These creative pieces reflect a recent trip made to Sicily (5-12 September 2023) undertaken with my wife Olena, sister Rosanna and nieces Sara & Paola. The trip began in Giardini Naxos and encompassed visits to Enna, Agrigento, Ragusa, Syracuse, Aci Castello, and back to Giardini Naxos with a night visit to Taormina. 

Here is our journey in seven pieces of writing to match seven days in ‘La Sicilia Bella e Romantica’! 

Contrast is all
And it comes at close-to-coast Agrigento
With a pictorial memento or ten of Scala dei Turchi
Safely stored for posterity and social media
In circles of Instagrammatic splendour
Each trying to outdo t’other
In the passing on of each shared and liked image
………for friend upon friends’ sake (never foe – oh no!)
And aren’t they oh-so-photogenic, those white strata cliffs
Smooth at sunset when King Crimson reigns on nature’s
Polychromatic scale – saffron, magenta-maroon, lilac, blood orange,
Shocking pink tipping those scales of visual glory to a ‘ten’ in the ‘che bello’ stakes!
Then there go those sky blue & purple Ekokayaks floating serenely in twilit reflections,
Lotus eaters dotted around like ants on a giant meringue in the distance
Where those cliffs meet the sea of many (reflected) colours.
In the distance on sandy beaches designer dogs (anthropomorphised), gay couples, random Americans, tour-bus Japanese stamp their presence on this place like a centrifugal
Force of Nature – ‘TRAMONTO’ – and humans morph into beaming sentinels of pleasure
At the slow burn of beauty ignited by the diurnal cycle.

AKRAGAS: Grecian for Agrigento as they sought to colonize from across the Ionian Sea,
The name of the local football club at its ‘floodlights-less’ stadium (‘tutto allo stadio!’)
Where fruit stalls sprout and grow like mushrooms in the sunshiney rain!
And in those stalls, what riches! Succulent homegrown mangoes, juicy peaches
The size of softballs, grapes that Aphrodite herself would devour pips and all!
Persephone pomegranates grown to make mouths water! Prices made to make those mouths
Open and fall! Ingredients for ingenious salads alla Siciliana, abundant, mutlifarious –
Radicchio, melon, rucola, almond (fresh from trees that criss-cross the island north to south,
East to west), local cheeses, sundried tomatoes – no such thing as ‘food miles’
In this place of thinkers and writers, aristocrats and gangsters…….
……..Agrigento, the gift that keeps giving and the wonders of The Valley of the Temples
Touches and tickles the senses of tourists and visitors from all corners of the globe.
He poses before these perfectly preserved Greek Palladian symbols of an age long gone
When ‘man-on-man’ was the highest form of love there was. And it was celebrated
Thereon and within the very red sandstone structures on these hills which modern man
Venerates to the very heavens and back…..he sees it all….he absorbs it all….a human sponge
…..drunk on the beauty which surrounds……

And around the ancient site spring the accutrements of an expanding tourist trade –
Granité stalls, expensive cafés, shuttle buggies, souvenir shops, extensive, expansive and not-so-Expensive car parking, an epidemic of info boards in three languages and offshoots –
A one-room daVinci exhibition in a decorous villetta once owned by a professional soldier and
Amateur archaeologist named Hardcastle – his bronze lifelike bust on a plinth at the head
Of two aesthetically-pleasing stairwells leading up to the entrance – perhaps the single
Most influential man in the evolution of the site as it appears today – Praise Be His Name
And Preservation Actions!!
Then there is a small boxed facility – not unlike an outdoor toilet in shape and appearance –
Containing discovered-in-the-sea Grecian urns, coins and other artefacts arranged and mounted
In the name of a popular Sicilian oceanographer who died young.

On site there is cappuccino, granité al limone to consume, there are the distinctive twist horn goats
To admire, now securely corralled after once roaming and weaving inside and around temple
And pillar. There is a ‘race’ in an electric shuttle buggy from the far western reaches
To the main entrance, pilota operating the machinery as though at F1 Monza.
He is told as we get in “Palermo!” And appreciates the joke, as from behind dark glasses he replies,
“Domani!”

