This last summer, I was in one of the rare corners of the world where you can combine morning ancient temple visits with afternoons floating on a calm sea. I enjoy eating Ragu filled pastries. I enjoy convincing myself that I will actually lose weight if I float and digest these Ragu filled pastries at the same time. Here are two weeks of this kind of self delusion. August in Sicily in 2014:
Friday 8th August 2014
I took the early part of the day to decompress. Decompressing makes me think of tires deflating or a plane losing air pressure which is not a good metaphor considering I was about to board a low cost flight that afternoon but it was the only one that sprang to mind. In the line at the airport, a mix of Sicilian men, short stocky and imposing came out of nowhere and began ducking underneath the ribbon like they were doing the "limbo". There were four or five of them, synchronized swimmers, all blissfully cheating together. "It's my vacation," I said to myself. "I am not going to give these guys a hard lesson in Anglo Saxon cue etiquette. And besides, I am going to their part of the world, after all, so maybe I should go easier on the no cutting in front of me in line lesson of being a decent human being." The man ahead of me had greying temples and an oblivious disposition. He would not have understood even if I had tried to explain that in most civilized cultures, people standing around in formations are not doing so for their health. But as I said before, I let it go. He was talking with the others in Italian. I would have to get used to this comportment and language. We stood and waited our turn but Amandine can tell my heart's racing. She has a radar for feeling my pain at moments like this. We let it go and carried on with our plan to have a good time.
In the plane later, the captain calls our attention to Mount Etna exploding outside the left of our windows. Amandine hates volcanoes but loves Sicily. She has been here before. It is strange that she would be this country's ambassador when her worst fear is being sacrificed into melting lava but maybe it is the thrill of being so close to something so dangerous that excites her. I wonder why pilots are totally cool with volcanos in Sicily yet have a problem with volcanos in Iceland. Best not to dwell too much on this minor detail. We arrived in Catania and I knew I had to face my biggest challenge yet: the rental car. Some people's biggest fear is that they will never know true love. My biggest fear is that I will have to rent cars in foreign countries in perpetuity. To each his own demons. Spent what seemed like an eternity in the parking lot trying to make peace with the fiat 500 we had rented. It was a new animal to me. I could not tell if it was automatic or manual. It turned out to be a little of both. Just like an Italian car to not be able to make up its mind. I was okay with both kinds of cars but I at least needed to know what I was driving. Like knowing what sex the woman you take home from the bar is. You might be fine either way but it at least helps to avoid a nasty surprises in the dark. I got it working after a little soul searching and we kept Etna to our right as we circled unfamiliar motorways looking for the exit that would take us to Taormina. I can think of nothing more stressful than driving and navigating. Driving and navigating for me are two skills that God never gave me. Combine them in a foreign country when you are tired and you get a guy who is sweating bullets. Eventually we found the exit as Amandine looked into my eyes and wondered what kind of guy she had decided to spend the rest of her life with. It was soon apparent that we would have to rely on intuition rather than solely on the disembodied voice of a GPS from Amandine's phone. Like all GPS devices, it enjoyed playing with our minds, by telling us to turn left and plunge over a dangerous cliff face. We would have to go it alone, which was my nightmare because we were doing this at night. And secondly because it was all terrain that required serious mountaineering skills. Taormina was a beach resort that on one side, boasted some of the most beautiful beaches in Italy. But to enjoy this luxury, one had to have the skills of someone growing up in Switzerland and going to mountaineering school as driving around here was nothing but steep surfaces and sudden drop offs. Bliss for the uninitiated.
We made it eventually. Only two hours behind schedule. The young woman waiting for us outside looked like she was about to give up and rent out our residence to gypsies. I assumed this was the owner's daughter. No fresh faced thing would greet us so patiently at ten in the evening without the obligation of family pushing her to be nice. She lead us to our bungalow and then swiftly made her exit saying that "we would take care of the rest in the morning". That last piece of information trailed off as she was no doubt heading off to join her boyfriend at a night club somewhere. We decided to eat a late dinner after the challenging drive I had. But it turns out that we were about to walk up a cliff face on a moonlit night. The view reminded me of the movie "The Red Shoes". When the two young lovers spend time together on a summer night in the French Riviera, it is photographed like a dream by Jack Cardiff. We too shared this same sublime moment. After a day spent in a metal box flying through the air, we were suddenly treated to a cliff face looking out at a moon soaked sea. The sight is the reason most people come to places like this and we had it immediately. I don't think any moon is better than a moon over the Mediterannean. It's not like other moons. It is an Italian show off moon. But it is glorious. Down below, we could make out the silhouette of an island framed against the soft gentle night. Even in the dark, the small volcanic outcropping looked friendly. We could see each concrete step as we walked up to the town center at the top, but it got a little hairy in patches. There were also a few dark lit corners when you asked yourself why you risked your time on such adventures. I had just followed the sound of bad Italian pop. Sweaty and exhausted, we were now in Taormina proper and could relax. Tan people were out in force. Couples made a point of being on parade, beaming, like sun filters that had collected energy during the day and now, once the night had begun were beacons of radiant health. Girls wore white sheer clothes to show off their brilliant olive skin. I was immediately jealous of everybody. I knew that everyone was a tourist here but it seemed, strangely, that everyone had been adopted.
We sat down at the Trattoria that hassled us the least. Amandine was quite confident that we would not be taken for a ride this first time out. I was not so sure. I had a bad history with just sitting down at your nearest Pizzeria. I believed in vetting first, of drawing out the good from the bad, of looking at how many customers were drawn to tables. But we had no time for this. And we were famished. I ordered an Italian white. Some local wine to cool the palette which was strange as it came from earth covered in ash. I wondered if we would be able to taste the volcano in it? Everything tasted like Pino Grigio. We ate well enough. Some callamari, some pasta and some tirimisu later, we were back down the moonlit steps again and collapsing on to our double bed. We left the shades open to look at the moon, still working over time. The white light would carry over into my dreams.
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