It must have been some time during the 4th century A.D., because that is what the sign said, a rich Roman decided to build a modest house with a private chapel, hot and cold baths, rooms all over the place…you get the picture, just what everyone needs in a country home. He and his slaves are all dead, the baths are dry, the roof caved in, and when it got excavated over the last couple of centuries, only the floors survived in a state worthy of gawking, which was our intention on a hot Sicilian day in Aidone.

This is obviously a good time to be brief, unless you care about mosaic floors—and who doesn’t? Click on any of these images to get an enlarged view.

Cottage floor plan

Carting back the kill

Man about to be gored

Peaking through a door

Flat chested athletes

Don’t use acid on mosaics

Enough already

It is hard to say why mosaics have such appeal, but the place was busy with paying tourists. Mosaics last longer than walls and ceilings. For one thing, floors rarely fall. If your boss in the year 397 had 40 rooms to be inlaid (or laid in), you could probably put off fear of starvation or of being tossed to the lions for a few years. For some, that would beat working at Amazon.com.

Pesto pasta with sun dried tomatoes

Mushrooms w basil and almonds

Simple tomato salad

Pounded chicken with bread crumbs

Panchetta wrapped mozzarella with balsamic vinegar

The Sicilians make tasty looking food, and it is (nearly) always delicious. Almost every dish could be photographed and put into a recipe book. This was our lunch, beautifully presented. Everything would have been great, but the fearsome trip to the Bristol Hotel was made more difficult by a street party that had closed access to the hotel. By happenstance, our helpful, handsome desk clerk walked by our stymied car and advised us where we could snag an overnight spot, a substantial distance from the hotel, but it proved to be a pleasant walk back.

The street party was noisy, simple, and filled with young people. I liked seeing so many kids out at night without a hint of  rowdiness. We found a large pizzeria away from the madding crowd. It was entirely adequate.

The hotel at Agrigento was modern. We enjoyed a bottle of prosecco on a patio watching the sunset and had a late-night sandwich before bed. Even luxury hotels seem bland in comparison to the old palaces with modern plumbing  procrustean-fitted into odd spaces we have been enjoying. Our luggage loaded, we fled to a local Greek ruin.

Nice hotel…ehh

Another temple

Will we leave this much?

Icarus is newly fallen

Sometime after the turn of the 21st century, Icarus fell to earth near a temple to someone who never existed and whose name I have forgotten. Curiously, his wings and torso were kept intact, much appreciated by the giggling tourists who stood bravely by his immodesty. (What’s to be modest about?)

The drive into Enna was by far our most challenging on Sicily. The GPS led us up a steep narrow path to a car that was kindly blocking the road, which I mean sincerely. The tapering street was going nowhere, so the careless parking saved us perhaps another 50 meters of descent in reverse. The correct route, not much wider, we would have abandoned except for an occasional sign on the way reading “Bristol Hotel.” Options were few, so the signs served mostly as reassurance. Stephanie rescued us by actually asking in Italian for directions (I was so manly embarrassed). A women offered to lead us in her car to the hotel, grabbing for herself the last, legal parking space. See! So much for seeking help.

We parked in a handicapped spot, which we had earned by this time, and a handsome, dark Italian youth (they are everywhere!) ran out of the hotel to assure us that he would move the car as soon as another spot was free. The turns to the hotel were so tight that some were 2-point turns for our experienced guide. Confident no tow truck could get into Enna, much less punish our parking sin, we checked in.

Man with a big bell

View from our balcony

Ibid, with parking

Church

Wedding

Square

Though I could not understand a word he said, the hotel clerk, who gave generous Italian directions to Stephanie, has a musical diction of rolled ‘r‘s and canolli-crisp ‘t‘s that had me enthrall, as if listening to a budding tenor. Perhaps it was not the public school system that taught respect for his language, but the lesson, whatever the source, he had taken with pride. Oh, that we could imbue such musicality and rhythm into American conversation.

