward to more variety in our diets, looking forward to grandparents, looking forward to museums, looking forward to reading new books to Elio and wearing something different than the same four outfits we've been wearing for the last two months. Tonight, I made a dinner that reminded us of how we usually cook, how we used to cook: a farro salad over thin slices of steamed butternut squash, a huge plate of roasted cauliflower. It felt good.

This afternoon, Elio and I played soccer in the courtyard with Salvatore, Paula and Michaele (Giovanna's son). Then we had a longish conversation that I thought was about Sundays and how everything is closed down, but that I realized later was actually about the start of daylight savings time (which started today here). Meanwhile, Guy spent a long time skyping with Tamara and Laula. Our two worlds, happening at once. An interesting juxtaposition.

Blog Entry #14: Palermo, Sicily, October 24-26: Guy

There seems to be a trend for both Kate and me. We intend to write about a trip or experience to keep things recorded, but we also write about the present moment of what is happening or of what we are feeling.

The rain is ever present. I like the rain, more than I would have ever imagined. A year in England, having weather come through quickly, rain, sun, clouds, more rain made me realize this. New Mexico, too, less rain of course but the weather moved through quickly and often.

My runs continue to be explorations. Snails, worms, really really big worms, slugs, frogs, lizards, random fruit fallen from trees. But mostly it is quiet. Just wind or the sound of water in ditches from rain runoff. And, the sound of me, feet and mud squishing together.

When it clears you can see the land, the colors, impossibly saturated, deep tones. My camera seems an imperfect tool. Maybe it is me. I can't capture the scene, the vastness, the colors, the patterns. Maybe I don't want too. I can't figure out what is the answer.

We went away this past weekend and somehow I was happy to be on the move again. It feels a bit much, sometimes, to be here amongst all this beauty and this deep complex culture. A culture of agriculture, of workers and landowners, of families, of etiquette's I feel incapable of comprehending right now.

We went to Palermo, a city not without all this strange complex Sicilian mores, but it is a city. Cities are places Kate and I feel comfortable in for all their own messiness and, yes, familiar contemporary culture too. We stayed north of the city on the sea at Anna Tasca Lanza's house in Mondello. We stayed in a tiny guest house that is adjacent to the main house. They have a couple who live in another guest house full time. Mario and Angela and their two kids. They take care of everything in Palermo the same way Giovanna and Pompao take care of everything here at Case Vecchie.

Arriving late, we ate dinner out and the next morning Mario escorted us to the bus and we ventured into Palermo for the day.

Rain, sun, clouds.

We walked a lot of the city, through labyrinth streets that were originally set up by the Arab community before the French, Spanish, Greeks and Italians had their way with the city and created grids here and there. Elio did a great job, walking most of the time when it was not raining. We saw small cars, lots of scooters, garbage piled high. We saw bombed buildings from WWII. Church after church, the best streets made with solid, gorgeous square-cut stone. We came across some fun markets, had some bad street food and then ventured into what is the best market area, but it was closed for the rest of the day, (it was Sunday) save a small restaurant. We were hungry, so we sat down. This should be the part of the story where we have a transcendent meal. Alas, no. This is the part of the story where we have an OK meal and move on.

This is the part of the story where we realize our story may not be about just food. Or the search for food.

Our story may be about living fully and simply. This is what, I think, we are doing. I just spent an hour looking at a friend's website. She is doing art that is taking her to the Arctic and Antarctica. We don't have to end up in Antarctica or Sicily to focus on the place, the people, the landscape. I think it is simply the impetus to go out of the front door and open your heart and move forward that makes up a life.

Kate and I and Elio did this in Brooklyn, I hope we continue to do this wherever we are.

I hope this does not sound preachy. It is more for me, for me to remind myself that this is what is important. The lessons learned and reinforced here are about experiencing the day with Elio. Seeing the land and not trying to record it. Cooking simply. Connecting food to land, egg to chicken. Taking a moment or many moments to sit and talk. Saying hello. Acknowledging people. Being present. These are all hard to do.

How do we translate this experience to everyday life in a busy place where money tends to guide you around and towards ends that may not be important to you. Not sure.

I made a cup of coffee for Salvatore today. He came into our little house, sat and drank and had a cookie. (Cookies we made with walnuts from the walnut tree in the garden.) This is one things I know Kate and I are missing, sitting with friends and sharing food. We would hope to do more of it if we come back here to live for a few more months, but I know we miss it with our community back home. That is the place (at the table), I think, that Kate and I have continually been able to approach these lessons.


Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray. Let the beauty you seek be what you do. --Rumi