Wine Colored Days

So, Sicily.



Bellini Piazza in daylight

Arriving in Catania at night, we found ourselves on the fifth floor of a mouldering 300-year-old palazzo, where our room for the night was huge but smelled strongly of sulfur -- Phil claimed it was from Mt. Etna, which was not at all nearby. We set out for a beer in what we later learned was the Bellini Square, and found to our surprise that at 11 p.m. on a Sunday night, the city was just coming alive. Young and old -- and middle-aged with their small children -- strolled past dressed in finery ranging from bridge & tunnel jeggings and spike heels to Williamsburg shredded jeans and man-buns. It was quite a scene.

In the morning we headed for the duomo, dedicated to St. Agata -- a sumptuous baroque exterior with an enormous cupola. Across the street was another enormous

church also dedicated to St. Agata. A Sicilian saint and virgin martyr, she was imprisoned and tortured by having her breasts torn off with pincers. Then she was sentenced to be burned, but an earthquake saved her, and she spent the rest of her life in prison after being miraculously healed of her wounds by St. Peter. She is omnipresent in Sicilian ecclesiastical life.

In the center of the square was one of Phil's favorite things: a fountain featuring a black-lava elephant carved in Roman times, with an Egyptian column rising from its back, and saints and classical figures surrounding it - the symbol of the city, and a lesson in multiculturalism.




The fish merchants were kind
enough to give me their excess
ice for my poor feet, which gave
off the aroma of the sea for the
rest of the day.

We followed our noses to the open-air fish market, arranged around another fountain fed by an underground stream. We ate lunch beside the fish market after touring the Roman theater in the center of town, well-preserved but stripped of its original marble. We saw the exterior of the 15th century castle and the elegant buildings and courtyard of the university, the second oldest in Italy.

Later we revisited the Bellini Piazza (Bellini is a local son) and saw the floridly baroque opera house. We took a taxi to the airport to pick up our car, which I had again

specified should be an automatic. It turned out to be something called semi-automatic, which, much like the gun that shares its name, can be a weapon of death in the wrong hands (i.e. ours).

We had a GPS, which we decided to name Beatrice, but only if she was better at directing than

Nigel had been on Malta. Ninety minutes later (it was a 20-minute drive) we had renamed her B*tch. She wound us around and around various small towns, up and down the seacoast, until we were both nearly hysterical with frustration. Finally a kind gentleman in a local bar took pity on us and guided us in his own car up a hillside on a one-lane road to an unmarked driveway, where our hostess welcomed us at the most beautiful agriturismo we could ever have imagined. But you'll have to wait to see for yourselves.