Sicily Day Two: Erice

For another night, I got a mere four hours of sleep, but this had more to do with staying out till past 2AM with a few friends.  Regardless, I woke up out of habit by 7:00, and I headed down to breakfast on the early side yet again.

We met as a class at 9:00 and headed off to the far northwest corner of the island to the town of Erice (Eh-rhee-chay,) a notable lookout perched some 2600 feet above the sea on a small plateau.  It provided the Carthaginians with great advance knowledge of Roman invasions during the first Punic war, as they could see any ships coming from a great distance away.

Development on the outskirts of Palermo

A 14th century watchtower sits on an island just off the north coast

Looking out towards the northwest coast of the island

 Traveling through the countryside

 

Beginning to ascend the hill to Erice

Facing northeast as we head up the switchbacks

The fog-infested woods outside the town
 

The fog-infested town

The city itself reminded me a good bit of Perugia, with it's small hillside location and nearly all stone buildings.  The bus ride up this great plateau was nerve-wracking to some as we swung around switchback after switchback in our coach bus. Approaching the top, we entered the clouds, and the fog allowed for maybe ten feet of visibility at any given time.  The fog-infested pines would have made an ideal backdrop for a horror film.  When we finally reached the top, a stray cat came wandering out of the fog, which many thought of as some sort of bad omen.

We first went to view the city's main church, with a finely chiseled roof that was simply stunning.  At this point, the class split up, and I walked with the tour guide and four other students to the amazing 12th century castle at the other end of town.  Seeing this gorgeous stone structure shrouded in wisps of fog looked like something straight out of a video game.  (All that was needed was a weapon and a boss to defeat.)

The Duomo of Erice (La Chiesa Matrice)

The bell tower adjacent to the church

Inside La Chiesa Matrice

Outside La Chiesa Matrice

The park surrounding the Pepoli and Venus castles.

Il Castello Pepoli

Il Castello Di Venere

Fellow classmates walking into the clouds

In front of Il Castello Di Venere

That's a long way down

A road on the backside of the town, with a steep drop down the plateau immediately behind me.

A pedestrian street

Being up in the clouds raised a lot of interesting thoughts for my classmates and myself.  First of all, the speed at which the clouds moved up close seemed significantly faster than they appear on the ground.  I felt at times like I was watching time-lapse photography before my eyes.  Secondly, it seemed possible that the rain and weather patterns of the town might be completely different than those below cloud-level.  We were at times afforded remarkable views of land above and below the thick layers of clouds.  Thirdly, we speculated as to the effect of living in this environment.  Did kids draw pictures with birds and sky below them, and would it feel odd to then leave the city and live at sea level after a life on the plateau?

Walking back through the town, I stopped in with a few fellow students at a liquor shop to check out some of the local products.  Sicily is a much better producer of sweet wines, such as Zbibbo and Marsala, than dry wines.  The young woman in the shop was so gracious to us, giving samples of nearly everything we asked about and many we didn't.  Even after I'd made my purchases, she continued to give my friends and I tastes of different liquors and hors d'oeuvres.  She gave us samples of one memorable local product called "crema di pistacchio," which was like a liquid pistacchio pate liqueur.

This woman knew some English but not a lot, and I got a chance to use my Italian to fill in the gaps in the conversation.  Similar to Jackie, she wore her affection for Sicily on her sleeve.  I found the people here to have a real pride for their island distinct from Italy (I guess that shouldn't be a big surprise to anybody who's seen The Godfather.)  Having been so generous, Pizeme, who was with me at the time, said, "Viva Italia," to which she defiantly responded, "Viva Sicilia."  Sicily and the south of Italy have had a tenuous relationship with the rest of the nation for as long as it has existed, but it was interesting to see this declared as forcefully as a Virginian might have in the antebellum south.

One interesting feature that I didn't notice in my first two hours in the city was the preponderance of giant radio and television towers.  It was obvious why they would be placed there high on the hill, but, shrouded in fog, they were concealed for much of our time up there.  At one point, in the span of about forty-five seconds, I looked straight into the fog, then saw a television tower, and then watched as it was made invisible yet again (seen below). 