His directions pointed us to a restaurant first approached from the rear. A waiter spotted starving tourists (perhaps alerted by our hotel guy) and marched us through the kitchen and dinning room to an outdoor table protected from the mountain sun by wide awnings. What a lunch it was.

Bread and wine

Roasted peppers

Antepasti

Ravioli

Spaghetti pomodoro

Pappardelle in mushroom cream sauce

After lunch we hiked to the east end of the city, where a castle once protected the citizens from roving mobs of foreign knights. One character, photo below, looks like a member of the KKK. The castle was open for anyone to wander at no charge and no oversight. Lean over the parapets at your own risk.

Rod at the village edge

A view from Toledo, or so it looks

From the tower

Friendly ghost?

The land below the castle

Enna makes few compromises to modernity, but at night kids clustered in cheerful groups below our balcony chatting, the faces of their smart phones flashing like fireflies in the murky chill of the night. They are nice kids. Never yelling, but the stone surfaces around the plaza amplify their friendships. My sleepless night wondered what it would be like to be among them. If only I could speak Italian.

A town square

The square outside our hotel

Typical street

The people of Enna have access to new cars (few are SUVs), cell phones, computers, 220V current, and all modern appliances. The town may look worn, but beneath the surface, people are healthy and well dressed, interiors are renovated. They are middle class—comfortable.

The center photo shows the single inlet to the hotel’s square. It is 2-way, though you may wonder how a single car squeezes in. They manage. Someone is first, a car in the opposite direction backs down. There are no rules, but it seems as efficient as it can be.

Does respect for the past result in respect for the present? I grew up in a city where many fine buildings were razed to accommodate a cheap shopping mall and ugly parking lots. The people of Enna live with 500-year-old, mostly unadorned buildings that people like us flock to. Do cities that revere the past build carefully today?

Some Italians build with the expectation that future generations will live with their decisions, but the devastation of an earthquake in the Italian mountains three weeks ago where over 300 people were killed by shabby construction, including a modern school that collapsed, thankfully empty, in the night, is a testament to corruption and greed from the Greeks to the present. Can we knit the past to the future? Or is that just for old wine?

I confess that a part of the joy of this day, not the only part or even the best part, was the knowledge that my brother Bob would experience real envy at my getting meet so many wonderful people. Stephanie’s cousin invited us to lunch with them at their country cottage, set into a Sicilian hillside many generations ago, overlooking the village of Mezzojuso pictured to the right as seen from the spot where everyone is standing in the  picture on the left.

Meeting everyone

Mezzojuso

Our host, Johny [his spelling], spoke conversational English, as did two others. Otherwise, we were on our own—mono-lingual Americans. (I like to presume that foreign speakers will presume my other language is French, or Spanish, or Swahili, but bilingual people know that non-Americans always carry a language brief of the countries they visit.)

From upper left, Rick Rogers, son of dentist, girlfriend of dentist, mother of young girl, 95-year-old survivor of German prison camp, dentist, daughter of dentist, father of young girl (I hope), young girl, Rod, me. Missing are the two hosts, Stephanie, and a hired hand. Apparently, they were making the meal we were about to eat.

The outdoor dinning table

The fish

The prickly pears

My hunky dinner companion

The table was set outside. Rod and I agreed to sit separately, though only a few people spoke English. My dinner partner was a tall, handsome, college student with pretty good English and marvelous eyes. He is studying math at Pisa University. I could go on…

The food was exceptional—duh, this is Italy. Two kinds of fish, tuna and swordfish, were pan seared with an olive, tomato, caper, mint sauce. I am sure the cook had other secrets not divulged. The fish was served with side dishes of caponata (eggplant with celery and what must be myriad spices), sliced zucchini saluted in oil and spices, and a generous basket of Italian bread. I accepted a second helping of fish and found that I was finishing my meal last! I wonder how long they will talk about that fat American who could not stop eating? The feast was rounded out with prickly pear cactus peeled and lightly sweetened in ways I cannot guess, watermelon, various Italian cookies, and outstanding coffee.

