November 5, 2010
I savor the morning. A church blushes. A fountain plashes. A lonely piazza exhales the aroma of fresh-baked brioche.
Carmelo makes the world’s best coffee, a magic brew, strong enough—for 30 minutes at least—to make the world pink with possibility.
If you’re planning a trip to Southeast Sicily, why not start your day in Ragusa Ibla with Carmelo (at the Donnafugata Bar on Piazza Pola)?
What to do after the bar? See my suggestions for “A Golden Day in Ragusa Ibla” on Susan Van Allen’s site. She also shares some good tourist tips for Siracusa and Catania.
Happy touring! If you’ve been to these towns, please tell us what’s top on your list. Thanks for reading!
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Susan Van Allen is the author of the wonderful 100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go.
September 21, 2010
Spotted in a Sicilian antique store: Baroque armoire of honeyed rosewood. Curlicues. Cornices. Roomy shelves. Way out of my range.
I keep going back. Just looking, I say, petting the piece. The price drops. But still…
“Bellissimo,” rasps the bleached antiquaria, pulling on a cigarette like it’s oxygen itself. ”One of a kind. From the villa of a barone.”
I imagine it in its former life, surrounded by Chinese porcelain, bibelots on the mantle, gilt-framed mirrors, Persian carpets, embroideries heavy with tassels. I fork over a wad of euro-cash, and she stubs out her cigarette and says two delivery guys will be on the job posthaste. And won’t it be absolutely gorgeous in my salone.
I don’t have the heart to admit it’s going in my bagno, bathroom, just steps from a toilet.
My buzzer goes off and two rosewood-laden guys heave into the house. My joy sinks a notch when I see her, the antique dealer, imperiously bringing up the rear.
I point toward the bathroom. When she sees how I’m violating Sicilian protocol, she exhales a puff of black smoke, utters a curse, and waves her cigarette around.
Later, I wipe out the centuries of baronial grime, fill it with my plebian doodads, and sweep up her long trail of ash.
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For all of you who love Stromboli, or the Aeolian Islands, or Sicily, or Italy–would you help save a gorgeous (earthquake-damaged) church on Stomboli by signing a petition? It’s the project of one of Baroque Sicily’s readers, Beatrice Ughi. Signatures can only be collected until the end September. The link is in Italian, but it’s simple: go to the 3 long, thin boxes at the bottom and put in your name, email address, and the verification code. Mille grazie!
http://iluoghidelcuore.it/san_bartolomeo-stromboli-isole_eolie
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September 17, 2010
“Can I take your picture?” I ask the phalanx of guys warming themselves in the sun.
“Sure,” says the baby-faced man in the foreground. “But hurry up. We’re all on our way to the cemetery.”
That’s Sicilians for you. Curious dark humor.
History’s to blame. Tyranny. Plague. War. Famine. Earthquake. Poverty. Excellent cadavers. Having survived all that, you’d be telling black jokes, too.
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For some more black Sicilian humor, read Camilleri (if you like mysteries), or Pirandello’s “The Oil Jar and Other Stories” (see my review here), or see the wonderful (long) Taviani Brothers’ film Kaos (Chaos), based on four of Pirandello’s short stories. The village scenes in Kaos were filmed in my town!
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August 19, 2010
I’m furnishing my home with trash.
The orange trash guys drop by on a daily basis. One day they’ll cart away secco, dry stuff. The next day it’s umido, wet stuff. Another day it might be plastica or carta or lattine. I still can’t figure out what the last thing is. To make matters worse, each kind of rubbish must be tightly wound up in a different-hued bag: lava-black for secco, pistachio-green for umido, and so on. I don’t expect to ever really catch on to a system that’s as complicated, in its own way, as Sicilian codes of honor.
But all that’s beside the point. What matters is not the debris they haul away from the house, but what they bring in. Last week one of them, eyes ablaze, said, “I hear you like old stuff, Signora.”
“You heard right, Signore.”
“Well, I have a piece of an old Sicilian cart. Do you want it?”
I took it, of course, along with his picture in the too-bright sun.
Then the next day along comes this: a rusted grinder, still smelling seductively of caffè.
So we’re in business, me and the garbage guys. Will the house soon look like a moldering antiques bazaar?
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July 15, 2010
A working kitchen has finally emerged from the rubble like a phoenix rising. After two nail-biting years. No longer do I boil up boxed soup on a hot plate, despair, mix paint around with a carrot stick, despair, write on a plaster-encrusted sawhorse lit by a bare bulb. I have a real table, lights, a working stovetop. Not just any stovetop, amici, but a Renzo Piano one. (Renzo Piano is the Italian architect who designed the Pompidou Center, the new wing of the Chicago Art Institute, etc.) The stovetop is a piece of impeccable Italian design, though tricky to light and hard to clean (makes perfect sense as form usually trumps function in Italy).
Flies buzz in tight circles. The Iblean light beats in every morning, shining off the mirror-like floor.
The centerpiece of the kitchen is the cathedral dome out the window, and the soundtrack to my life are the bells, scaring me out of bed at 7am, marking the passing of each quarter hour, ringing for the dead, for weddings, for evening vespers, for morning mass, and for festa—four crazy-making days straight.
I love my Sicilian kitchen, and I’m grateful for each day I spend there. (What are you grateful for? Come on, tell us.)
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My Tourist Tips for Southeast Sicily
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