At the entrance car park while alongside a huge, well-packed long-distance BMW motorbike
From Slovenia, a billowing pall of thick black smoke rises in the distance
Where ‘the wall’ of cityscape modernity rests in contrasting functionality.
There is the insistent sound of fire engines. The contrast is complete.

HOW WE LOVED IT ALL*HOW WE ABSORBED IT ALL*HOW WE MARVELLED AT IT ALL*

>Parco Valle dei Templi Agrigento>Villa Hardcastle>The Garden Of The Righteous Of The World;Fridtjof Nansen, Jacob e Elizabeth Kunzler, Martiri Militari dell’Arma dei Carabinieri periti nell’ eccidio delle Fosse Ardeatine 1944>Capra Girgentana> Sapori di Sicilia, via Cesare Battisti, 20 – Agrigento and their amazing veggie salads!>Provolone flavour extra creamy ice cream@’Le Cuspedi’ gelateria>The jovial caretaker of Il Castello Normanno’, Aci castello Terra dei Ciclopi in need of a ‘dopo pranzo’ kiss!>limone granité limone spremuta limone di etna(verde)>’#si lu giovani uulissi e lu vecchiu putissi, nun ci fussi cosa ca nun si facissi#recital of PROVERBI SICILIANI by two young waitrons (Agrigento) + dodgy English translation>”you need to swim to sit there” said by mine host as we perch in the open terrasseby the bubbling nocturnal surf of the Ionian Sea, ‘Dromedario’, Giardini-Naxos>Funivia di Taormina, salta e discess/up&down; state-of-the-art enclosed cable cars (Austrian – 10euro a throw!)>Basilica Collegata San Sebastiano relics&vestments museo, and the ‘molto divertente’ messagio, Acireale>The Sicilian grown mangoes and avocados at an Acireale market stall, the former optimum in flavour, the latter rotten!>’Bambú’ lido and the three circular jacuzzi pools, Giardini-Naxos>Parco Archeologico della Neapolis, Siricusa>On the hunt for pale green cassata cake, Naxos seafront by night>The jetstream of toddler vomit while on that hunt>Comune di Giardino-Naxos Assessorato ai beni culturali>Tempietto Olimpiadi Roma 1960>Pasta Norma con pezzi di milansane>The ‘rainbow layer cake’ sky over the station building at Agrigento Centrale, Centro Storico>The floribunda bouquets of aromatic fresh basil shooting out of wooden crates at via Cesare Battisti pedestrian stairwell>MSC Divina cruise liner viewing at ‘L’isola Senzo Tempo’, Ortigia>Same day ristorante ‘commedia del arte’ amongst the waiters at Blu Heaven, Ragusa & Aranblu, LargoPorta Marina, Siracusa>Un altro (PROVERBE SICILIANE)
#unni a gaddina canta e u gaddru taci chidda é casa ca nun c’é paci#>Tiny ‘pezzi di cassata’ heavenly melt-in-the-mouth pasticcerie to die for, Pasticceria Minotauro Taormina>Teatro dei Pupi, Ortigia, Siracusa – Orlando&Rolando puppet knights in perennial conflict>Ortigia’s marine aura – huge breakers crashing up against the fortified sea wall;two enormous canopied&
monumental trees – Moreton Bay fig(10m tall), Banyan(9,5m tall) beside Giardino Aretusa&Aquarium>The garden terrasse Agrigento B&B/diner/takeway with twitchy waiters quick to whip away your plate – exit breadsticks stage left!!>The flip side view, Sicilia Brutta of oil refinery after oil refinery, oil tanker after oil tanker at Gela>”So is a native of Gela a gelato/a?”>Frenzied picture takers of the world’s biggest cannolo filled with poppy seed, ricotta and Modica ciocollata, and all those tourists go ‘snap snap snap happy! In Siracusa-Ortigia by night>In the bay at Naxos luxury yachts mix with Dutch minor royalty vessels>A battery-powered FS ferry crosses the Messina Straits from Calabria> A jet-black hulled super-yacht with steepling fibreglass masts lies anchored off Agrigento Marina carrying the North Macedonian flag>And everywhere compact decorative (ancient Greek battle scene motifed) ‘PIAGGIOS’ lie in wait for the impressionable, invariably US or UK, tourist in search of an overpriced tour or three>At diners and fast food takeway outlets there is ragout arancini to tempt the taste buds aplenty (washed down with Etna wines); for veggies there is porcini&mozzarella variations on a theme>gaily dressed gay couples parade in all their finery up in Taormina by night and down in Naxos by day, a legacy of the Ancient Greek historical connection>30+road tunnels to negotiate via Italo maroon bus, Messina to Naxos(1hr)>A white piano in purple light, behind sits a 60-something ‘chanson’ performer doing covers of old San Remo favourites, Naxos Lido’s answer to Elton John!>On the way to the headland turn of the coast a whole host of underlit Testa Ceramica Siciliana (Moor Heads) Caltagirone Frutta Doppia, male & female punctuate the concourse where ferries rest by night>Enna and across the gorge the 5th century Byzantine village resting on promentories, decorous subjects for landscape pictures, we oblige!>And to cap it all, there is ETNA overseeing all in a kind of total harmony that is timeless>Steam curling languorously from the crack at the top deceptively benign for now……..