This city had some real magic about it, and I'll treasure my experiences forever.  What a truly remarkable place.

Going back down the hill, we drove out to the coast to see the salt flats near the seaside.  Sea salt is one of the island's great exports, and the open reservoirs afforded some gorgeous views with white flamingos and other birds nestling atop the water.  Since receiving the itinerary, many of us, including the chaperones, had been speculating as to what the "salt museum" could be, and we got our answer in the form of an old mill.  We spent about twenty minutes in one dank room with Jackie as she demonstrated a few of the tools that were used through the years to manufacture salt.  Without context, I think it easily could have been confused for a medieval torture chamber.

Looking back up at the town, with Il Castello Di Venere sticking out in the clouds on the right.

Salt flats

They lay terracotta shingles over the mounds of salt

 A windmill at the salt museum

Later that night I had a nice time at the "drinkeria," where several Italians approached my friends and I.  I spent about fifteen minutes talking to two of them, relating in Italian in a way I hadn't experienced in some time.  My language skills, while still limited, definitely came back far better than I imagined.  The funny thing was, as my friends and I decided to leave, I bade goodbye to my Italian acquaintances with the traditional hug and touching of both cheeks.  The first man replied to this by saying, "what are you apart of the Mafia or something?"  Of course, I told him "no," but it was interesting to see his reaction to what I thought of as a sign of respect for local customs.

Sicily Day One: Monreale

1 / 14 / 11

I woke up by 3:30AM on the first morning in Italy.  I tried my best to fall back asleep, but after ninety minutes of lying awake in bed, I decided to get up and write in my journal until breakfast began around 7:00. 

I'd forgotten; breakfast in Italy is not the same as in America, as lunch is the big meal of the day here.  Breakfast is a small bite to eat—pastry and coffee—just to hold you over until lunch.

It wasn't until 9:00 that the whole class met in the lobby to leave for the day's activities.  We were off to the nearby town of Monreale (Royal Mount) where the Palermo province's famous cathedral stands. 

Cacti outside the parking lot in Monreale

Entering the town town of Monreale

The Monreale town center

I feel like I've seen enough of these Catholic churches in Europe to have them not stand out so much anymore.  They really are all so amazing, but our destination remained awe-inspiring.  The cathedral sat well up on the hillside to the south of Palermo, offering wonderful views of the city and it's valley, often referred to as "the conch" because it resembles a shell.  The church itself was laden with gold and silver plated tile mosaics representing the stories of genesis in comic-book style frames circling the nave.  The mosaics brought real recognition to this cathedral, which also featured interesting Arab—both Islamic and Sephardic—insignia lower on the walls, representing the island's diverse heritage of inhabitants.  Apparently the church was built after the Norman invasion of the 11th Century, and they realized the best way to profit off of the island was to encourage the cooperation of the existing residents and perpetuating the strong port, even if it meant compromising some of the Christian values espoused by the Normans and their Holy Roman Empire support. 

Of course the Jewish population was later wiped out when Spain had control during the inquisition.  Jackie, our tour guide, said that most people in Sicily with explicitly Christian last names were descendants of Jews who'd changed their names during the inquisition.

Inside the Monreale Cathedral
 

 

Here you can see the stories of Adam & Eve (top) and Esau & Jacob (below) in the mosaic scenes

Looking at the ceiling from behind the organ

More exciting than the inside of the cathedral was climbing to the top of the building  to see the view overlooking "the conch."

The roof of a chapel on the way up to the top of the cathedral

The cloister adjacent to the cathedral

The bell tower and chapel seen from a window in the passage up to the top of the cathedral

The basically two-way passage that can only fit people going one direction

Nearing the top

At the top!

Pizeme, one of my fellow classmates, walking just below the tower.

Looking out across "the conch" towards Palermo and the sea.

A fountain in the town center of Monreale outside the cathedral

A nice little park adjacent to the cathedral with some giant fig trees.  One of these giant fig trees in Palermo is the largest tree in Europe in terms of area.

