Tango, Greek temples and Turkish steps

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Entry

  Marinella, Sicily, Italy
Tuesday, June 12, 2007

So, I wake up in Palermo and look out the window to see if my Aprilia is still there, as I'm up shit-creek without a paddle (typical Australian expression for non-Australian readers) if it's been stolen during the night. I breathe a sigh of relief, pack and go downstairs to find some breakfast.
There's no almond granita here and in fact many things are different. I'm in foreign territory here - sometime during my ride yesterday I crossed an invisible line, equivalent to the 'Mason-Dixon' line in the United States which divides the north from the south. Here the line runs from somewhere just west of Messina in the top right-hand corner diagonally across to near Agrigento, about halfway along the south coast. The south and east of Sicily is 'Greek', whereas the north and west is 'Phoenician/Arab'. Almonds, pistacchios, ricotta and other cheeses are mainly from the east, whereas chickpeas and couscous are from the west.
I saddle up and ride to Monreale, which has a cathedral with fabulous mosaics (it is not an exaggeration)

01 Monreale Cathedral

. Monreale is set high up on the sides of Conca d'Oro and has beautiful views over the city of Palermo. I'm heading towards Marinella (little marina) di Selinunte, about 80kms to the south, where there's a tango festival this weekend. I heard about it when I was in BA at Practica X, which is run by Pablo Inza. He and his partner, Moira Castellani, and 2 other Argentinian couples (who I saw and took classes with when in BA) are teaching. I've decided I'll base myself in Selinunte for a few days of sightseeing, swimming and just go to the milongas at night.
I find an interesting B&B called Villa Anna - the owners are a lively young couple with a small child and the place has been decorated in a colourful and idiosyncratic way. They give me a room in the garage (which is what I can afford - the arty rooms upstairs are more expensive). I love it - it's like a bunker. I'm given the keys to the garage and asked to keep it closed all the time as otherwise their cats get in - the only problem is I have to be very quiet when I come home late from tango as the garage door makes quite a racket when I open and close it, not to mention my scooter.
I go and have a swim even though it's late in the day and it's a bit cool, then have dinner at the Firefly restaurant, which is tied in with the owners of the B&B. I have cavatini (another of the innumerable types of pasta) with mussels, clams, pieces of fish, parsley, and eggs of St Peter's fish - apparently the fish doesn't taste very good but the eggs do and they are used as an ingredient in the sauce

02 Cloisters in cathedral

. I go to book for the tango and they are rather surprised to have this Sicilian-Australian roll up unannounced on a scooter, unshaven, messy-haierd (helmets are terrible for hair) and looking travel weary, but I joke that I will scrub up quite well tonight, and come back a short time later all dressed up and ready to dance the night away (I don't wear a helmet when I ride back as it will mess up my beautiful locks, and I like the slightly windswept look it gives me - who says men aren't vain?).
The next day I wake up to light rain, but the trouble is it rains all day and I am confined to quarters. I stay in bed and read and sleep, then go to the archaelogical park nearby (Selinunte is a well-known historical site founded around 650BC) but it's just too wet, so I retreat for more sleep and reading. I ask Claudio what the weather forecast is and he says rain for the next 4 days. In the library at Villa Anna I find a book called Sicilia, L'isola che c'e (Sicily, the island that is) by Gaetano Basile - I borrow it, retreat to my bunker and start reading, and am enthralled. The author has chosen a number of places in Sicily and has provided stories about these places, some of which I've been through already. I can see that I can easily spend 2-3 years following up these stories and their connections and I realise how hopelessly naive I was to think 2 months in Sicily would be enough to help me understand it better - in 2 months all I can do is visit lots of towns and places, but the churches, buildings, houses, rocks, rivers, all have a myriad number of stories attached to them

03 Detail of cloisters

.
By the end of the day I'm fed up with being in the bunker and ride out in the rain to have dinner. I choose a restaurant and sit down and order spaghetti with bottarga, vongole and zucchini. Bottarga is made from fish eggs (usually tuna but other fish can be used) which are dried and pressed into a cake. For cooking the bottarga is shaved and melted in the pasta cooking water, and usually a little is shaved over the dish before it is served. The clams provide a salty sweetness and the oily zucchini a slight bitterness, and the dish is topped with toasted breadcrumbs and fresh parsley, and the whole lot is a wonderful combination of flavours.
Cooking is all about combinations - carrots, pumpkin. tomatoes or peppers would all have been wrong in this dish. The parsley gave it a light herby zinginess which I love - parsley is used in a lot of Sicilian dishes, as is lemon - it's often squeezed over sausages and meat, as well as fish). Parsley is so often used only as a garnish, what a waste - and I'm sorry but I'm going to sound dictatorial here (but I have no choice) only flat-leaved Italian parsley can be used - the other curly type doesn't look or taste anywhere near as good.
With a nice meal like this (I also have grilled swordfish steak, flecked with - what else, but parsley, and lots of lemon juice) I have ordered a good bottle of white wine

