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Monday, January 3, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
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.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
A Sicilian New Year
We woke refreshed and hungry. The area around our apartment—which we had not been able to see the night before—was beautiful and lush, all rolling hills and vineyards, with Mount Etna looming between the clouds in the distance. Mount Etna is the highest and most active volcano in Europe. After some breakfast, we talked with some fellow guests and the proprietor about how best to see the volcano. I had read that if you go with a guide, you can see lava flows, but the proprietor told us there had not been any eruptions lately.
Instead, we drove up, up, up for about a half hour, arriving at the Rifugio Sapienza, where there are several snack bars and souvenir shops, and a gondola you can take from there, at 1900 meters to 2500 meters. It was significantly colder, and we all bundled up with all of the layers we had, plus hats and gloves. We plunked down 83 euros and hopped aboard a gondola. It was only then that I realized I might not be so happy in a small box hanging from a wire cable up a mountain. I’m not a fan of heights, but I often get myself in situations and only realize that I should have considered my options more carefully once my breath is coming fast and shallow. Well, there was no getting off at that point, so I tried to banish all thoughts of getting stuck, of the cable snapping, of the wind whipping our rickety box around.
Once we got off, I breathed a sigh of relief and took in the beauty. Patches of snow dotted the ground and the volcanic gravel crunched under our feet. We climbed up a fair bit more, but were unprepared for a real hike. The air felt thin in our lungs, and we got out of breath quickly. We had traveled above the clouds, and it felt like we were on another planet altogether. The kids made snowballs and created rockslides on the hills. We walked far enough to work up a nice appetite for lunch, and then took the gondola back down. The ride back down seemed much faster.
Once again, the restaurant we had picked out for lunch was closed, so we went to Orchidea Pizzeria. Again, reviewers raved about the pizza baked in a wood-fired oven. Orchidea was open, but no pizza. Our waiter recommended the canneloni, which was not on the menu, so we figured we should try it. We ordered one plate to split but got two, which was just as well because it was delicious. I had a mushroom soup, made with several kinds of meaty mushrooms the proprietor picked himself on Mount Etna. It came with a bowl of freshly made croutons, about 2 inches square, and was a meal on its own. I was so full when we finished that I worried we had made a tactical error—we had reservations to eat New Year’s Eve dinner at the agriturismo. But that wasn’t until 9 o’clock, so I figured we’d have room by then.
I was supposed to go taste the agriturismo’s wine at 6 o’clock, but fell asleep under the down comforter and then had a long, hot bath instead. When it was time to go down to dinner, I still felt full. I should not have worried—dinner was, in Alec’s words “aggressively bad.” When we arrived at the dining room, it was already packed, and the wait staff promptly set plates of appetizers in front of us. Given that it seemed we had arrived late, we thought perhaps the first course had suffered from sitting around waiting for us. But no, the subsequent courses—and there were several—were no better. We were grateful for the lunch we had eaten earlier, but distressed to find such a poor meal at the agriturismo.
Fortunately, the atmosphere helped make up for it. Most of the tables held parties of 12, 18, 20 people—families with babies, children the ages of our kids, a few grandparents sprinkled in here and there. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood. They tucked into their food, the wine flowed, and a pianist played American standards like “Imagine,” “New York New York,” and “Piano Man.”
Just before midnight the waiters came through to pass out sparklers, and everyone counted down and started singing. Outside we could see all kinds of fireworks being set off in the towns below. Alec and C.C. stepped outside for a better view, but Milo and I got swept up in a conga line before we could join them. A patio off of the dining room had been tented and set up as a dance floor, and a DJ started blasting the dance music—“Billie Jean,” “YMCA,” “Celebrate.” The place was hopping. Pretty soon most of the wait staff were dancing with the guests. After plenty of dancing, the kids started to wilt, and we headed back up the hill to our room. So far, 2011 is pretty good.
Girona, to Trapani, to Segesta, to Santa Venerina
The day started badly. We set the alarm for 6 so that we could pull our things together and get to the airport on time. I popped into the shower before anyone else woke up and sang a little tune—the thought that I would be eating lunch in Italy made me giddy. But then I emerged from the bathroom, and the kids were beastly, and so I quickly turned into Mean Mom. We took not one but TWO wrong turns getting to the parking place near the airport, and suddenly we were way behind schedule. My father always insisted on getting to the airport hours before a flight. Once, when a snowstorm was forecast for the day of my sister Jody’s flight, he wanted to take her there the night before. I am not quite that bad, but I hate rushing to the airport. I can get irrationally tense even when I have plenty of time. So this situation, especially with two small and grumpy children, was not so good for me. The check-in guy assured us that we’d make the flight, and we all began to breathe a little easier. Then, as we were about to walk across the tarmac to board our plane, we realized that C.C. did not have her rolling suitcase, so Alec ran back and retraced our steps, locating it in the place we had loaded up on snacks and drinks, so as to avoid Ryan Air’s price gouging.
We landed at 11 am, and I had spent an hour the night before researching places for us to eat lunch. My technique is to look on Chowhound, Trip Advisor, and the Slow Food website, trying to find a trifecta. Italy is home to many slow food restaurants. The movement was started in Italy by a man named Carlo Petrini, who wanted to promote local food prepared with care—the antithesis of fast food. Slow food restaurants are certified by the slow food organization, and have a snail sticker in their window right next to the stickers showing which credit cards they take.
Calvino’s Pizzeria, in Trapani, is not a certified slow food restaurant, but the reviews on both Trip Advisor and Chowhound were so off the charts that I decided we had to head straight there from the airport. Reading the descriptions of the hot pies slathered with fresh sauce, local olive oil, and mozzarella made my mouth water.