Before returning to Italy, I contacted two of my former professors in Florence to see if they had any recommendations on things to see and do in the area of Palermo, and they both made a point of highlighting the Cathedral of Monreale.  It didn't take too long for me to figure out—based also on our class's itinerary which was nearly all outside of Palermo—that there wasn't a lot to see in that big city.  It is the modern urban hub of western Sicily, but the island's true treasures lay in the countryside.

With that said, we returned to Palermo to tour a small street market, a historic remnant of the Phoenician (Carthaginian-Arab) presence on the island.  Compared to the remarkable Boqueria in Barcelona or even Mercato Centrale in Florence, I felt a bit underwhelmed by the displays.  It wasn't the most photogenic place, but certain products like cauliflower looked so fresh and tasty.  The key difference between Sicilian market and the others I'd seen in Europe is the greater Arab influence in Sicily.  The Arabs were proponents of outdoor displays of their local products in the open air on pedestrian streets.  In other European cities, these markets tend to be sheltered in buildings.

A building at the entrance to the street market

There was lots of fresh fish on display, though nothing quite as exciting as the Monkfish of Barcelona.

Broccoli (which actually means cauliflower here.)

Fresh produce

In a restaurant adjacent to the market we had our lunch, which came out in a quick succession of courses.  The meal featured caponata, cornmeal and ricotta stuffed eggplants, a round hoop-like pasta with prosciutto and hard-boiled egg-white baked in tomato sauce, and finally a local ricotta-stuffed cake called cassata.

By this time I was starting to feel the effects of my minimal sleep, but it was off to the puppet museum, representing the island's long history of marionettes.  The medium was a predecessor to television, with serialized shows, which local residents would come back for each week.  The museum housed the largest collection of puppets in the world: more than 4000 in all.

 

At the puppet museum

Unfortunately we weren't able to see a show.  It seems the art form is now dead, and this is here for tourist season when they can do more demonstrations.

This was an advertisement for a puppet show, basically saying, "next week on..."

By this time, I first began to detect Jackie's penchant for telling the history of her homeland with a heavy dose of pride.  Underlying everything she says there appears to be this sentiment that Sicily has gotten a bad rap through the years, and she would like to change those perceptions one tour group at a time.  This is a position I often feel myself when talking about Philadelphia to those from elsewhere, but the way she communicates is a bit heavy-handed.  For better or worse, I feel like I'm getting a more biased and purposefully propagandized version of the facts relating to the history and accomplishments of the island and its people.

She would many times tell us about how, even though the Italian courts ruled in favor of Naples, all Sicilians know that they invented pizza first.  Similarly, she would discuss more pointedly how northern Italians are the more ignorant people with racial stereotypes for the south.  According to her, there is no outward racism or homophobia, even though she herself told us that if her gay friends were to come out publicly they would lose their jobs. 

One particularly interesting remark I found was that Sicilians refer to northerners as polenta eaters versus the south where people eat more (and obviously created) pasta.  With this in mind, she then told us that polenta is cornmeal, a simple grain, whereas pasta is seen as more of a delicacy.  I couldn't help but think that, wheat is just a grain too, but if anything, I would only come to appreciate these comments as an interesting view into the biased perspective on history she takes.

After the museum, I got to take a nice nap at the hotel, and I went out on the town again that evening with a group of about eight people in my class.  We ended up at a local Neapolitan-style pizzeria that was quite good.  I went for the Italian staple: quattro stagioni, featuring artichoke (carciofi) and prosciutto.  Life in Italy is looking pretty good!

Gates at the Palermo port

Back To Italy (The 32 Hour Day)

1 / 12, 13 / 11

Originally I was planning on taking the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) from Penn Station out to JFK. About five days ago though, one of my classmates emailed to see about splitting a cab with a few people from NYU. Having to be at JFK—an airport that the three of us who decided to ride together had little experience with—between 6:00 and 6:30PM, we decided to meet for a scheduled cab at 4:30. About a day later I thought about the potential for traffic around rush hour and the impending snowstorm, especially considering that Mayor Bloomberg notoriously mishandled the blizzard a few weeks back. I thought it best we move the cab up to 4:00.

