Day 12: Crisscrossing Sicily

They say the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. As we learned on this day, such basic geometry really did not apply to Sicily's transportation system.

We began the day by eating pastries in the sunshine just across the way from the Temple of Apollo. Unfortunately, when ordering a cornetto (croissant), I again accidently said "cornuto." Here we go again. The woman behind the counter laughed. I apologized and walked out with sweet, cream-filled goodies. And my glazed sweet bread Danish with tasty cream inside was my best breakfast pastry yet.

We had a handful of sights we wanted to take in before continuing our travels across Sicily. But what was the best way to do so? Walking was out. We needed to find a way to see various sights while making it easy for Lori, and the rest of us. We could take a taxi but that would be a bit costly. Across the piazza, we saw a man driving a covered Ape advertising tours. I went and talked to him. His name was Antonio or "Tony" as he preferred to be called. He offered two different sightseeing packages for $60 apiece. We wanted to see several sites on each of the tours so I asked if we could do a hybrid. He agreed, we loaded up, I jumped into the shotgun seat and off we went.

Our first stop was to see the Madonna della Lacrime (Madonna of the Tears) sanctuary. Though we did not enter due to a lack of time, I just wanted to see it. When I was a missionary, I visited the original site of the plaster image of the mother of Mary, learned of its story and heard about a campaign to build a sanctuary. That was in early 1983. The story goes that a couple received it as a wedding gift back in the 1950s and hung it above their bed. She later became pregnant and lost her sight during her physical struggles. One night, her sight was restored and she looked up to see tears coming from the small image running down the headboard. The incident caused a bit of a frenzy among locals and a pilgrimage for others. Critics questioned whether the claims were true. Now the plaster is inside the sanctuary built in 1994. It was built in the shape of a tear drop. As Tony pointed out, some locals say it looks more like an upside down ice cream cone.

The book of Acts in the Bible's New Testament chronicles the journey of the Apostle Paul. Acts 28:12 states, "And landing at Syracuse, we tarried there three days." So where was that in Siracusa? Though not scientifically verified it's believe Paul spent time in or around the site of Church of Saint John. The basilica was built in the sixth century but the crypt underneath dates back to the first century AD. As per just about every other historic building, it's believed the Church of Saint John was built in the same place or on top of a previous edifice or collection of buildings.

Our last stop was where we spent most of our afternoon - Neapolis Archaeological Park. Tony said we needed at least half a day to see it all but we only about an hour or so. At the entry point, we found out wheelchairs were available so we got Lori hooked up and off we went, up and down over the rolling hills. It was a good and worthy workout. The park has a series of historical sites that served different purposes. The expansive Greek Theater, built in the fifth century BC, had a seating capacity up to 20,000. The old stone benches are being covered by wood as seasonal classic performances currently take place on the stage from May to July. Too bad we missed that window. 

There were just so many sites to see. Lori and I saw a couple but Ron and April got around much better. There was Altar of Hieron, dedicated to Zeus where animal sacrifices take place. The Ear of Dionysius was an ancient limestone quarry with an impressive echo inside. Latomia del Paradiso was a quarry site where stone was harvested to build ancient structures including parts of Ortygia. Riddled with catacombs, it's also where 7,000 prisoners of the war between Siracusa and Athens were kept. There was also a Roman amphitheater that hosted wild beasts and gladiator fights.

After wheeling Lori back to the Ape, I returned the wheelchair. I originally had to leave my passport as collateral at check out. When the attendant returned my passport, I opened to the photo and in Italian I said, "That's not me."

"What?" he said, rather perplexed.

"This guy is a lot uglier than me."

He then just busted up laughing.

As we waited 10 minutes or so for Ron and April to join us out front, it was fun to just talk with Tony. He was really friendly and easy to chat with. Like with many other locals we met during our trip, he was intrigued how we, as Americans, spoke and understood the language so well. I told him how I lived in Siracusa 40 years earlier, and how Ron and I were missionaries who returned to Italy for the first time since then. "Still, my friend, that was a long time ago," he suggested. Tony wasn't wrong. It amazed me how the more I spoke, the more I listened, the more the language continued to come back. I'd referred to that previously but it's one of the most surprising and welcome happenings of the trip for me. Ron was smarter. He studied and prepared (and it showed). I just winged it. But it also speaks to the power of the brain to recall things learned basically in a previous life. That just made things so fun.

