Towns and cities in the south of Italy can be pretty scruffy. Years of deferred maintenance have started to take a serious toll on the buildings and infrastructure. The poster child for this is Palermo. It is a city with thousands of years of history at the confluence between the cultures of the East, the West and Africa.At various times it was ruled by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Normans, the Swabians, the Aragonese, and the Bourbons. (I bet the school kids don’t like their history classes very much - who could remember all that?) But all these influences are evident in some of the superb churches and palaces of the city. The sheer variety is astonishing.
And it is this that makes Palermo one of our favorite places in the south - along with the bustling vibrance of the town, its narrow alleyways and open-air street markets and restaurants whose dishes clearly show the vast range of culinary influences that their invaders/rulers brought with them.
Couscous is common here; we eat at a restaurant called Garaffa which is a word derived from the Arabic “carafe”; the most popular street food here is arancini (a rice ball that can be stuffed with various different fillings) which were apparently conceived in the 10th century when Sicily was under Arab rule.
Arancini are, I think, the perfect representation of what I like about Palermo. They are slightly scruffy and nondescript on the surface but then when you dig down under the surface you find all sorts of delights.
We’re here at the weekend and the weather is steamily hot with thunderstorms in the afternoons. We are having lunch near Palermo cathedral when one downpour occurs. We anticipated this and chose a table inside but the outside diners were soon pouring into the restaurant slightly damp and looking for dry places to eat. Everyone gets closer together and groups start talking to each other (even more so than normal). We strike up a conversation with a young Swedish couple with their nine month-old baby. It’s their first vacation with her and it’s been a shock. Apparently they used to spend time at the beach, go to bars etc. - now they don’t and they don’t look entirely comfortable with the change. Hopefully everyone will grow into their new roles .
Just your average Palermo parish church ...
Sunday is not a day to go visiting churches - they tend to be busy doing their real work. But we managed to sneak into one of the most astonishing - Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio. This church dates back to at least 1143 and is a superb blend of styles with lavish decoration inside. But today it is, as I said, doing its real work and there is a christening going on. Other tourists are shoo-ed out of the little cathedral but, for some reason, the lady who is clearing the church of tourists tells us we should sit down closer to the altar. The church is closed to the public and we are privileged to watch a very personal service.
There are about five or so babies being baptized today and the service is multi-phased. Tis being a family occasion and in Italy you cannot call the proceedings “solemn”. They involve laughter, the taking of many photographs and an overall buzz of happy conversation. The babies are doing fine as they are being anointed with oil and the like. However, the last phase involves at least partial immersion in the water in the font (which was filled from a blue plastic bucket). For this they have to be naked and they get held up like this in front of the congregation.
The babies are not happy.
You can see their thought process - “I didn’t sign up for this part. You told me it was going to be a big party that was going to be all about me. I got new clothes and everything. And I'm going to get presents. But you didn’t tell me about this. And there will be photographs!! You’d better not bring them out for my boyfriend or girlfriend in twenty years time. There should be laws against this. I am not happy”.
Fuzzy but you get a good sense of the occasion
But everyone survives the assault on their dignity and it all ends in happiness (as family occasions here, it seems, inevitably must).
We head onwards to the north-west of Sicily and round the cape - Capo San Vito This is a very striking coastline with mountains dropping straight into the seas. Like all of Sicily it has a fascinating and varied past The town and the little island of the same name, Isola dei Femme, was the home of the parents of the baseball player Joe DiMaggio. Not so much “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?” but more like “Where did you come from?”
Mountains and towns here have names and histories that date back to the time of the Saracen invasions in the 9th and 10th centuries.
Our last stop before heading off to Sardinia is the town of Trapani. We’ve not been here before and it’s a bit of a surprise. Much larger than we expected and it seems to be thriving as a base for tourism to the neighboring Egadi islands. It is also the home of the Museum of Salt.
I know that most of you will be saying “Why does salt need a museum?” or “Whoever heard of such a thing?” But, actually, there are a number of salt museums dotted around the globe and pay heed to the importance of salt in preserving the food stocks through leaner times. But what vault my attention was that the salt from here is called Nubian salt and the salt pans are in a location just south of Trapani also called Nubia. But the “real” Nubia is in Egypt on the Nile. I wonder if they’re connected somehow.
Also around the coast here you can see windmills which were introduced in medieval times. Strictly speaking they’re not “mills” but are used to pump water from the sea into the lagoons where the sun dries the water out and leaves salt behind.
And, apart from salt, Trapani gives us some lessons in just how the Mediterranean diet (and in this case the Sicilian diet) works.
First of all, the fish. it’s caught by boats like these……
Note the superyacht in the background. Apparently money can't buy you a good parking space
And guys like these …….
Who deliver it to a fish market like this less than 50 yards from the quay.
Where another guy cuts the swordfish steaks and sells them to us who walk them back to our boat again less than 50 yards away. And we have dinner.
Apart from the swordfish, note the couscous, Sicilian orange sauce and Sicilian lemon
Fresh, additive free and, of course, delicious.
Then there’s the wine.
If you buy it in a restaurant - 20 Euros.
Enjoyable, as you can see
And, if you by it from the vineyard store across the street, it costs 8 euros for the same bottle. But if you buy it direct from the barrel i in the same store it costs 2.75 euros a liter. How to cut out service, marketing and distribution and get really affordable. great wine.
Needless to say, we stock up with fresh provisions and wine for our trip to Sardinia.