I'm glad I bagged the LIRR idea because that got cancelled with the snow. Then, of course, after all our planning, it only took twenty minutes for the cab driver to get us to the airport. Our driver said it was the quickest he'd ever gotten to JFK from Manhattan. We weren't the only ones who coasted through traffic though. About three or four people were already waiting at the terminal, and by 6:00 the preponderance of the group was getting impatient waiting around for the last stragglers—who were actually arriving on time.

The benefit of being early was getting to finally interact with other members of the class who, for the most part, I'd only seen during our five classes spread across the last semester. If I had a complaint with the class, I think it would be that we had so few classes and for longer scheduled periods where we had little to no discussion amongst us. This was, after all, supposed to be a "seminar." As a consequence, I only got to chat with a handful of people in the class prior to the trip, and then only minimally. (Learning names has been difficult.) The time in the terminal—five hours before actually boarding the plane—worked as a great icebreaker in getting to know other people on the trip.

This was my first time flying Alitalia, of which I'd previously heard horror stories about lost luggage and bad service. It was definitely more cramped than the Swiss and Lufthansa flights I had last time I went to Italy. Legroom was minimal, and the Italian in front of me had their seat cocked back deep into my space for all but a few minutes bookending the flight. Fortunately I had an aisle seat and was able to stretch my legs in that direction. Of course, this led to one leg being relaxed and calm while the other was cramped and sore.

I wasn't able to sleep on the flight either. I've been staying up late in America. Some of this is because my shifts working at Moore Brothers Wine are in the evening, but I'd also been setting up my internal clock for Italy. By the time I would have gone to bed the night of the flight, it was already 10:00AM in Spain, where we saw the first daylight shining on the Basque hillsides.

I did try to go to sleep a few times, hoping to preempt the inevitable drowsiness I would get the next day or two. I asked for red wine both times the beverage cart came around, as a few glasses will usually make me a bit sleepy. Alas, it didn't work as planned, and considering this was the Italian airline, I was surprised at how putrid the wine was. One would think they'd like to represent their country better than that.

I passed the time listening to some tunes and watching two movies. The first was The Social Network, which was featured first on the overhead monitors—a definite sign of the aircraft's origin in the early 90s, along with inputs for the old two-prong plastic headsets. Having previously seen the film, I picked up on some nuances and underlying shadings I hadn't gotten in my first viewing, but this time around I didn't feel the emotional gravity that I remember from the theater.

The second movie on the flight was in Italian, and I didn't feel like testing myself
at the equivalent of 2AM either by listening or reading the subtitles on the 17" monitor four rows and the ceiling's distance away. Instead I watched the critically acclaimed breakthrough for mumblecore directors Mark and Jay Duplass: Cyrus, starring John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, and Jonah Hill in a very strange and wonderful indie romance flick. I'd downloaded a copy onto my ipod anticipating my predicament, and the movie was of the right scale to be enjoyable in that format.

We touched down at 11:30 AM Italian time and spent a quick hour in the Rome airport before boarding a smaller jet to Palermo. On this flight I had significantly more leg room: I sat in the first row of seats grouped in threes with only two seats in front of my row, so there was no seat in front of me at all to inhibit my legs. Of course the Italian man across the aisle from me was less fortunate, as the American woman in front of him had extra leg room in front of her, being in the first row of economy seating, and yet she decided to recline her seat back into this frustrated older gentleman who struggled to read the newspaper for the hour duration of the flight.

Actually, I was supposed to end up with a window seat on this flight—which would have been spectacular—but I decided not to ask the family of three (including a baby whose diaper was changed midflight) to move. I tried my best to watch the views out both sides of the plane during the flight, picking out Mount Vesuvius sticking out alone through the clouds—it definitely helped that I'd been to the volcano before and knew exactly what it looked like or otherwise I would have had no way to know what I was seeing.

What I didn't realize was just how stunning Sicily looked. As we first got a glimpse of the island I could make out small white chalky cliffs with several century's old watchtowers scattered along the precipice. The land then went very flat inwards for less than a mile before rising into jutting steep rocky hills. Many of these had open faces similar to El Capitan. These rock formations didn't seem to connect either, as the hills didn't follow a ridge. Each stood more or less on its own towering over the grassy plains below.

