Hello,
Since I last posted I’ve gone and done some more touristy things, visiting Taormina and the Golle Dell’Alcantara, as well as more general driving around stuff, and thus, here are some photos and explanations of the interest piquing or dumb things I see. Hooray!
This stuff doesn’t look that visually spectacular, but is pretty tasty. The stuff in the plastic stuff is Granita Limona, which is like a sweet sorbet made out o’ real lemons, and the bread is Brioce, a vaguely sweet bread that you rip up and dip into your granita, which creates a delicious, flavour sensation. Also available in Fragola, or Strawberry.
I previously pointed out that Sicily is basically a gigantic mountain. What I didn’t explain is that it is a mountain entirely made out of marble. And as such, this stuff is all over in house building. It’s said that in Sicily you’re poor if you’ve got marble floors, and rich if you have wood, which is reasonably rare in sicily, or at least growing on such steep ground it’s pretty difficult to harvest. What you see here are bits of marble, which have been chucked in the sea for some reason (an example of how valuable marble is here) and has been rounded off by the waves slightly. And now they hold down the tablecloth so it doesn’t blow away. Marble! Sicily has too much of it.
The next few photos are from a villa near our house, which upon the death of it’s original owners, was gifted to the state and became a public park/function area of sorts. (This is a bit of a theme of this post. State owned villas. What a theme.)
A little shot of the entrance of the house. The tree cover makes it hard to get a reasonable shot of it.
This is a lil cemetery for all the dogs of the of the houses original generations of owners. I know looking at a graveyard is always gonna be fairly depressing, but these guys clearly loved their dogs, so it’s quite lovely in a way.
There are these lovely vine covered walkways around the property. Where the original owners used to take their dogs for an evening walk. You see they were very dog-centric. Of which I approve heartily.
Hey look, a cork tree. You just hack bits off em. And use em as corks, who knew the process was so simple.
Finally, photographic evidence of a weird fact of Sicily: The place is fuckin’ covered in Eucalypts. In digging for why this is so, I’ve come up with a few answers. In a couple of places in Europe, Eucalypts have been used In low, marshy areas, to combat mosquito-spread malaria, by draining away surface water. I’ve tentatively heard that it was Mussolini who introduced them for this purpose. However they’re also planted on steep, never-gonna-be-marshy hillsides near roads all around here. My guess is, due to their got shallow, spreading root systems which suck up moisture, they’re using them to prevent Sicily’s favourite past time: having major roads blocked by sudden rockslides. Though this is only speculation, maybe they just love Eucalypts!? Who knows.
And here is the Sicilian Loch dog! This dog had sweet mismatched-colored eyes, but when I tried to photograph him, he fled under the nearby shrub. Next time, Siciliano Cane Della Loch.
And now more touristy photos from my trip. Here’s a few shots of Gole Dell’Alcantara, which is a little ravine in the river Alcantara formed by a lava flow from Etna, Sicily’s eterna-pissed, city crushing volcano, flowing across the river. The water caused the lava to cool quickly and crystallise, so where the water cuts a ravine, you get these geometric formations on the walls. Also, the water comes out of the ravine super cold, and dorky tourists like myself stand in it and giggle. Here are some shotsssssss.
Swoosh! The River Alcantara.
Another scenic photo ruined by the liberal application of hazard tape, also my blurry photography. Note the formations in the rock. Truly geologists everywhere having a ragin’ boner about it, maybe? Who knows.
Spotted in the Gole Dell’Alcantara gift shop. Statues of saints, crudely covered in glitter are the shonkiest merchandise of Sicilian gift shoppery. Pictured is Padre Pio, the Elvis of Italian sainthood. Top tip: Try not to look disappointed if you get something like this as a gift. It would only hurt us both. Instead of just you.
And finally, to Taomina. Taomina is Sicily’s most triumphant hey-look-an-inhospitable-cliff-top-gonna-build-a-city-thar. It’s fullo buildings that pre-date Christ, and specialises in being equal parts delightful and snooty.
In more recent history, around 1900, one of Europes classiest holiday spots, attracting the likes Oscar Wilde, Nitzche and Russian Tzar Nicholas II n’ family. Before that, it was re-captured back and forth between the Greeks and Romans, and a whole pile of things happened, probably. I guess if you are ultra-piqued you can follow this up with Wikipedia.
