November 23, 2022 - Sicily, Italy

 I forgot to mention a few things about Mt Vesuvius when I visited Pompeii.  So here’s a picture for reference.

If you draw an imaginary line from one side of the slope upwards and from the other slope upwards from the two peaks that now make up Mt Vesuvius, you’ll have a general idea what the mountain looked like in 79 AD when it had the huge eruption that buried Pompeii.  Mt Vesuvius is still an active volcano.  The last time it erupted was in 1940 and it was pretty small.  Volcanologists/Seismologists believe that Mt Vesuvius will erupt more than likely within the next 20-50 years and they hypothesize that it will be larger than the one that happened in 1940, but can’t say just how big.  One of the world’s most active volcanoes is the one on the Stromboli Island (yes, that is indeed the name of the island!) off the coast of Sicily.  in fact it erupted just last month and has been doing so quite regularly since 1932.  But the volcano that is of most concern to Volcanologists isn’t Mt Vesuvius or the one on Stromboli Island, but rather a submarine volcano off the coast of Ischia Island.  It is 100 times larger than Mt Vesuvius and last erupted in 1302.  Volcanologists believe that it is just a matter of time before it erupts again.  Who knew there were so many active volcanoes in this part of the world?

When I left Sorrento on Tuesday, I had a few options to get to Palermo, Sicily.  One was to fly from Sorrento to Sicily.  Normally flying is cheap in Europe, but the cost for this particular flight was nearly 400 Euros.  I don’t know why.  The other option was to take a train from Sorrento back to Naples and then from Naples to Sicily at a cost of 47 Euros.  That’s the one I chose!  However, it was going to take the entire day and part of the evening.  However, I love train travel and I thought it would be a good opportunity to just relax and see the landscape of Southern Italy.  The night before leaving, I learned that there was also an overnight ferry from Naples to Sicily at a cost of about 100 Euros (if you wanted a sleeping cabin).  I decided to stick with the train.  Overnight the wind and rain picked up with lots of thunder and lightning.  During the train trip the next morning, which goes along the coast almost the entire way and watching the turbulent sea and waves that were at least 10-15 feet high, I was glad I had taken the train.  By midday the skies had cleared and the sea looked much calmer.  And it was at this point that I got a huge surprise!  There is a small strait that goes between mainland Italy and Sicily, Villa Giovanni and Messina.  I assumed one of two scenarios; we’d get off the train, take a ferry and get back on a new train in Messina or that there was some kind of train bridge between the two.  But no, neither of those two scenarios were accurate.  Instead, our entire train was loaded onto a Ferry while we were still on it!  The train was split into two sections and one half was loaded onto the right side of the Ferry and the other half was loaded onto the left side of the Ferry.  The entire process took about 10-15 minutes at most!  It was awesome!  Once we were secured, we were allowed to get off the train and go top side on the ferry or we could just stay on the train.

In Sicily, I spent a really nice leisurely morning doing nothing except watching the rain.  My apartment has a terrace in the front and the back and my host provided an entire refrigerator full of snacks, oranges, water, a bottle of wine and all the ingredients necessary to make my own pasta.  I’m leaving the pasta ingredients for my Thanksgiving Dinner.  But enjoyed a few of the pastry snacks and some of the oranges this morning.  When it stopped raining, I ventured out to see what Palermo had to offer.  It’s basically split in half by the old town and the new town.  In many of the European towns I’ve been in that have an “old town”, I expected narrow streets and wandering alleys.  Not in Palermo, the old streets are quite wide and are only for pedestrians.  I visited the beautiful Cathedral, several other churches, and the Theater.

The Cathedral of Palermo is enormous.

The Archbishop’s Palace was closed today, but will reopen tomorrow.  So, I plan to go back and see it.

I just wandered for a while and came across some really interesting old churches built in the 12th Century.

The Meridian Line that goes through the church

Church of Santa Maria.  It was closed by the time I got there.

Next to it on the right hand side with the three domes on top is the Church of San Cataldo.  Most fascinating church I’ve visited so far.  It is quite small and has more of that Middle Ages feel to it.

For my last stop of the day, I got a tour of the largest theater in Italy and the third largest theater/Opera House in Europe after the Palais Garnier in Paris and the Hof-Opernhaus in Vienna.  It was built in 1871 (the same year our house was built)!  It is 7730 square meters.

This is the actual scaled model version built by the architect to present to the committee for the award-winning design.

This theater is known for its perfect acoustics.  But it is in this domed reception room, known as the Echo Chamber, that the sounds really make a huge noise.  When you go to the center of the room and talk, the returned message sounds like it comes back to you from everywhere.

Tonight’s dinner consisted of a Sicilian Specialty - Pasta con le sarde; this is fresh, salted, and grilled sardines with fennel made into a sauce on top of Pasta.

 

I also had Sarde a beccafico, another Sicilian Specialty, which is a stuffing of sardines, pine nuts, raisins and breadcrumbs.  They were delicious.  

I thought I was a Northern Italian cuisine lover.  But the further south I’ve gone the more I like the food.  Well, they seem to use more fish!