Tony shuttled us to the Siracusa bus station, we said our goodbyes and then the travel weirdness began. Even though it's basically 130 miles from Siracusa to Agrigento, there's no direct kind of highway or rail line so we had to head north to Catania instead of almost straight west to Agrigento. Once a bus took us to on the 40-mile ride to Catania, we missed our next bus connection so we passed the time in the train station. And that's where I purchased my best arancino of the trip so far. The outside was crispy and the rice inside was soft and loaded with both sauce and flavor. It was just plan the best, juiciest rice ball so far in Italy. And it was bought in a train station bar, of all places. 

After another relatively short bus ride, we caught the first of two train transfers. We headed west toward the small town of Sicilia in the central portion of Sicily. From there, you'd think we'd head south to our destination. Nope. Instead, in order to get to Agrigento, we had to head north 55 miles to Termini Imerese, which is only 24 miles from Palermo and back on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Once there, we got off the train and boarded another that took us almost straight south 50 miles to Agrigento. I'm not complaining. It was nice to just relax. It was also nice that Lori did not have to be on her feet. Plus, I got to see a part of Sicily I'd never seen before. Or at least, a portion of Sicily I didn't remember seeing when I made that trip a couple of times back in the early-1980s when I was a missionary. We also got to view another beautiful Sicilian sunset.

It was a lovely warm evening as we left the Agrigento train station. We found a taxi driver and asked if he could take us to our apartment for the night. He said it was relatively close and we could walk there. When he saw Lori was on crutches, he offered to drive her there for free and the rest of us could walk. We asked if he could take all of us. We finally talked him into it and he took us up a narrow, very crowded street. The drive was really slow going as we basically parted a sea of Italians out on a nice summer's night's stroll. When we arrived, the driver would not take the $20 offered, even though I insisted. Instead, he settled for $12. What a nice guy. He just wanted to make sure Lori was comfortable and taken care of.

Our Airbnb was a nice place but it took 62 steps from the street to climb the stairs to get inside, making it was a bit of a challenge for Lori, but also par for the course. The apartment was elegant with new flooring and wood throughout.  Giuseppe was our host. He talked a mile a minute. And even that description didn't do him justice. He was super, super hyper yet friendly. After showing us around, we told him about our schedule and he said he would allow us to leave our bags at his place after our checkout time the following morning-bonus! Our quest that evening was descend the Street of Arts on Via Atenea to join the throngs of people and find somewhere to eat that wasn't too far of a walk for Lori. 

We came across several restaurants nearby. I entered one of them, Le Boccerie, and was told if we didn't have reservations, we were out of luck. This restaurant, like several others spilled over into a nearby piazza across the way. Ron talked to a server there who said she would squeeze us in. And that's exactly what happened. He must have swayed her with his boyish charm. Either way, she led us to the back of their designated area and up a couple of stairs to a table and four chairs on the landing of stairs that ascended to the Church of San Lorenzo, also known as the church of the lost souls in purgatory. Why purgatory? Because the church is the featured structure in the Piazza Purgatory, where we were seated. What an amazing ambiance.

There were a couple of times that the same person at the main restaurant who told me they didn't have room for us came our way. I would just hold the menu up above my face or dip my head down so I wouldn't be noticed. Anyway, I really surprised myself with my order. Anyone who knows me knows I'm an all-meat-all-the-time kind of pizza guy. Not sure why I went the route I did. I must've been inspired. But man oh man oh man! The stove-fired five-cheese pizza I ordered was so flavorful. It included fiordilatte mozzarella, Vastedda del Belice, Gongonzola, Parmigiano Reggiano and fresh Ragusano. Couple that with a Sicilian-made aranciata made with 22 percent orange juice and it was my best pizza meal of the trip.