HOW WE LOVED IT ALL*HOW WE ABSORBED IT ALL*HOW WE MARVELLED AT IT ALL*

CANTO SETTE

The time had come
Seven days Seven nights
The sum total of our fun
‘Apartment Four’ to vacate#
Garden, ground floor solid state
Two plusses on the review ratings score
Nice new rugs on the floor
‘Booking.com’ – can’t ask for more!

On our walk
To catch our bus
A last view of Etna
Steam rising
A volcanic kettle on the boil!
My memento mori?
Seven grey-black rocks
Holed like a Swiss cheese
Harvested by my niece
On the beach at Bambú.
Rocks that were once
Part of the whole
Mysterious Magical Mountain
In front of us.

Our homage replete
With the nuance
Of partial truth
Become legend,
Once chariots passed beneath
Then carts, mule nostrils flaring
Straining to reach the top
Where scientist, vulcanologist,
Those on the Grand Tour,
Hardy locals, naíve strangers, giddy foreigners
Strained to look down inside
At nature’s pot boiling, bubbling
Restraining the lava, that stuff inside
Awaiting the trauma that sometimes follows
If it will deign to explode
In the wake of which man will surely implode.

We await the “wightious wequiem”(as those with a Home Counties lisp would announce)
Those with learnéd letters after names.
Then after will come the symbolism (penned by writers, painted by artists)
And that rainbow prism of colours celebrated in books and on canvas,
While the reportage will be natural, matter-of-fact, reporters implacable
Feral asking no-deferral on stop-press stories that follow
The explosion a date in the calendar, a lumpen rock rainstorm extravaganza
Political Pronouncements made by those (there ain’t half been some clever bastards)
Who had reached the top, staring then
Starting at just how hot
La Principessa Siciliana really was!

In our current age
Hybrid or electric
The latest craze
Maximum result
Minimum effort
To get up close and personal
Good Queen Etna your slip is showing,
Subsidence, porous rock, striations,
Strata, lava non grata: the clipboard and timer
The only ‘organs’ of record
Worth their weight in eruptions.

Still, there remains that awed respect
That transcends race, colour, or creed
When we visit to feel the need
To be up close and personal
With the taut power of nature
And the cracking glowing fissure
Of something nominally solid,
Something coiled, turned in on itself
Something saved, recorded
A memory never annulled or dulled.

I look up at that famed or infamous land form
Previously (to me) a marked, conical point
On the map, concave, convex, OS, 3-D,
The ways of seeing, or noting its presence are plenty.
Now, an imposing focal point for building text
To celebrate, corroborate or simply state

I WAS THERE AND I HAVE SEEN……….