Ci Vadiamo in Sicilia

For the last five days we’ve been enjoying a wonderful visit with Concetta’s cousin, John, and his delightful wife, Helen, at their vacation town home in Cenadi, Italy. To give you a bit of insight into what Cenadi is like, visualize miles and miles of low rolling hills with virtually every inch covered in vegetation of some sort. Olive groves march off in orderly rows in just about any direction you look. Fig trees grow everywhere, both in gardens and along the edges of farm fields. Around every bend in the road you see a wonderful profusion of grape vineyards and gardens nestled in beside “rusticos,” or ancient rock houses. And wherever you don’t see carefully tended gardens and orchards, you see wonderful stands of chestnut trees, wispy fern-covered fields (where the wild mushrooms hide), and dozens of other species of trees I couldn’t begin to identify. Amongst all this beauty you find, just here and there, tiny villages full of wonderful old stone and stucco houses with red-tile roofs, bright colored entryways, and even brighter-colored laundry hanging from ancient iron balconies. Below those balconies, wind skinny two-lane roads, so narrow that you have no choice but to slow the pace of your life down and take in some of this rustic beauty, even if it’s for just a moment.

We love to come to Cenadi for the people as well. On either side of John and Helen’s house are good friends named, of all things, Montesano. As some of you know, Concetta’s last name is Montisano. The spelling was changed from the original Montesano spelling when the family immigrated from Centrache, a town just down the hill from Cenadi nearly a century ago. Though the neighbors are probably not relatives (Montesano being the third most common name in the area), we have come to love those folks like they were our own relatives. Frank and Isa on the north side are the family who are offering to sell us an apartment in their building if we would like to have a base in Cenadi from which to explore Italy more thoroughly in the future. Yesterday we had a marvelous lunch with Frank and Isa comprised of such a quantity and variety of wonderful food that I didn’t want dinner five hours later. From Isa’s pasta, fried peppers, wild chicory, lightly battered mushrooms, and to-die-for salads, to Frank’s homemade wine, we feasted like Kings and Queens for at least two hours. For dessert they brought out a plate of home-grown figs and other fruits that was a beauty to behold. That, along with ice wine and a triple dose of espresso made me want to sign the purchase agreement right there and then.

And then there’s the Montesanos on the south side, Tony and Maria. Lovely folks they are and there’s no mistake. The Montesanos “south” always have us to lunch or dinner when we come to visit, and this time was no exception. On Monday the four of us (Me, John, Helen, and Concetta, met at Tony and Maria’s for a whirlwind feast of everything from pasta to roast chicken with rosemary potatotes, stuffed eggplant to garden-grown salad. Of course Tony had his own homemade wine as well. In fact, just last night I was privileged to photograph Tony and his nephew, Giovani, carrying crate after crate of freshly-picked grapes to dump into the hopper where the stems would be stripped off. Tony is 70 years old, but he could work circles around me. After putting his thirty or forty crates of grapes through the stem-stripper, he went to his nephew’s house to do the same job. After that, it was a friend’s turn. He told me he didn’t finish stripping grapes until 10:30 p.m. What a guy. Before we left, I had a chance to get to know Maria better by sitting with her on her patio for an hour and stripping the dried beans out of the center of a whole bunch of string bean hulls for use in next year’s planting. As a reward, Maria gave me a whole package of beans to plant in my garden.

Of course, it was very hard to say goodbye to John and Helen, but since they’re getting ready to fly home to Canada, we had to bid them a very fond farewell and bon voyage. They made us very, very welcome over the past few days, even taking us sight seeing and shopping and letting us use up a bunch of their satellite Internet time. Breakfast was our favorite time of the day as we sat and planned the day’s events. I’m sorry I forgot this morning to sample the fig yoghurt (they get loads and loads of better flavors here), but the coconut was terrific. John and Helen are lovely hosts, and we hope to visit them again some time soon.

Around 9:30 a.m. we had the car all loaded and Concetta and I headed off down the mountain into some dazzling blue skies and toward the sparkling blue of the Mediterranean. We hit just a tad of fog as we gained altitude at one point, but most of the drive was heavenly. We didn’t have to rush since our goal was the east coast of Sicily, and we decided that we could easily do that in half a day. The journey here to Sicily turned out to be a tad more complicated than we thought, but by 3:30 p.m. we had reached our destination village of Taormina, just down the road from Messina where the ferry boat deposited us. We were expecting close to pandemonium in our ferry experience, but in truth, it wasn’t that bad. The Italians are sometimes a bit stingy with their road signs, which can make for some tense moments, but for the most part we purchased our ticket, got in the proper line, loaded up when the ferry docked, and got off without so much as a single problem. We had been warned that all hell can break loose when you’re trying to exit the ferry because they try to funnel four or five lanes of traffic off the ferry to one lane exiting the disembarkation point. In our case, we boarded fairly early in the process, got placed right behind an ambulance with the blue lights vigorously flashing, and when it exited so did we. In fact, we were the number one car down the exit lane. Some piece of luck!

So, our next bit of uncertainty resulted from my insistence on not making any reservations on Sicily. I wanted our choice of lodging to be based solely on accident if possible. Though that sounds a bit daft, I like at least occasionally to let serendipity take control to see just what adventures can result. Before we left this morning, and quite at the last minute, John gave me some Internet searches that Helen had performed some time ago when she wanted to go to Sicily. From that stack of searches, Concetta and I picked out a likely target for our night’s lodging based on whether they had Internet or not. As fate would have it, we found the Hotel Angela without much difficulty, drove up and parked right in front, and discovered that they indeed had space for us. We would have liked three days, but they could only guarantee two at this point. I’m hoping that someone ends up cancelling, but if not, we’ll head off down the road to see just what other adventures we can turn up. At the moment our room is located high up on a cliff face overlooking both the Mediterranean and the slopes of the active volcano, Mount Etna. It almost seems that we have a view that goes on for several lifetimes. I’m not sure what our plans for the evening are going to be, but the hotel runs a shuttle down the mountain to the old part of Taormina where there are a vast selection of restaurants and shops. So, pardon me while I finish getting dressed. I’m starting to get hungry and I haven’t eaten anything but a banana since breakfast. I’m starting to fall away to a shadow.

The photo above was taken from our bedroom patio after we returned from dinner. Quite by accident, I think Concetta and I stumbled onto the very best restaurant in Taromina. We got the full white table cloth treatment followed by the best ravioli I've had in years and years. The wine was superb, the service excellent, and the view was much like what you see above. We stayed the full course from anti pasti to gelato and coffee. I could eat there forever. When we were done, the hotel called for us with a van. What a place!

Tomorrow we'll probably explore a bit around here and then, who knows? Stay tuned.