Great food! Great friends! And a great Italian atmosphere! 

Day 11: Retracing 40-Year-Old Footsteps

 I bounced out of bed this morning and received my marching orders.

"Go find me a pastry, please, or two," said Lori.

And with that, I went in search of a pasticceria. So many choices. Sweet or savory. Or both. For Lori, there is no hesitation. It's always sweet. 

One of the things I did throughout our trip was post 5-8 photos a day on my Facebook page. It was fun to read the comments, several of which were from former missionary friends of mine who also served in Italy. One of them was from Ann Wilks Taylor, who was in my Missionary Training Center group back in 1983. She had commented on an earlier photo of a lemon granita: "Yum!!!!! I hope you had a brioche with it. My favorite breakfast ever." I'd had my share of granitas back in the day. And I'd had my share of brioche too, but never the two of them together for breakfast so that's what I went with, and posted: "Purchased 15 minutes ago in your honor and for my enjoyment." Ann was right. It was a most excellent breakfast. 

Lemon granita in the upper-left corner

Fortified and energized, we went on a walk in the heart of Catania's historic district. One thing I noticed immediately in the light of a beautiful, sunny day were the hues, tones and colors of this grand old city. Some would call it ugly, especially with the seemingly nonstop swaths of graffiti. I would term it more dingy. Though I'd never heard of it before, one of Catania's nicknames is apparently "the black city," because of the color of its buildings, blackened by the soot and ashfall of Mount Etna that, as mentioned in the previous blog post, had damaged and destroyed the city many times over the centuries.

I can't emphasize enough how much of an emotionally fun, deja vu kind of throwback this day really was. I mean, here we we were. Ron and I together again, along with our wives this time, but physically retracing the same footsteps to some of the same locations on the same streets from 40 decades earlier. It was just so so surreal. And kudos to Lori who, like the tortoise racing the hare, was slow, steady and strong on her crutches as we revisited the past.

The first stop was Castello Ursino (Bear Castle). Built in the 13th century by the Kingdom of Sicily, it served as the seat of the Sicilian Parliament as well as a military installation and a prison. The eruption of Mount Etna in the 17th century left it surrounded by a moat of lava. Today's it's a museum.

As we continued our walk through the historic city center, we came to Via Etnea, Catania's main drag that Ron and I traveled countless numbers of times on the bus and on foot back in the day. Looking to the north, you see Piazza del Duomo (more on that in a moment). Look the south and you can see Porto Garibaldi (Galibardi Gate). Built in 1768 to celebrate an ancient marriage, it main elements were white stone from Siracusa and darker stone from Mount Etna. 

We continued our way toward the Piazza del Duomo when we came upon Catania's historic fish market, one of the largest such markets in Sicily. This was most definitely a step back in time. It was in the same place when we were missionaries and sold the same stuff: fish, mussels, octopus, crabs, snails, swordfish and beef as well as fruit, vegetables, spices and on and on. 

The market borders a piazza full of history. It's surrounded by offices of government, the Cathedral of Sant'Agata and the elephant monument which were all built after Mount Etna destroyed Catania in the late 1600s. Unfortunately, the elephant, created from volcanic rock spewed from Etna, was getting a bit of a facelift during our visit. Legend has it that an ancient magician who lived in Catania turned his own mount, the elephant, into lava. The cathedral was grand. Inside, we watched a baby baptism and then Ron and I headed up inside Sant'Agata's dome. It took us 195 steps from the street to ascend to an upper rim on the dome. Once on top, wow, what a view. You had a 360-degree view of Catania. The only thing we could not see was Mount Etna as it was mostly covered by clouds. Our timing was prefect as we were serenaded by a series of high noon dueling bells.

The Dome of Sant'Agata on the left

Mount Etna covered by clouds in the background

The double-spire church is in the same piazza as our former chuch meeting place

Just a few blocks away, we wandered into Piazza San Francesco d'Assisi and a monument dedicated to Giuseppe Benedetto Dusmet, Catania's archbishop in the mid-1800s who was later elevated to the position of cardinal. The real blast from the past was the building in the background of the monument. It was either the second or third floor that used to be our chapel where Ron and I attended church as missionaries. And to be back there was downright surreal. Ron related one of his Catania memories. We invited a family to our church to teach them. We showed up for the appointment but they weren't there. Apparently, they entered the church of San Francesco next door.