After lunch, our host guided everyone to an abandoned monastery where a few devoted artisans work to restore ancient artworks and old books. They are particularly proud of a printed anthology of Plutarch, including his Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, which is printed in fine-lettered Greek. It is believed to be one of only two copies extant, the other is in the Louvre. Odd that the book is being so man-handled by a restoration expert.

This will be a day long-remembered and something that other travelers cannot match. We left the group, who were headed for gelato, to drive on to Agrigento before dark.

Imagination can disappoint, raising expectations without cause, but in Erice it failed to overpromise. The town is perched above Trapani and the Mediterranean just beyond, so I was prepared for a sweeping view from the third row of a crowded café. It is much more.

Erice has what another town has Caprisciously abandoned—good taste. It is warm and charming, without a gauntlet of designer stores nipping at the fatted wallets of the savage rich. The art works in Erice are unique; the famous pastries, unreplicated at Starbucks; and the stonework, outstanding.

La funivia is a cableway system to rise the 703 meters (over 2300′) to the city gate. It is 10 minutes well-invested. The city of Trapani makes the scale of the lift tangible. Everything is stone and the claim is that the cable system did not exist when someone lugged this stuff up the hill. Ouch.

Looking for directions?

The pavement design

Close-up, regular and unique

Walking through the gate of ancient Erice, one quickly realizes that this is a special spot. Even the paving stones are both irregular and congruent, their varied surfaces polished smooth as St. Peter’s foot by the touch of the adoring multitudes. The gentle slope passes a series of small shops, lacking the intimidation of the pretentious Capris.

Entering the town

Rod below his city sign

Narrow alley with purple

Typical side street

Dark ages gift shoppe

Stephanie discovered a marvelous pottery shop, securing the lightest gift the owner had, and it was free: restaurant advice. As a result, our lunch was an outstanding pleasure.

Rod and I shared ravioli with a swordfish stuffing and grilled onions, while Rick and Stephanie had beef carpaccio with rocket and parmesan. These were so delicous that my readers were forgotten until the crisp, fresh cannolis ended the lunch. (How on earth did they cut them in half? They shatter with each bite. Did they use dental floss? A laser?)

We walked off lunch (I wish) with a hike to the far end of the city where a castle stands prepared to defend the Erice against any threat, excepting aeronautics and gunpowder. It worked for quite a while. Had they had the foresight to build greenhouses and water pumps, even sieges might have failed.

The return to Castellammare del Golfo had us looking for a bar, which happened to pop up across from our parking spot. The British-accented Italian bartender made up two negroni cocktails, a beer, and a lemonade for €18. He included a ham sandwich cut into four, a bowl of chips, and a cup of olives, without charge. I could get to like these prices…except for the ham.

Put the stress on the second syllable at your peril.

The geologic beauty of Capris rivals the Hawaiian islands, but the social excesses began when the Roman emperor, Augustus, bought the whole thing as a summer retreat, and that selfish tradition persists to this day. High-end shops gob the streets like coarse sugar on sweet marmalade. Watching the rich display their contempt for restraint is repulsive; I’d rather see a soccer team comparing their genitals…much rather.

Capris is like a priceless antique diminished at the hands of hack with urethane. Sprinkle enough of these people in NYC and LA and Trump would have himself an election.

We quickly took a bus to Anacapris, the island’s other city, a tribute to the linguistic creativity of the Greeks. At the start of this short ride, Rod’s sanity had lost a debate about whether we should take a chairlift ride to a blistering, sun drenched height atop the island’s  2000′ peak. His resolve was not to last.

Along the narrow, hairpin road that our bus driver sped his rickety tub, the right side of the road gave way to a 1200′ drop, guarded unconvincingly by a tastefully low barrier. The passengers let loose a collective gasp as the brave boast of a chair lift melted like soft gelato in the August heat.