Trapani is a port city, famous for its salt and sardine industries, which go way, way back. Excavations have uncovered ancient salt works in Trapani, where the Sicilians of yore boiled seawater from nearby marshes. It sticks out of the rest of the northwestern part of the island like a tiny finger pointing into the Mediterannean.
We found Calvino’s easily, and a parking spot as well. From a block away, we could see that the doors were open, and we quickened our steps. The doors were open, but when we walked in, the place was empty, which seemed odd given what I’d read the night before about the chaotic atmosphere, the rabbit warren of small rooms bursting with diners. “Hello?” I called out. I peeked into the kitchen window and saw the back of an Italian grandmother-type retreating into its nether regions. A young man came out. “Pizza?” we asked hopefully? “Si,” he replied. And then he held up seven fingers. “Sette?” I asked. “Sette o’clock? Noche?” I asked. “Si, si,” he said. “Oh, no,” I said. I am sure that if you snapped a photo of my face at that moment, you could have put it right next to the word “crestfallen” in the dictionary.
“Where should we eat now?” Alec asked. The pizza man seemed to understand the question, and told us to go around the corner, to the Osteria la Bettolaccia. So we walked back out into the bright sunshine. When I have my heart set on something specific to eat, I have a very hard time recovering. Fortunately, I had a back up plan. I needed more than just the pizza guy’s recommendation. I looked in the book I had taken notes in and saw that the other place I had written down in case something went wrong with Calvino’s was… Osteria la Bertolaccia—the same place! My spirits lifted immediately. We walked the two blocks to the restaurant, only to find the door locked. The sign outside said they opened at noon. It was 12:40. I remembered that, when we had been in Barcelona a year ago, many restaurants closed altogether between Christmas and three kings day. Maybe we would encounter the same thing in Sicily.
Alec walked to the kitchen door and knocked, which seemed like a silly thing to do. But that’s how desperate we were. Sure enough, someone answered! “Chiuso?” he asked. “Yes, the door is closed but the restaurant is open!” answered our new friend. He went around and unlocked the door from the inside. It seemed odd to me, but I was so grateful and happy to find the osteria open that I chose not to question it.
The Osteria la Bertolaccia is slow food certified. It is a homey little restaurant with beamed ceilings, terracotta floors, and about eight simple tables. Bad eighties rock plays a little too loudly from the speakers, somewhat incongruously. We ordered pasta for the kids and shared a plate of caponata, cheeses, olives and sun dried tomatoes.
Couscous is one of the typical dishes of Trapani; because of the promixity of Sicily to Morocco, there are Moorish influences in the uses of spices and nuts, the way fruits and vegetables are deployed in a dish. In Morocco, the couscous would have been served with meat and potatoes, our server told us, but here in Trapani it is served with fish. Alec ordered it (see below), while I ordered Busiati alla Norma, another typical Sicilian dish. Busiata is the type of pasta; it is a long, tight corkscrew, about the width of tagliatelle and looks like it was made by wrapping the tagliatelle around a thin rod, thinner than a straw but thicker than a skewer. The sauce is made with basil, tomatoes, pecorino, garlic, The pasta and sauce intermingle with cubes of fried eggplant—not too many, but enough to give the dish some depth and bite. When the waiter put my plate on the table in front of me, I leaned down and breathed deeply. The aroma alone was enough to make me feel that I had arrived. I ate the pasta with a glass of inky nero d’avola. The waiter brought the kids paper to draw on once we depleted our own stash. We had Sicilian ricotta cake and strong coffee for dessert. Our first meal in Sicily, and the Osteria la Bertolacci had thrown down the gauntlet for the rest of our meals.
We had reservations to stay at an agriturismo in Santa Venerina for the next two nights, and we had a four hour drive ahead of us. We planned one stop, early in the drive, at some ruins in Segesta—supposedly the best preserved temple on an island full of ruins. It seemed worth the slight detour. The kids clowned around in the ancient theatre, and ran around the temple counting its columns. The ruins took longer to see than we had anticipated—at this point we would be getting in at about 8:30. Although I was certain I had reserved dinner at the agriturismo, when Alec called to tell them what time we would be in, they told us the restaurant was not open for dinner. So I began searching on the iPad for somewhere to eat in Giarre, which was near Santa Venerina. I found a place that looked terrific and plugged the address into Dolores. When we arrived, the sign on the door informed us that the restaurant was closed on Thursdays. Who ever heard of a restaurant closing on Thursdays? Sundays, Mondays, these days I can understand. But Thursday? I did not have a Plan B this time, but did a bit more research on the fly and came up with another place to try. At this point, we were all getting tired and, although our lunch had been very filling, the kids needed to eat.
We drove to the next place, which had all kinds of lights outside, walked up the front steps, and found the door locked. Again. Alec started knocking, figuring that it had worked at lunch time. And sure enough, the door was opened by a young man in a Santa hat. What’s with all of these restaurants keeping their front doors locked? The restaurant was loaded with gimmicks—touch screen menus that didn’t quite work embedded in the tables, small paper tablets to plop in hot water that transformed into napkins. The kids were happy with their mediocre pizza, and we shared a just okay pasta dish and a very good arugula and tomato salad. It was no Osteria la Bertolacci.
By the time we arrived at the agriturismo Murgo, after driving up and down the wrong Via Zafferana several times and finally knocking on some doors, we were so tired we could hardly see straight. I gave an exhausted thank you for the down comforters on our bed, shuttered the windows, and we all fell into a deep sleep.
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