Today it’s a bit of a tourist trap, but a lot of it’s upper-classiness remains. Commence some photossss.
Taomina’s streets. Classy as heck.
It is full of delightful little laneways..
…and Italy’s narrowest street. Pretty narrow, right.
Some shots of the Greek amphitheatre which is the main ruin of Taomina. You can see from this shot, the original stone and concrete building created by the Greeks, has been spitefully Bricked over by the Brick preferring’ romans, when they recaptured it.
A shot of the theatre, with Taomina in the background. The wooden stage you can see owes to the fact they’re still doing performances and concerts there today.
Another sight of Taomina is another donated to the state Villa, originally the property of an English lady what married some Sicilian dude. The place takes up 3 hectares of Taormina’s most prime land, and is now apparently priceless, given that land in Taomina now goes for about 22,000 Euros per square meter. But now it’s a lovely park we can walk around, for exactly no money.
More evidence of Sicily’s love of poor building placement.
The Paladini, or Paladins, the holy Knights of France, as interpreted by Italian storytelling. Nowadays they fuel a rampant puppet manufacturing industry. They’re pretty neat. These are some big ones!
And finally, some pimped out Carts. These are one of Sicily’s main bags, and actually a national symbol. Pimpin’ out carts, and riding them around at festivals, looking smug. These carts are usually incredibly ornate, in carving, painting and usually both. I will probably see more of such carts in my trip! Stay tuned, for more ornate cart action.
And that’s that for today! It seems that I’m having about 10 more pictures in each post than the previous, So by the end of my trip, I’m sure you’ll be attempting to open the page, then punching your monitor off the table in frustration. We can only hope.
Hello,
Since I last posted I’ve gone and done some more touristy things, visiting Taormina and the Golle Dell’Alcantara, as well as more general driving around stuff, and thus, here are some photos and explanations of the interest piquing or dumb things I see. Hooray!
This stuff doesn’t look that visually spectacular, but is pretty tasty. The stuff in the plastic stuff is Granita Limona, which is like a sweet sorbet made out o’ real lemons, and the bread is Brioce, a vaguely sweet bread that you rip up and dip into your granita, which creates a delicious, flavour sensation. Also available in Fragola, or Strawberry.
I previously pointed out that Sicily is basically a gigantic mountain. What I didn’t explain is that it is a mountain entirely made out of marble. And as such, this stuff is all over in house building. It’s said that in Sicily you’re poor if you’ve got marble floors, and rich if you have wood, which is reasonably rare in sicily, or at least growing on such steep ground it’s pretty difficult to harvest. What you see here are bits of marble, which have been chucked in the sea for some reason (an example of how valuable marble is here) and has been rounded off by the waves slightly. And now they hold down the tablecloth so it doesn’t blow away. Marble! Sicily has too much of it.
One of my Aunt’s cats. My Aunts cats do not like me! Or anyone but my Aunt.
The next few photos are from a villa near our house, which upon the death of it’s original owners, was gifted to the state and became a public park/function area of sorts. (This is a bit of a theme of this post. State owned villas. What a theme.)
A little shot of the entrance of the house. The tree cover makes it hard to get a reasonable shot of how grand the house is.
This is a lil cemetery for all the dogs of the of the houses original generations of owners. I know looking at a graveyard is always gonna be fairly depressing, but these guys clearly loved their dogs, so it’s quite lovely in a way.
There are these lovely vine covered walkways around the property. Where the original owners used to take their dogs for an evening walk. You see they were very dog-centric. Of which I approve heartily.
Hey look, a cork tree. You just hack bits off em. And use em as corks, who knew the process was so simple.
Finally, photographic evidence of a weird fact of Sicily: The place is fuckin’ covered in Eucalypts. In digging for why this is so, I’ve come up with a few answers. In a couple of places in Europe, Eucalypts have been used In low, marshy areas, to combat mosquito-spread malaria, by draining away surface water. I’ve tentatively heard that it was Mussolini who introduced them for this purpose. However they’re also planted on steep, never-gonna-be-marshy hillsides near roads all around here. My guess is, due to their got shallow, spreading root systems which suck up moisture, they’re using them to prevent Sicily’s favourite past time: having major roads blocked by sudden rockslides. Though this is only speculation, maybe they just love Eucalypts!? Who knows.
