On to Syracuse

I set my alarm for 9:30 am so that I could make it to breakfast on time; I vowed not to miss a single meal in Sicily.  I had had eight hours sleep and felt pretty good.  C.C. had already woken up and was reading in bed, so the two of us crept out and had a nice time.  I asked the staff if we could get a late check out—our place in Syracuse would not be ready until early evening, and we knew that most everything would be closed on New Year’s Day.  Also, a slow, steady rain had begun the night before and didn’t seem anywhere close to relenting.  Given that the morning breakfast crew had been partying pretty hard when we had left at 1 am the night before, I don’t think they were in any rush to clean our room.  They told us to stay as late as we wanted.

The closest town to Santa Venerina, where we have stayed for the past two nights, is Milo.  We had to check it out.  It had started to drizzle by the time we got there, so we suited Milo up in his raingear and took a shot of him by the Welcome to Milo sign.  Milo and C.C. have always had these imaginary places they talk about called C.C. Town and Milo Town.  Every now and then they’ll tell us how you say this or that in C.C. Town.  Milo also has a very tiny imaginary person named Sudsun who lives in his ear.  As we approached the town of Milo, he announced, “There’s Sudsun’s house!” and pointed at a large villa on our left.  Apparently, Sudsun hopped out of Milo’s ear and into his house when we passed it, and got back in when we left.

We had made a reservation for dinner at a restaurant in Syracuse, but felt the need for a little lunch before we hit the road.  At this point, the rain was coming down in sheets.  I tried four restaurants, and all were packed with big families eating many-course, prix fixe meals that we discovered on the norm on New Year’s Day in that part of Sicily.  The kids really wanted pizza, but we were told that no one would be making pizza until at least 7 pm.  I guess it’s not really lunch fare in Sicily.

Finally, we found a place in Milo, the Nuovo Braciere, where we could order a la carte.  I had the house pasta—Caserecce alla Boscaiola—fat little tubes with a sauce of porcini mushrooms, parsely, cherry tomatoes and a touch of cream.  Perfectly cooked and delicious.

Fortunately, both kids conked out in the car, and we arrived at our rented apartment at about 6:30 pm.  The housekeeper, Mrs. Mañano (we called her Mrs. Tomorrow) met us outside the place with a man—her husband? her father?  And there was much discussion about where to park the car.  At one point, he made Alec get out and started parking it himself. 

The apartment is in a centuries-old building.  You open the street door and find yourself in a small courtyard that smells vaguely of cat urine. And, yes, the street outside is full of cats.  Its another one of those places where people leave plates of cat food out, which I don’t quite understand.  Maybe it keeps the mice away.  We climbed the stone stairs up and up.  Mrs. Mañano opened one big wooden door, which led to a small hallway with several other doors opening on to it.  One of these was hours.  The apartment is large, light, clean and simple.  Not the lap of luxury, but very well located and quite comfortable.  We unpacked, put a load of laundry into the washer, and then set out for dinner.

We chose Sicilia in Tavola because people raved about the homemade pastas and cannoli.  It’s one of those places where every spare inch is used.  A tiny antipasto buffet held grilled zucchini, radicchio and eggplant.  There were tiny eggplant rollatini and sundried tomatoes and olives.  I ordered hand-rolled spaghetti with tiny clams and shrimp, and a sauce that featured chopped pistachios, which are also grown locally.  I find I am having a hard time coming up with enough words that mean “delicious.”  It was super tasty.  Alec had a zuppe di pesce with clams, shrimp, mussels, squid.  And we both had cannolis for dessert.  The waitress took the shells out of a Tupperware container, filled them with homemade ricotta filling, dipped both ends in finely crushed pistachios, and dusted them with powdered sugar.  Strangely, Sicilia in Tavola has no coffee or tea.  Perhaps there’s no room for the machine.

We walked home through the brightly lit Piazza del Duomo, with its amazing buildings, and the kids enjoyed running around with no cars.  Deep in conversation about some fantasy game they were playing, they held hands the whole way back to our apartment.