Sicily Blog

 It's already June, a beautiful warm month in Provo! I've enjoyed celebrating family graduations, birthdays, and other activities...

Celebrating Ming Lu's 17th birthday at Yamata restaurant

       Cousins Cordelia, Lucie and Evie at activity in Provo Canyon

     Grandson Nick de Schweinitz's Herriman HS graduation

Fernanda, Nick, Evie, Marc, Simon, (Hannah missing) de Schweinitz

    The hills are green again around Rock Canyon from MTC & home

I was privileged to spend a week on a Gate 1 tour in Sicily, and 2 weeks in England (Pandemic travel credit), a good respite from all the terrible news around the world. 

Sicily is little bigger than Vermont, with about 5,000,000 people and 650 miles of coastline. It is quite a melting pot. Greeks defeated Carthagians and other earlier inhabitants in 480 BC, Romans defeated Greeks in 212 BC; after 3 centuries of long-distance Byzantine rule African Arabs invaded in 827 AD, took and transformed Palermo as it istoday and brought infrastructure to rural Sicily 4 years later. Norman Crusader Roger de Hautville took Sicily at the end of the 11th century and slowly changed Sicily from an eastern to a western society. Sicilians got rid of the French in 1282, they invited Pedro of Aragon, Spain to become their king. Spain dominated for 500 years. After several popular revolts, the socialist Garibaldi, with the aid of Sicilian Redshirts, took the island in 1860, and convinced the peasant class to vote for Italian unification. Poverty forced mass immigration to the Americas in the late 1800's and early 1900's.In 1908 an earthquake killed 70,000 and leveled 90% of Messina. Another in 1968 leveled many villages. Such a history makes for an interesting island.

Here are very few of the highlights.

I love the new, old and everything in between of the many cultutres that have made Sicily so fascinating!

Our local guide shows the symbol of Sicily, whose map looks like a 3-legged "character"

Monreale Cathedrale with 12th century Byzantine mosaics

Our wonderful guide Fortuna Gallo was fun and often bought us Sicilian treats, such as ricotta cream-filled fried cannoli after our visit to the famous Norman cathedral Monreale.

The Palermo Cathedral is amazing. Despite the first 2 days of rain, we saw a lot.

           Cefalu is east of Palermo along the north "green"coast

Sicily is very agricultural. The Greeks brought olives and grapes, the Arabs, citrus, sugar cane, dates, pistachios, flax, cotton and mulberries; the Spanish, tomatoes, potatoes and prickly pear cactus. 

Erice (western province Trapani, northwest tip of Sicily) with Norman castle, in area sacred to Venus. Built on Roman and Phoenician ruins.

Salt was an important product. Windmills still intact in les Salines. Salt was important in preservation of fish.

Agrigento (on south central coast) aligned with Greeks at Syracuse, had a population of about 200,000, until defeated by Rome in 261 BC 

Temple of Concord (above) and Temple of Hercules (from around 500 BC), in Valley of the Temples, form part of the largest archaeological site outside Rome and Greece. Used later as a Christian church.

The plains around Mount Etna (largest in Europe, and one of the most active volcano) are extremely fertile. Fruit, honey, wine, cheese.

Etna, considered a "gentle" volcano, has about 3005 craters on north and south slopes which are weaker, with pressure let off frequently (the evening after we visited it started spewing black smoke), so is not as devastating as Mount Vesuvius. Eruptions take place when plates slip over each other, and release magnum through fissures. It takes years for grass to start growing in the lava fields. The last major eruprion occurred in 2001-2.

One of the icons of Sicily is a Turkish "Moro" man's head. In the 10th century, when a Sicilian girl, who was in love with him, found he had another wife and family, she chopped off his head. She planted basil in it, which grew very well. It is a reminder not to get involved with strange men!. 

Taormina was founded in 304 BC as a (Greek) colony of Syracuse, falling first to Romans, then Arabs, then Normans and Spanish. 

The Greek theater (built in the 3rd c. BC) was refurbished by the Romans in 1st century AD.The Romans sacrificed some of the seats and part of the stage to make a circular arena to accommodate gladiator games. The accoustics and view are spectacular.

Taormina, the upper town, in the province of Catania, is the "Capri" of Sicily, and was formed from volcanic eruptions of Etna 500,000 years ago, and lies close to Messina which is just a few miles off the mainland of Italy, connected by ferry.

I love Sicilian music with typical instruments, especially the guitar.

Syracuse, more powerful than Athens, until Romans distracted the Greeks. These Christian tombs are above the very intact theater.

"New" Syracuse has a population of about 500,00, and is a beautiful city on the east coast of Sicily

Piazza Armerina (town on hill below), has intricate and well preserved beautiful Roman mosaics, baths, chambers, meeting halls at the famous Roman Villa del Casale. It may have been a way station on a navigable river on the way to Agrigento.Women also exercised in the gyms.

Palermo port and Teatro Massimo where I saw "Cenere," a "play" about the Mafia court case where 350 mafiosi were convicted in the late 1980's, as a result of which 2 judges were murdered in 1992. "Boss of Bosses" Salvatore "Toto" Rino was finally convicted of arranging the murders. Sicilians took justice into their own hands after centuries of foreign domination, but today their is little problem.

Except for testing positive for covid (many of us) the last day, we had a great trip. For MANY more photos, checkout the link to my album:

https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipMkKCrwyniC6aXg70JdTcbyFbJigo08WtYhNMqI

I have 2 separate albums for England, where I visited my daughter and her English husband after Sicily, with the following link if you are interested:

https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipNhNDNFZ2mW6t9F4dp7Qu9vNfeMTSIXDBW8W6eW

https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipOq-tk2QZ9aoCu87BB0XRM7F2V3am3aYVoOGGFN

(Maybe I will make a short(!) blog of these)