Seeing the Dusmet statue with the small, now defunct slimy, green water fountain behind it, immediately brought a classic missionary memory to my mind. Ron and I met Fratello Rizzo in Catania in the summer of 1983. We met together, talked often and established a great relationship. He decided he wanted to be baptized. Unfortunately, Ron was transferred just before the baptism took place but it went forward. On the scheduled day, my new missionary companion and I showed up at church early in the day only to find out the water was turned off. So how do you have a baptism, one by immersion, if you don't have any water to fill the baptismal font? We looked out the window and there was our answer. We would get water out of the Dusmet fountain. (Note: back then, the water had little chunkies in it but wasn't that bad since the fountain was fully functioning.) We scrounged around and came up with a bucket and a long rope. One of us walked the bucket with the rope tied to it over to the fountain, scooped it full the water and the other hung out the church window, pulled up the bucket and dumped it into the font. Bucket after bucket after bucket. Hour after hour after hour. When we stopped, we had raw, beat up blistered hands. But we also had a couple of feet of water in the bottom of the font. The baptism went ahead as scheduled and I had the opportunity to baptize Fratello Rizzo a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. What a great day! 

Fratello Rizzo and I on his baptismal day

Not even a stone's throw (okay, may two or three stone's throw) we walked into the Roman Theater of Catania. Thought to have been build in the second century AD, it wasn't fully excavated and restored until the late 1950s, when the final homes built inside of it were removed. The stage was once lined with decorative marble columns and the facility could seat about 7,000 people.

As we made our way back toward the apartment, we came across an older man with a table full of blood oranges. We stopped and chatted as he made fresh-squeezed blood orange juice. Man oh man oh man! Talk about nectar of the Gods. That's exactly what this was.

Though we had seen a few up north, we saw many more Ape (bee) in Sicily. The three-wheeled, covered scooter first became popular after World War II. The past-war economy was extremely difficult and people needed an inexpensive way to get around. That triggered the birth of the Ape. They were popular when I was a missionary in the early 1980s and we saw a bunch of them across Italy on this trip, especially in Sicily.

We then found a street-side eatery that hit the spot with my Sicilian favorites of orange Fanta, juicy arancini and lemon gelato. I mean, can how could it get better than this? 

After grabbing our bags at the apartment, we took a taxi to the train station so we could head south to Siracusa for the afternoon and evening. When arrived to find a state of mass confusion. There had apparently been a 4.7 earthquake about 10 miles off the coast of Catania right as we sat down to lunch. Really? We didn't feel a thing. Because of that, all scheduled train routes were stopped. Here we go again. More unplanned public transportation issues. 

Okay, trains were out. There didn't seem to be any bus options either. The whole time, a taxi driver kept lobbying, "I can take you there for $100 euros." We kept asking questions to the train customer service folks as well as fellow travelers but weren't having any luck. In the end, we waited too long to use that taxi driver but he said he had help on the way. We're thinking he called a family member or friend, an older man in a four-door car. That worked for us. We ended up paying him $110 for the 40-mile trip. The drive was yet another scenic one with views of Mount Etna and the beautiful countryside. Sitting in the front seat, Ron kept nodding off. The driver got a pretty good kick out of that.

We arrived in Siracusa, the second city in which I served as a missionary, in the late afternoon/early evening. Our driver dropped us off as close as he could to our Airbnb apartment, but couldn't get really that close because it was on the island of Ortygia (meaning quail in Greek), the old city and historical center of Siracusa. Even though I'd lived in Siracusa back in the day, I'd only visited Ortygia a few times and really didn't know much about it. There are many Greek stories about the island city. One of them maintained Asteria, the Greek titan goddess of fallen stars and nighttime divinations, metamorphosed into a quail, threw herself into the sea and was changed into the island of Ortygia (Quail). Well, she's was a beauty with her clean, narrow, winding streets. After dropping our packs, we made our way deeper into Ortygia toward the ocean past the Cathedral of Siracusa, which dates back to the seventh century but was built on ruins of Greek and pre-Hellenic times that go way, way back.

