Brad, Author at Sicily Uncovered: An American Traveler's Sicilian Road Trip

Da Alfredo, Lingua, Salina

Brad
Jul 2, 2023

Believe the hype. If you do any bit of research about the Aeolian Islands and Salina in particular, you will come across mention of this restaurant near the beach in Lingua. There is a lot of talk about how they have the best Pane Cunzato and Granite. I’ve been eating a lot of Pane Cunzato here, which is an open or closed sandwich on a focaccia type bread filled with a variety of ingredients, including eggplant, tomatoes, capers, mozzarella, ricotta salata, tuna, anchovies, basil, olive oil and other typically local produce. I have probably been eating more gelato than granite, but on these hot afternoons, a granite definitely helps to cool down. This leads me to Da Alfredo. I walked to Lingua along the road from Santa Marina, which was easy and scenic, about 2km in length with nice overlooks of the harbor. Along the walk I found a few patches of blackberries ready to pick. The village of Lingua opens up with a wide boardwalk and there are several restaurants nearby. Around the corner is the Island’s namesake salt lake, and a lighthouse which on the day I was there, was closed to the public. The beach is rocky with crystal clear water. By the way, the only sandy beach on Salina is the black sand beach of Rinella. Having just had lunch (pane cunzato) in Santa Marina, I was only planning on going in the water, having a granita and walking back to Santa Marina. Then I saw the food coming out. It looked delicious, so I ordered a half of the “Salina” and finished with a anguria (watermelon) and fragola (strawberry) granita. The service was very fast. The pane cunzato made all others I have had, taste like they were doing it wrong. The granita was the best thing I’ve had in Sicily. It is hard to understand how they achieve the rich flavor and creamy texture with only using fresh fruit, sugar and water, but they do. It is incredible. I will need to make a trip back before I leave the island on Monday. If you find yourself in the Aeolians- especially Salina- this place is a must.

The Aeolian Islands
Milazzo is the main port with connections to the Aeolian Islands. Liberty Lines operates hydrofoil ferries to the Aeolian Islands on a daily basis. You can book tickets online, or on their app (as I did), or in person at the port. They do say that if you book online or on the app you still need to check in at the ticket office an hour before departure. To ensure you have a seat, it is probably a good idea to book in advance.

The hydrofoils are very fast, sound and feel more like airplanes when you’re in them. There was no feeling of the ocean or that you might become seasick. Most people choose an island or two as their base to explore the Islands. There are seven significant islands that make up this archipelago, located in the Tyrrhenian Sea just off the northeast coast of Sicily, they include Vulcano, Lipari, Salina, Panarea, Stromboli, Filicudi and Alicudi. I decided to make Salina, known as the “green island” my base and I was happy that I did. I started my stay on Salina at A’Alera in Malfa, where I rented a scooter and spent 3 days exploring Pollara, Leni and Malfa. The rest of my stay on Salina was at the main port of Santa Marina at Le Sette Vele di Riccardo B&B. Malfa is a great little village, but it is very quiet and three days was plenty. It was nice to get to Santa Marina for a little more activity and choices of restaurants and cafes.

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Navigating Sicily’s Roads
During my drive around Sicily, I did my best to take the longer, more scenic route between destinations. I relied heavily on my car’s GPS, which also warned of upcoming speed cameras which are many. One of the things I quickly realized about GPS however, was that it didn’t always take into consideration whether I was supposed to be driving on a particular road. Many cities and small towns have Limited Traffic Zones ZTLs, for which your license plate needs to be registered in order to enter. I was aware of this and able to navigate around them. So rely on GPS but also keep your eyes open and read signs. GPS also lead me down a dead end alley at one point in Chiaramonte Gulfi- there was a sign but I didn’t understand what it meant until afterwards (see below).

There are only two roads that have tolls as far as I know in Sicily, the A18 and A20 Autostradas. I was able to avoid using these until it was time to go from Taormina to Milazzo. I considered a longer non-toll route but it was through the mountains and would have taken 2hr 30m instead of the 1h 15min. That brings up another thing I found useful, was previewing my route on Google Maps Street View the night before. You can drop a look along the route and ensure that you will be traveling good roads, or check out an intersection in advance that may be confusing. Driving in Sicily is NOT hard and it is really the only way to enjoy the countryside. I read all the doomsday warnings about not renting a car and how crazy the Sicilian drivers are. It was intimidating but once you get out there and start mixing it up with rest of the traffic you will see it is not a big deal. The only thing that really irritated me was the Sicilian habit of tailgating. Even when you are exceeding the speed limit and there is someone in front of you, there is inevitably some jackass 2 feet off your bumper.

