A Giarratana

Today we're visiting friends of the family who live in the hilltop town of Giarratana.

We leave Ispica to drive through dry-walled countryside dotted with ancient olive trees. Some of the dry stone walls have been built or restored recently; they're immaculately neat and white. This stone yellows with age so it's easy to identify the pristine new walls. The countryside is flat here, with straight roads and low vegetation. There are houses here and there; some new-looking, others old and tumbledown. Every so often we pass a very grand old house with an imposing front gate.

Soon we're at the outskirts of Modica; a stretch of modern shops and outlet stores. We stop at Bar Fucsia (meaning fuchsia, but awkwardly pronounced FOOK-sya). As well as being a bar (which, here, is closer to a coffee shop than the British concept of a bar) Fucsia is a pasticceria, selling sweets, pastries, cakes and biscuits. We intended to take some cakes or biscuits to the friends we're visiting, but when we enter we see a huge fridge of semifreddo. Literally "half cold", semifreddo is a desert layered with sponge cake and creamy and luxurious Italian "gelato" (which is so good that we do it a disservice to translate it merely as "ice cream"). The semifreddo catches our attention and we take half a block (about 800 grams - roughly a pound and three quarters - for just €7.50!)

From Modica, we head uphill. The terrain starts to undulate, roads become winding and the dry stone walls more numerous but older. The vegetation is taller here, giving the countryside a wilder, more unkempt look. But dry stone walls tame the hillsides into terraces and this area is brimming with olive trees.

The higher up the mountain we go, the more trees there are, including pine and other evergreens. This feels a world away from the arid coastal areas we've stayed in this week.

As we enter Giarratana, we are greeted by the Chiesa Madre (Church of The Mother) rising above the houses. The streets feel narrow because they're lined with houses, but there's plenty of life here, despite the chill in the air. It was quite warm and very humid down by the coast, even though it's October, but Giarratana is about 500m (1,700 feet) above sea level and it's at least 10℃ cooler at the moment.

Giarratana is a small town; just around 3,000 inhabitants, but at least twice a year the town swells as the whole province comes to partake in one of the regular events here, both the major events being in August.

First is the Sagra della Cipolla (festival of onions). Giarratana is famous for giant, flat, sweet onions. They can easily reach 30cm or 40cm (12 to 16 inches) in diameter.

Then, on 24th August is the festival of the patron saint of the town - San Bartolo (Saint Bartholomew) - when a huge charity auction is held in the town square. It happens that 24th August is my birthday. People here are often named after the saint on whose festival day they are born, so Simona sometimes jokes that I would be Bartolina had I been born in Sicily. I haven't been here on my birthday, yet, but one year I hope to come to the Festa di San Bartolo.

Journeying to Messina

We are staying in Ispica, in the province of Ragusa, on the south-eastern point of Sicily. Simona's uncle currently lives in Messina town (which is the name of both the town and the province), so we went for a visit.

 

The drive is only a couple of hours, but the views are incredible. Not least because the central reservations of the motorway are brimming with beautiful but toxic Oleander. The road is inland from Ispica to Avola and then follows the coast past Siracusa, Catania and Taormina to Messina.

 

Mount Etna, brooding and perpetually shrouded in a ring of cloud at her summit, hangs over Catania. Etna is an active volcano and there are times when Catania airport, the main airport for the east of Sicily, is closed because Etna is grumpily spewing smoke, ash and lava.

 

After Catania, the landscape becomes noticeably more rugged. Peaks and foothills hide small towns nestled into the protective embrace of the mountain. Sometimes the first sign you'll see of a town will be its cemetery because they're usually outside the walls of the town.

 

Taormina clings to the side of a mountain, overlooking the beautiful, clear waters of a sheltered bay. Little wonder tourists flock to the area!

 

Shortly after Taormina, the indistinct, hazy outline of the mainland appears on the horizon: Calabria - the toe of Italy's boot! And before we know it, traffic is getting heavier because we're entering Messina.

 

The town is not exactly the jewel in Sicily's crown. There is some beauty here, but Messina seems run down and dirty. It is a port and as with any port there is a lot of through traffic.

 

In 1908, there was an earthquake which devastated the town. Temporary housing was quickly erected and after a few years, funds (and permission) were found to begin rebuilding. The work had barely started when the first world war broke out, halting progress. In the 1920s work continued and so much of the architecture here is in the Liberty style (known elsewhere in the world as Art Nouveau).

 

 

Progress ground to a halt again with the Second World War and restarted in the 1950s. Over a hundred years since the quake however, that temporary housing is still in use; the buildings have been modernised a little and renovated here and there, but they're still the same structures and people live there.

 

The beauty of the town is the panoramic walk, high up by the old city walls, looking out to the harbour, the strait and Calabria beyond.

 

 

We descended the hillside through the grounds of the Montalto Church and headed towards Piazza del Duomo (the Cathedral) The rebuilt clocktower was inaugurated in 1933 with works built by the Ungerer company of Strasbourg and at midday every day it gives a quirky display steeped in the tradition and folklore of the area.

 

 

Two statues - Diana and Clarenza, historical heroines of the city - draw attention by tolling the bells. Then a lion (the symbol of Messina) waves a flag, waggles his tail and throws back his head to emit three fearsome roars. Next up is a somewhat arthritic display from a rooster, which struggles to flap its wings before crowing. As Schubert's Ave Maria plays, a model of Montalto Church rises from what I assumed to be the rubble of the 1908 earthquake, Christ raises his arms to bless the crowd and finally there's a depiction of the legend of the letter sent to the residents of Messina from the Virgin Mary. It scores highly on entertainment value plus, it's all visible for free!

  

Arriviamo in Comiso!

Comiso airport, in the province of Ragusa, Sicily, was a US-controlled NATO airbase until about 20 years ago. Since then, the Sicilian people have eagerly been awaiting its reincarnation as a civilian airport.

We chose to fly to Comiso for a few reasons (novelty, I'll admit, was probably one), but primarily because Ryanair were running flights there from Stanstead for a comparatively reasonable £85pp or there abouts. That's reasonable when compared to BA's Gatwick-Catania fare which has been steadily increasing recently (we considered ourselves lucky, at Easter to find flights on that route for 'only' £225pp).

As we disembarked, crowds of people were pressed up to the windows of the arrivals hall observation deck, eager to catch a glimpse of their loved ones descending from the plane. Once we had cleared passport control and visited the baggage carousel we headed out to the arrivals hall to an excitable crowd. Ours was the only plane arriving and it wasn't even full; the were far too many people here! The feeling of this being an event was almost tangible. But of course, the first time you go to a newly opened airport IS an event. Rather than having to search for someone willing to drive out to the airport to meet family members returning from their journey to London, everyone wanted to come along for the trip! The result was that that there were probably three or four times the number of people waiting as passengers on the flight.

Aeroporto Civile di Comiso is so new you can practically still smell the paint. It doesn't even seem to have a 'bar' (coffee shop) yet, however if you arrive hungry, the little panineria outside will be a welcome sight.