04 Column in cloisters 1

. At the table next to me are a couple from the US who speak Italian to the waiter, so I don't have to help them out :) and I need someone to help me finish the wine (I can't drink a bottle by myself and go to tango), so I overcome my innate shyness and start talking to them. I often wonder what people think when a total stranger, who looks and talks like a local, breaks in on their cosy chat and speaks to them in an Australian accent. Anyhow Karen and Steve are from New York and are delightful people who are on a bicycle riding tour of Sicily. They have been riding through the rain all day (while I've been sleeping and reading in my bunker) and they tell me the funny story of how they encountered a number of flocks of sheep on the backroads they were cycling along, and of course the sheep droppings were sodden, and their bikes didn't have fenders, so they're riding along for kilometres with wet sheep shit being flicked up by their wheels on to their clothes (if you've ever ridden a bike in the rain you know how you get a vertical stripe of mud and road residue up your back). I try and be empathetic but the picture in my mind is hilarious, but they are really good sports, and now dry and with full stomachs are very happy indeed.
I offer them some of my wine and I'm really happy when Steve has some as a)I hate anything being wasted and I can't drink it all, and b)I like drinking wine with other people. The waiter comes alomg and asks if we'd like dolce and Steve has an almond dessert of some kind and offers me a taste and I order that too, then the owner comes around and asks if we'd like some ricotta pastries freshly made. This is strange as only 15 minutes before we'd asked about desserts made with ricotta and the waiter had said it wasn't fresh enough. Anyhow the owner brings around a big tray and proceeds to hand the cassatini (half moon shaped deep fried pastries filled with sweetened ricotta) around to the patrons and keeps coming back and asking if we want more

05 column in cloisters 2

. I have 2 (or 3, I can't remember) and I'm now really full. Anyhow I tell Karen and Steve about the tango and take my leave and fortunately the rain has stopped (although the seat is wet) and I ride down to the Grand Hotel Selinunte, where the milonga is being held. Karen and Steve turn up with the restaurant owner (sans trays of ricotta pastries) around midnight and watch the performance by Ezequiel and his partner, which they are very impressed with. I keep dancing until a point when I look out the window and there's light (about 5.30am), then hop on my Aprilia and ride in the rain back to Villa Alba, trying to be as quiet as possible, but you try and be quiet on a motor scooter and opening and closing a creaking garage door when everything else is deathly quiet.
Next day (Sunday), I head off for Agrigento, about 100kms away. First stop is Menfi, beginning of the 'wine road', but don't have time today, continue on through Sciacca and stop at ruins of Eraclea Minoa. Near here is Scala dei Turchi, which I have seen pictures of in a magazine. I eventually see the sign and ride down a very steep cobbled street, park my Aprilia, and walk around the sandy point, and all of a sudden there are these striated creamy white cliffs with people clambering over them. I take off my shirt and sandals and walk in the water to them. People have found little places to sit and gaze out over the sea. I join them. I see a man with clay paste all over him (he has mixed water with the white clay paste and smeared it over himself) and smile at him and take his picture. He smiles back and I go over and show him the picture. His name is Emanuele and he loves it, so I give him my email address which his partner stores on her mobile phone. We have a pleasant chat and he would love to visit Australia - he's used Google Earth and he's seen the opulent houses in Palm Beach north of Sydney, and probably thinks most Australians live in houses like this, rather than the reality of the little red brick bungalows you see as you fly into Sydney - but how come so many of them have swimming pools in the backyard?
I ride on through Porto Empedocle, where the writer Luigi Pirandello lived, and head up the hills to the Valley of Temples just outside Agrigento