The rental car companies do not provide transponders, so you will have to pay as you go on the toll roads. This added a little stress because I wanted to make sure I didn’t get in the wrong lane at a toll booth and end up meeting an Italian police officer. The systems is simple- take a ticket when you enter the toll road and pay with cash or card when you exit. I found that even the toll booths that were marked as occupied by a person were now self-paying, but there was a button to press if you needed assistance (prepare for the line of cars behind you to not be happy if you do this). To simplify, look for the white signs. There will be a little picture of a person in a car reaching out the window. The yellow signs are for Telepass, and there are also some lanes that have yellow and white but I would avoid these too because you may have an impatient Telepass person behind you. You can pay with bills, coins or card. There is a little basket that pops out and you can put coins in it. Since I had a pocket full of coins, I just dumped a handful in the basket and it gave me back what I overpaid (this is faster than trying to count out coins).

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Taormina: Stunningly beautiful and a fast walker’s nightmare
Taormina gets all the press for its beautiful hillside village, the public gardens (outstanding), Teatro Antico, Isola Bella and the list goes on. Unfortunately, it is long past discovered and the main pedestrian Via Umberto felt more like a subway platform at rush hour than a street turned sidewalk. As someone who likes to walk fast even if I have no idea where I’m going, this was the first place I found myself mumbling under my breath at tourists standing in the middle of the street, looking at their phones, eating ice cream, and generally looking confused. It is also the first place in Sicily that I’ve seen anyone carve out the inside of their pizza to discard the crust. It shouldn’t bother me, but it does. I stayed three nights at Hotel Casa Adele, which was a perfect location, reasonably priced, clean and new with good service.

Taormina served its purpose for me as a base to explore Mt. Etna Nord. Would I stay here again? Maybe in the off season. I just can’t handle the Disneyland type crowds and tour buses.

The 69th Annual Taormina Film Festival happened to be happening during my stay. Since Teatro Antico was one of their venues, it was going to be impossible to see it without buying a ticket to one of the shows. Indiana Jones And The Dial of Destiny happened to be playing on the night that made the most sense for me, my last night in Taormina. The show was supposed to start at 9 and I figured I’d be back at the hotel in bed by midnight so I could get up early and drive to the Port of Milazzo to catch the Ferry to the Aeolian Islands. By 10:15 the show had not yet started, and with no explanation or acknowledgment from the venue, the crowd started to boo and yell “andiamo!” and “respetto!” It was music to my ears. Harrisson Ford was finally introduced and the first thing he did was apologize, and say he was embarrassed. He cut his talking short so we could get on with the film. Seemed like a genuine, humble person. As for the movie- I left about an hour into it because it was getting late and I didn’t want to deal with the exiting mob at 1 AM.

In a few days I will be posting more about the food I encountered, and the restaurants I visited. One of the things I have been on the lookout for during my trip was Scacciata. I have found it in Melilli at L’Antico Fornaio di Biagio & Figli and in Taormina at L’Arco. I’ve included some photos of L’Arco’s below. It was a bit heavier than the one found in Melilli, but was my go to place for afternoon and evening snacks. Other photos include Bella Isola and the public gardens.

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Etna Nord
What an experience. The photos and description will not do it justice. I used Guide Vulcanologiche Etna Nord for my trek to the northeast summit crater of Mt. Etna. The guides Daniele and Marco were fantastic and I cannot recommend their service enough if you are considering treks on Mt. Etna. It was without question, the most impressive outdoor experience I have ever had.

Traveling from my accommodations in Taormina (more on that later), I drove on the twisting winding mountain roads leading to the rendezvous point at Chiosco Bar Etna Nord in Linguaglossa. In the winter, there is a small ski resort that operates a few lifts from this location.

We rode an offroad vehicle to approximately 2800m and then hiked to the summit craters at about 3300m. Our time at the summit was short, and for as excited as I was to get there, I was also excited and anxious to leave. It is a cold, windy, barren, and inhospitable land with plumes of gas that change direction at a moment’s notice. Our vulcanologist guide explained the differences in gas color, and what they mean to simplify: white=good; blue=bad and time to go, along with what the absence of gas means (the main crater means that it has sealed off and pressure is building underneath= time to go). We were caught in a few cross wind plumes of gas and briefly experienced the inability to breathe. Though I wasn’t able to capture on video, there was one audible eruption that shook the ground under our feet as we were standing within a football field of the center of the crater. The colors of the different minerals, and chemical reactions ongoing were beautiful. The odor was of sulfur but not oppressively so.