The first hills I could see from the Palermo Airport

More open face peaks on the drive into Palermo's city center



Coming into the airport, everybody found their luggage fairly quickly, and we met our tour guide for the trip, a Los Angeles transplant now living in Sicily: Jackie. The whole way into town, she pointed out things to look at, and just as she began to talk about each one, she would cut herself off, saying, "but I'll tell you more about that tomorrow." The rest of the evening many of us joked about whether she would ever tell us anything interesting or simply note that she might discuss it in the future.

After checking into the hotel, where I was assigned a room with a fellow music major I'd studied with in Florence, I went out for a stroll around the town. I was immediately struck by how few older buildings there were. The whole city, at least in the district where we were, seemed to have been built in the last half-century. There wasn't a lot I felt compelled to take pictures of, and there weren't any shops that looked different than the chains I'd seen across Italy in my past travels. At this point, I'm holding out hope that the tour guide will reveal the more compelling underlying features to the city that the laymen might not pick out.

I went out for about a half-hour in a smallish loop to the south of the hotel, getting a map along the way, and then I met up with one of my classmates, Kevin, to go on a slightly longer stroll north to the Mediterranean port. On this walk, I saw a few more older buildings, but mostly we got some nice views of the boats docked along the shore.

The port near the new Palermo town center

The class was treated to dinner this first night at a trattoria across the street from the hotel. We got the full four-course Italian treatment with antipasto (ham, salami, olives, and cheese) a pistachio-arugula pesto pasta dish, fried fish rolls, and parfait for dessert. We all agreed the pesto was really different from anything we'd had and great; most were less pleased with the fish dish though. We were all a bit stumped by that one—by that time I was pretty stuffed and didn't mind leaving plenty on my plate. It appeared to be like a fish sausage rolled in a pretty flavorless piece of prosciutto. For me, the dessert was definitely the highlight, with nice thin pieces of almond adding a wonderful texture to the thin block of gelato and chocolate drizzled overtop.

You would think that by this time we were all pretty tired and needing to crash, but it was one of our classmates' birthdays and we all wanted to make the most of our time in Sicily. A group of about twelve of us—the more talkative and older half of the class—went out for drinks. We had a few bottles of prosecco between us, and it was mostly just a good time. We've all really bonded pretty well, and I'm looking forward to spending more time together for the duration of the trip.

It was 12:30AM on Friday morning in Italy before I got to bed, which I figured worked out to about 32 sleepless hours. It's just like old times here in Sicily.

Santa Maria Della Catena, one of the few older buildings I saw in my first walks around Palermo.

The church was apparently built between 1490 and 1520

Il Convento Di San Domenico

Adventures In Italy (Reprise)

Adventures In Italy by Adrian Bridges

Now you can re-experience the blog in a physical format. This new book captures the same adventures with full-page color pictures and an edited text. Click the icon above for more information.

Book Description:
Adrian Bridges spent his past semester at New York University at their campus in Florence, Italy. While there, he studied everything from guitar and music to politics and the Italian language, becoming ever more intimate with the culture of Italy. During that time, he had the opportunity to travel extensively around the country, both as a tourist and on tour as a member of his jazz ensemble, "The Afterthought Quartet."

Along the way, he took pictures of much of what he saw. This book is devoted to the photographs he took on those adventures and the journal entries he compiled on his trips around Italy and other nearby European locations.

While this book resembles the blog which Adrian kept during his time abroad, the focus of this book is on the photography, while the journal entries have been edited, and many times expanded upon, to supplement these images.

The Afterthought Quartet At The Blue Note Milano

Finally, with the help of Antonio Vanni and supporting faculty at NYU Florence, I have a video clip I can present from Andy Gravish and the Afterthought Quartet's performance at the Blue Note Milano.

Featuring:
Andy Gravish - Trumpet
Adrian Bridges (Adriano Ponti) - Guitar
Dave Mainella - Piano
Piero Spitilli (Peter Spit) - Bass
John Bishop (Giovanni Vescovo) - Drums