Most of our evening dining experiences during out trip were happenstance. We would visit several restaurants, check out the menus, look some more, talk about out it and then pick one. In Siracusa, our goal was to find Al Vecchio Lavatoio (The Old Wash Restaurant) Ristorante, a restaurant-pizzeria-bar-gelateria with an historic underbelly. What better combination is there than that? We were seated outdoors under a large covered veranda with the Ionian Sea probably 15 yards away and 30 yards below us. It was the perfect spot for Lori to check two more boxes - witness a beautiful sunset and dip her top in the last of three seas that surround southern Italy.

Our waiter spoke English really well. This was something else that was a little surprising about our trip. While it wasn't surprising to encounter Italians who spoke English in and around Rome, we encountered many others in the Puglia and across Sicily. Generally speaking, the further south we went, the less we heard English. Plus, we wanted to speak Italian anyway. Still, meeting Italians who spoke English during our missionary days was almost unheard of. It just never happened. We complimented our waiter and asked him how and where he learned English. "American music," he said. Now, that had not changed. When I was a missionary, I heard American pop and rock music all the time. In fact to this day, every time I heard the song "Africa," by Toto, my mind immediately goes back to Catania where girls that lived above us on a higher floor would blare that tunes on their boombox. 

Back to Al Vecchio Lavatoio. This restaurant was really unique. Not only could you enjoy amazing views outside but inside had its own show and tell. The reason it's called The Wash is because it sits on top of an old historic waterway as the waters of a nearby spring still run underneath it. Back in the day, it was an ancient tannery. Then in the 1700s, it became a washhouse and remained actively functional until the mid-1940s. Women would take their laundry there because the water was fresh, not salty, like the nearby ocean. Ron, April and I passed through a large eating area with a transparent floor that showed ancient ruins of the old washhouse beneath it. Then we descended a tight staircase to see the washhouse firsthand. Talk about stepping back in time. It was so humid, as if entering an indoor swimming pool, minus the smell of chlorine. We walked the narrow corridors and saw stony cubicles. 

Dinner was as unique as the pre-meal sights. I ordered pasta carbinara, a dish featuring a creamy sauce, eggs, bacon and black pepper. The sauce is usually made with the same water the pasta cooked in and then a raw egg is thrown into it once the noodles are cooked. To me, it tasted like a pasta version of an omlette. Lori raised some eyebrows by ordering black squid ink pasta, a black liquid pigment produced by squid to protect themselves from predators. Apparently, squid ink is added to the pasta dough before it's cut and dried. When presented on a white plate, it more than stands out. Lori's dish was basically black squid ink ravioli. She liked it. I had a bite. It didn't taste near as bad as it looked. It wasn't even salty. I capped off my meal with a lemon granita. 

As we finished our meal, we watched the sun drop below the horizon. It was spectacular! We then walked along lungomare and first stopped at the Fountain of Arethusa, a natural spring. The unique looking plants in the spring were papyrus. Just down way, the path dropped to the sea so Lori took off her shoe and dipped in a toe. So mission accomplished. She added the Ionian to her list of setting foot in the Adriatic, Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas.

Fountain of Arethusa

The walk back to our apartment was long. Too long, really, but Lori just kept pushing forward one step at a time with her crutches. It was admirable to watch her determination and grit. One of impressive things about Italy is you can be walking through a portion of a city that dates back a couple of centuries and then you run into artifacts that date back a couple thousand years. Siracusa was no different. Just before we arrived at our apartment, we entered a piazza home to the ancient Greek Temple of Apollo. Dating back to the sixth century, it's one of Sicily's oldest temples with Doric architecture. Over time, it served as a church, mosque, barracks and private homes. And on this night, a great way to cap off another day of flavor, sites and Italian history.