06 Confessional Monreale Cathedral

. Siracusa and Agrigento were the 2 most powerful greek cities in Sicily and at their height rivalled Athens. Akragas, as it was known, was a large, rich city and a large number of temples were built on a high escarpment overlooking the sea. Later this area was used as a necropolis - great views for the dead. I last came here over 25 years ago and it looks very much the same except lots more tourists and all the souvenir sellers are North African.
I head back, retracing part of my route, then going north to Santa Margherita Belice, which inspired much of the setting of Donnafugata in the Leopard. Maria Carolina di Borbone, spent 3 days in 1812 in a carriage fleeing from Palermo (on her way to Austria) and arrived here exhausted (apparently the journey was so rough and dusty she didn't move from bed for 3 days), staying in a palazzo which is now the town hall.
I've been told about some thermal springs near here so I follow an endlessly winding road and arrive at sundown. I'm tired, cold and my muscles are stiff so I'm really looking forward to slipping into a hot thermal pool. Just as I get completely undressed and am really shivering with cold I get a call on my mobile from a couple of girls I've met at tango inviting me to dinner, then immediately after I get a call from an Italian friend. What's the etiquette for standing around naked and freezing and talking to women on the phone - do I say could you call back later because I'm naked and freezing, or do I take the call and try and end it as quickly as I can without being rude and trying to stop the shivering from affecting my voice (I took the latter approach). I have a nice dunk in the swimming pool, then find an area where I can sit under a water spout and position my body so that the heavy spout of water falls on my muscles and gives them a massage.
We have dinner, which is not satisfactory - they forget our table, the fish is frozen, but the wine is good and we get to tango at midnight, just in time to see Pablo and Moira do their performance

07 Ceiling and walls of cathedral

. They each have a glass of champagne in their hands and proceed to dance, while holding their glasses and sipping from them at appropriate moments in the music. It's very funny and skillful.
A number of us adjourn to the bar around 4.30, eating prosciutto and cheese toasted sandwiches and drinking wine, grappa, etc. I get into conversation with the DJ, Jorge, an Argentinian who has lived in Italy 15 years and somehow we get to talking about Iceland, and he's going there to do a tango DJ job later this year so I get his email address so I can find out where to tango in Iceland.
I also talk to a girl from Palermo and find out she was in Melbourne for a while and nearly married an Australian bloke. We talk about cultural differences, because this was what caused her to pull the plug. Her fiance was well-off, good-looking, etc all the sorts of things a girl looks for I would imagine, but his idea of a nice night out was to go to Borders with friends and they would sit around drinking coffee and reading books, newspapers, etc. He went around regularly to his mother's every week for dinner, and was easily hurt by even the lightest criticism.
So, I'm going to do all you Aussie guys (and others) a real favour and explain that if you want an Italian wife or girlfriend you will have to:
1. Talk a lot
2. Be spontaneous (it wasn't that he went round to his mother's the same day every week for dinner she had a problem with of course, it was that it was so programmed - why didn't he pop in to see her at other times?)
3. Be able to hold your own in a discussion or argument (Italian women don't have the patience or the inclination to pussyfoot around with fragile male egos).
Isn't it amazing what you find out when you stay up till dawn?
Next episode coming soon.

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

08 Christ Pantocrator (All Powerful) in the apse	09 Adam & Eve	10 Candles	11 Cleric's Gym?
12 Leaving Palermo & the Conca d'Oro	13 Autostrada out of Conca d'Oro	14 Marinella di Selinunte	15 Villa Anna aka Il Gattopardo (Leopard)
16 My bunker in the garage	17 Breakfast area Villa Anna	18 Guest lounge Villa Anna	19 Paving - Villa Anna
20 Fishermen's Recreation Club Selinunte	21 Two men fishing in the late afternoon	22 Kaleidoscopic Fiat 500	23 Padre Pio and yellow flowers
24 Downpipes	25 Buddha restaurant Selinunte	26 Cavatini with seafood and St Peter's eggs	27 Mint sand and sea
28 Sunset over Selinunte beach	29 Selinunte beach by night	30 Sea and sky	31 Selinunte restaurant strip by night
32 Three palm trees and green lights	33 Car park and far-off lights	34 Rainy dark night and bright lights	35 Deck chairs at night
36 Sciacca on a Sunday morning	37 Coastline and clouds near Sciacca	38 Ruins at Eraclea Minoa	39 Scala dei Turchi from a distance
40 Scala dei Turchi from west side	41 Three chairs looking out to sea	42 Scala dei Turchi from east side	43 Arty shot
44 Requisite traditional shirtless picture	45 Another view of Scala dei Turchi	46 The clay man - Emanuele	47 A sign near Porto Empedocle
48 Concordia Temple Agrigento	49 Concordia temple up close	50 Doric columns (I think)	51 Another temple and indigenous vegetation
52 Necropolis	53 Tourist at Agrigento	54 Clouds and stainless steel tanks	55 Almost full moon
56 Tango at Grand Hotel Selinunte	57 Pablo and Moira in a whirl	58 Moon and palms	59 Greek temple at Selinunte
60 Rubble from earthquake - Greek temples	61 Three columns in search of a roof to hold up	62 Inside of a Greek temple - Selinunte

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