We hiked on foot all the way from the summit to our beginning point at Chiosco Bar (1800m). We hiked through snow, loose pyroclastic ash and sand and eventually the more stable footing of the ski resort. The walk down itself was an experience, looking at the birds flying above, and the progression of vegetation from absolutely nothing to mature forest in a matter of a couple hundred vertical feet.

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Siracusa and Ortigia
I decided to stay on Ortigia, which is a small, densely populated island section of the city connected by bridges, with hundreds of great restaurants, cafes and shops. My hotel was located in a ZTL, and I anticipated parking would be difficult, so I decided to pay 25 Euro a day for valet parking. This is one thing I wouldn’t do again after having spent several days walking and getting to know the city. You can (easily) park at the Parcheggio Telete for 15 Euro for 24 hours. My valet service wanted an hour notice to bring me my car, which was inconvenient, and because of this, I basically decided to just not use my car or drive to areas beyond walking distance during my stay. It was nice to be off the road, and it forced me to focus on the city, which I enjoyed. Parcheggio Telete is on Ortigia at the far end of the famous street market, and my favorite (next to the bone chilling abandoned Bourbon prison (Carcere Borbonico circa 1834).

Aside from ancestral research and exploring the island of Sicily, one of the things I wanted to do was learn mor about Sicilian cuisine. It is quite different than the mainland of Italy, and has a heavy focus on fish. I was fortunate to find a local woman named Teresa Zimmitti who offers tours of the Ortigia market and cooking classes at her home. She walked me through the market, exchanging banter in Italian with the shop owners, and explaining how she chooses and uses the variety of items available from fresh vegetables, meats, cheeses, fish, dried herbs, nuts, preservatives and sweets. After we picked up the items needed for our cooking class, she drove me to her home where we prepared a wonderful lunch, including: veal meatballs, stuffed squid, pumpkin gnocchi, and eggplant parmigiana (I think I’m going to start saying aubergine, because it sounds better). I think my gnocchi technique still needs work, as Teresa discarded several of my creations before posting a photo to her Instagram page. To finish off lunch, Teresa allowed me to sample her homemade liquore including: Cedar (a popular citrus here which is a close relative of the lemon), Cinnamon, Limone, and Mandarin. I learned a lot and came home with a folder full of other recipes to try. Turns out Teresa’s family is also from Melilli and she has relatives in Middletown. Small world. So if you find yourself in Siracusa and would like a local guide to walk you through the market or show you authentic Sicilian cooking, look Teresa up on Instagram, Google or AirBNB.

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Melilli
119 years, 2 months and 5 days after Giuseppe first arrived in New York on the S.S. Citta di Tornio, I walked through the streets of his and Giuseppa’s hometown of Melilli yesterday. It was a strange feeling driving into the town our grandfather had talked about but never been himself. I remember as a child trying to find it looking at a globe, and then an encyclopedia and having no luck. It was always somewhat of a mystery, though we knew it existed as the sister city of Middletown, CT which had a large population of Sicilians from Melilli.

Approaching Melilli, the rolling agricultural lands outside of Chiaramonte Gulfi had changed to a mix of woodland, farmland and rocky hillsides with scrub. Olive trees, while still abundant were not as concentrated as they had been. The focus of the eastern skyline was now Mount Etna, visibly spouting steam. I had set my GPS to Basilica San Sebastiano, Melilli but in the excitement of arriving in town, took the first parking spot I saw, which was about .3 miles from San Sebastiano’s. My first impression was that it was very clean, similar to Enna. My second was, “where is everyone?”. The streets were quiet, and most of the shops were closed….

I will continue adding to this post and the photos

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Chiaramonte Gulfi
Land of olives. I will update this post shortly.

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Enna
Aside from the people tailgating me while I’m going 20kph over the speed limit, one of the things that is jarring as an American tourist is the amount of trash that you see on roadsides and at traffic stops. I stopped for a break from driving in Enna because it was approximately half way between Agrigento and my next stop in Chiaramonte Gulfi, though not the most direct route. Enna was a welcome change and was extremely clean and well kept. The hilltop medieval village clings almost impossibly to the side of this mountain. There are signs for winter travel regarding snow chains. It is apparently Italy’s highest provincial capital at 3,054 feet. The views are spectacular and the main attraction seems to be Castello di Lombardia. There probably isn’t enough for an extended stay, but 3-4 hours was a nice visit.

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