And here is the Sicilian Loch dog! This dog had sweet mismatched-colored eyes, but when I tried to photograph him, he fled under the nearby shrub. Next time, Siciliano Cane Della Loch.
And now more touristy photos from my trip. Here’s a few shots of Gole Dell’Alcantara, which is a little ravine in the river Alcantara formed by a lava flow from Etna, Sicily’s eterna-pissed, city crushing volcano, flowing across the river. The water caused the lava to cool quickly and crystallise, so where the water cuts a ravine, you get these geometric formations on the walls. Also, the water comes out of the ravine super cold, and dorky tourists like myself stand in it and giggle. Here are some shotsssssss.
Swoosh! The River Alcantara.
Another scenic photo ruined by the liberal application of hazard tape, also my blurry photography. Note the formations in the rock. Truly geologists everywhere having a ragin’ boner about it, maybe? Probably.
Spotted in the Gole Dell’Alcantara gift shop. Statues of saints, crudely covered in glitter are the shonkiest merchandise of Sicilian gift shoppery. Pictured is Padre Pio, the Elvis of Italian sainthood. Top tip: Try not to look disappointed if you get something like this as a gift. It would only hurt us both. Instead of just you.
And finally, to Taomina. Taomina is Sicily’s most triumphant hey-look-an-inhospitable-cliff-top-gonna-build-a-city-thar. It’s fullo buildings that pre-date Christ, and specialises in being equal parts delightful and snooty.
In more recent history, around 1900 or so, this was one of Europes classiest holiday spots, attracting the likes of Oscar Wilde, Nitzche and Russian Tzar Nicholas II n’ family. Before that, it was re-captured back and forth between the Greeks and Romans, and a whole pile of things happened, probably. I guess if you are ultra-piqued you can follow this up with Wikipedia.
Today it’s a bit of a tourist trap, but a lot of it’s upper-classiness remains. Commence some photossss.
Taomina’s streets. Classy as heck.
It is full of delightful little laneways..
…and Italy’s narrowest street. Pretty narrow, right.
Some shots of the Greek amphitheatre which is the main ruin of Taomina. You can see from this shot, the original stone and concrete building created by the Greeks, has been spitefully Bricked over by the Brick preferring’ romans, when they recaptured it.
A shot of the theatre, with Taomina in the background. The wooden stage you can see owes to the fact they’re still doing performances and concerts there today.
Another sight of Taomina is another donated to the state Villa, originally the property of an English lady what married some Sicilian dude. The place takes up 3 hectares of Taormina’s most prime land, and is now apparently priceless, given that land in Taomina now goes for about 22,000 Euros per square meter. But now it’s a lovely park we can walk around, for exactly no money.
More evidence of Sicily’s love of poor building placement.
The Paladini, or Paladins, the holy Knights of France, as interpreted by Italian storytelling. Nowadays they fuel a rampant puppet manufacturing industry. They’re pretty neat. These are some big ones!
And finally, some pimped out Carts. These are one of Sicily’s main bags, and actually a national symbol. Pimpin’ out carts, and riding them around at festivals, looking smug. These carts are usually incredibly ornate, in carving, painting and usually both. I will probably see more of such carts in my trip! Stay tuned, for more ornate cart action.
And that’s that for today! It seems that I’m having about 10 more pictures in each post than the previous, So by the end of my trip, I’m sure you’ll be attempting to open the page, then punching your monitor off the table in frustration. We can only hope.
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Hello,
I am severely loving this!
Go forth, John, that I may live vicariously through you.
Thanks Jess! Also, you totally got to the post before I could fix some of the spelling errors and broken link! If this blog were a videogame, I guess you’d get an achievement for that.
Wow, I didn’t realise you went to Sicily to play CS_Italy!
Also, Pics of odd shaped rock formations will be scrutinised by leah, just so you know.
This blog is both educational and visually appealing! Sicily sounds like a great place to be. I was particularly chuffed with your cork tree, and your research into Eucalypts!
I had a similar quest, upon discovering black swans painted in medieval cathedrals in England I was peturbed because I thought they were native to WA! So how did they get them? Did they just make them up and later they were true for reals? It is a mystery!
Keep on blogging! It is great!
Looking smug on a cart seems awesome!