True Dirt

island of the sun - part II

We arrive in Agrigento after three hours on the autostrada--Louise, the heroic pilot, and me the anxious navigator of our rental Fiat--with no real idea of where our hotel is located. After circling the teeny hilltop town and driving into several narrow deadends we head up the next promising cobbled alley only to find ourselves facing downhill on a hairpin turn that continues not as a roadway but as a stairway. I get out of the car to help Lu negotiate a five-point turn because she refuses to back up the steep hill. A small tree at the juncture of street and stairway is threatened with sudden removal. At this point, a man who has just parked his car nearby approaches with his hands gesticulating wildly and a look that says "stop before you destroy the neighborhood!". He is offering to help. In fact, he gets in our Fiat and backs the thing up himself, then gets in his own car and gestures for us to follow him. I had told him in my phrase-book Italian that we were trying to get to the Hotel Jolly. And our Sicilian knight delivers us to our destination, leaving the neighborhoods of Agrigento unharmed by invading American drivers.

We check into the hotel, our room nicely appointed with a view of gardens below, and then head out to the Valley of Temples a short drive out of town. We settle on visiting the extensive museum exhibits of Greek artifacts from the region, a decision based on the ninety-plus degree heat and the presence of air conditioning. Tomorrow morning, we strategize, will be cooler for temple touring.

That evening we search out a place to dine in the sultry evening where everyone in Agrigento appears to be strolling down the street. By lamplight we ascend a stairway alley off the via Atenea and settle our exhausted selves at a small table under the stars and ask for "acqua gazzeta" and "vino blanco seco". The insalata mista I order contains the most delicious mussels, sweet, fingernail-size morsels and octopus tentacles, drenched in olive oil. The wine is perfect. Gradually, we become aware of the table next to us--four young men who are sampling a selection of wines (we are, it turns out dining at a wine bar) and at least sometimes speaking with distinctly American accents. An accidental wine spill from their table that manages to splash my skirt leads us to introductions and it seems that two of the party are from Chicago and visiting their Sicilian relatives. They are also on a tasting tour to find wines to take home to their family restaurant in Chicago called, appropriately enough, "Palermo". We are invited to taste with them a local specialty, the "moscato passito di Pantelleria", a sweet wine from the muscat grape that is made only on the island of Pantelleria between Sicily and Tunisia.

Early the next morning....Sweltering in the September heat, carrying bottled water, we leave the dusty parking lot after paying our twelve euro at the kiosk next to the granita truck (from which we will gratefully purchase cool lemon ices after returning from the ruins). Our first encounter with the ancient city of Akragas or Agrigentum appears as a jumble of giant stones amid which grow giant agave, their asparagus-like bloom towering above the ruins. A puzzling construction of stone blocks slowly metamorphoses into what we recognize from the museum tour of yesterday as the massive stone Telamon, or male slave figure, of the Temple of Olympian Jove. This former wonder of the world covered sixty-five hundred square meters (about 70,000 sq. ft.) and stood forty meters high (131 feet). Thirty-eight Telamon, over forty feet tall, were that many feet above the temple steps, appearing to hold up the architrave and roof. Temple construction began about 480 B.C. and was the work of a slave workforce of thirty thousand Carthagenians captured after the Greeks destroyed their city. It took eighty years to complete.

We leave the sleeping giant and his ruined temple to climb the via Sacra, the avenue leading up to the acropolis of temples dedicated to Hera and Hercules, and the Concord Temple, so named from a Latin inscription found nearby but probably dedicated by the Greek builders to Demeter. We find ourselves on an arid plateau, the pale waters of the Mediterranean off to the west, and the modern city of Agrigento rising behind us to the east. In the fierce heat of the Sicilian sun the temples glow a ferruginous red from the island's volcanic stone. Once, they would have gleamed white from a sheathing of marble dust plaster and been colorfully painted in reds and blues. The city of temples was meant to impress from afar all who sailed by this coast with its colossal grandeur. Louise and I reach the end of the Sacred Way and sit at the edge of the mesa to watch for awhile the group of white-suited workers filling mouse hole size pits in the Temple of Hera with stone putty. Agrigento is a world heritage site and a large sign attests to the few millions dedicated to its restoration.

Louise points out the tilted slope of a nearby thrust fault and we are reminded that this is, like home, earthquake country. Mount Etna is to the south of us some hundred miles. It is about noon now and the bus tours have arrived. We are nearly perspired out and in need of more water. And we have a long drive ahead of us--to Cefalu, our final destination.

We return to the hill town and stop briefly in the city center to do a little shopping. We find a small ceramic shop where the owner is also the painter of the ceramic pieces (which are made somewhere else). I am excited to find a long-sought item--a salt cellar, the kind with a wide jug-mouth big enough to put your hand in and grab a pinch of salt. It was painted in the Sicilian color scheme: bright lemons on a dark green background. I also bought a small, brightly painted sun face--one version of the ancient symbol of Sicily: a Gorgon head (wreathed in snakes) surrounded by three detached legs, the "tinacria" or three points of the island of Sicily. We head back to our parked Fiat, pausing for a last photo op by a potted palm. I rap on the figured terra cotta pot holding the palm and realize that it's plastic--the choice of smart gardeners in hot Mediterranean climates everywhere.

island of the sun - part I

I have fallen in love with Sicily. The landscape, the cities, the people, the sweets. It was a whirlwind affair, lasting only seven days but filled with adventure, passion, and sleeplessness. The adventures encompassed a triangular tour of three cities--Palermo, Agrigento and Cefalú--that took us from one of the oldest world cities to the temples of the former Greek city of Akragas (Agrigento) and then to the little resort town of Cefalú that reminded me of Santa Cruz, California without the rollercoaster. My passion was, of course, for the landscape and the wonderfully odd plants we saw. And the sleeplessness was necessary to see as much as possible in our short visit, touristing during the hot mid-afternoons when Sicilians are eating and napping. It all began with a science conference at the University of Palermo that my traveling companion and friend, Louise Pellerin, a geophysicist, was attending (and thus the impetus for this trip and my impulsive decision to tag along). Lu graciously assented to my desire to explore archeological ruins instead of spending that time on a beach and we rented a car for Part II of our journey. So began the saga of two Americans on the loose on the Sicilian autostrada and cobbled hill towns with one Italian phrase book and a road map.

But first, Palermo. Our hotel, Albergo Athaneum, was a modest establishment in a modest residential neighborhood near the university. To get to the conference, we walked a couple of blocks through narrow cobbled streets of 3- or 4-story buildings where the laundry hung from racks over the sidewalk (a foot-wide curb of stone) and the women used small round baskets on ropes tied to the upper story balconies to retrieve groceries and other items from the street below.

The campus of the university was remarkable mostly for the flowering kapok or floss silk trees (Chorisia speciosa) that lined its paths. Standing about 20 feet high and covered with pink orchid-like flowers that littered the sidewalks, their trunks were an odd bright green and jug-shaped. I learned later from our Palermo tour guide what they were, and that Palermo had once been a center for the kapok industry supplying waterproof filling for pillows, upholstery, and life preservers (I knew the term "kapok" from WW II life jackets that my dad possessed) but which has been made obsolete by synthetic fillers.

The science conference is where I was introduced to Sicilian sweets, an incredibly diverse palette of pastries that are as fantastical, baroque and elaborate as the interiors of Sicilian churches--and heavenly tasting. In the mornings a table would be set with coffee and pastries, usually powdered sugar-coated croissant with slivered almonds and small jammy pastries. About 4pm the coffee break would be set up. Servers asked for our choice of beverage--juices, bottled water, tea and, of course, cappucchino. And laid out on the table was a feast of exquisite miniature confections often consisting of multiple layers of marzipan, chocolate, merengue, nuts, and glazed fruits. Even the biscotti looked rococo - dusted white and gleaming like marble. We were not to experience these delicacies once we left the conference since they are the domain of special bakeries that we did not have time to visit on our travels. But we got one last shot at them at the dinner which took place in Palermo's Orto Botanico, and this time it was an assortment of lavishly decorated and swooningly delicious cakes - of which I sampled three and now regret not attempting to taste them all.

My photographic expedition began with a half-day tour of the city of Palermo provided to "family members" of the conference attendees. This was a bus and walking tour with about ten of us "family," mostly women, and consisted of some of the most important churches and monuments spanning the richly layered historical periods of Palermo. I tried to capture in my photos the feel of both the island and the city in its architectural detail and its people-filled streets. My camera went with me on subsequent days to the botanical garden dinner and the farewell reception in the courtyard of the Villa Niscemi, at the foot of Mount Pelligrino by the sea.

There are many more photos of Palermo at the Flickr site (just click on any photo here) and I am working feverishly to put up the photos from Agrigento and Cefalú to complete this tiny tour of Sicily.

return from the gardens of the sun

Finally, this annus horribilus is ending for me on a sunny note. Having just returned from a too brief journey to the Island of the Sun, that is, Sicily where I and my friend Louise happily sweated our way through the cities of Palermo, Agrigento, and Cefalu, we have returned to our Mediterranean cities by an entirely different sea where the temperature in my house is at this moment 63 degrees Fahrenheit. I have a cd with over 200 pics of Sicily that I am anxious to sort through and share with all who happen upon this little corner of the Net. There was also an interlude in London where I got to spend two days in two magnificent gardens, Wisley and Kew. And there I snapped another 200 or so photos. So there is a rich booty to share.....when I have recovered from multiple time zone affective disorder.

mourning after the flood

so recently, it seems, I sat in this Uptown garden ... I am hoping Nature will eventually put back together what she has torn asunder.