View from the bus

This photo was taken on the return trip from the far side of a narrow road.
When going up the road, the rail was not visible, the cliff is shear, the drop, astounding.

We settled for a pizza and beer under the shade of a canopy. As Marc Antony once spat, “Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.”

It was in Anacapris that I filmed evidence of the driving styles of Italians for which I have included a short video:

It appears that the bikes at the end of the video stopped, but in fact they barely slowed. I nervously stopped filming—as if the cop would care about me. He was just getting out of the sun. If people stopped at intersections, of which there are countless, the country of Italy would cease to function.

Italy has given less regard to automotive traffic than the US. There are a few highways, but city buildings and neighborhoods have resisted demolition done just to relieve congestion. It often seems incredible that two busy areas of a city are connected by anfractuous routes, barely wide enough for an economy vehicle, but such is the country’s subservience to la dolce vita.

A short stretch of water separates Capris from Sorrento, so we made our way back in time for a cold beer in an unpretentious town. Sorrento is blithely indifferent to threats from sea rise (except for the docks). The cities of London, Paris, and Hamburg will envy New Orleans after Katrina before Sorrento has persistent puddles.

Rod, fresh off the boat

The city from the port

The harbor from the sea

Our patron

At the top of the many steps from the pier to the city’s flat streets stands a statue of St. Anthony, patron of long, enduring friendships.

There are three ways for commoners to experience the Amalfi Coast—boat, bus, and car. The boats have vantage, but cannot help the traveler reach the high towns, like Ravello; the bus takes control of the pace away from the individual; and the car requires a competent driver. We unwisely chose the third, with terrible results.

The famous drive is along a south-facing wall of rock where outstanding engineers have scratched east-west roads into the surface. It is a two-dimensional world where each town is an inescapable node. We escaped twice.

The first was a spelling error when my navigator entered “Revella” for “Ravello.” The GPS spitefully sent us up 30 km of monkey intestine before the road narrowed to a coarse grind of right fender and left mirror between roak wall and stone building.

The second was again the fault of the GPS when a critical left turn was acerbically acknowledged after the fact by an exasperated voice, saying “recalculating.” Turning around on these roads, using a many pointed forward-reverse would certainly block a hundred horn-loving Italians, and might still fail. Our bodiless GPS companion then turned the drive back to our hotel into a 4-hour odyssey, landing us in Sorrento, after dark, when the main drag, the only drag, was closed for a weekly party. Ahhhhh

Misadventures not withstanding, we enjoyed the towns of Postino, Amalfi, and Ravello, eventually. Amalfi sports a parking lot with the orderly inspiration of sitting in line for Trader Joe’s one-out, one-in system. We queued at a swing-arm gate awaiting a token first deposited by someone leaving. Within each token is a computer chip that has the arrival time encoded. Cool.

Amalfi is positioned at a fissure, allowing a footpath to worm its way a thousand meters or more from the sea. We stopped for a short lunch, chosen for its boast of a/c more than the food, but neither satisfied.

Rod paused before a cathedral that could have been Led Zeppelin’s inspiration for Stairway to Heaven.

Cathedral? Does every village in Italy get a bishop?

Typical of fine construction in igneous Europe, homes emerge from the stone.

Rock of ages…one hopes.

The ocean views exceed most of California’s, largely because the ancient towns cling to impossibly precarious niches. At various points, the road narrows to a single lane, alternating directions. Tour bus drivers pass each other with barely 6″ to spare—and I know what 6″ looks like.

The town of Ravello, where Gore Vidal lived for more than 25 years and Greta Garbo was able to be alone, is the direct opposite of Postiano. It sits high above the sea, showing only a tease to the passing yachts, while Postano spreads her inviting charms at the water’s edge. Each has its allure. One flirts with every passing admirer, the other is cool and discrete. Odd that Vidal would have chosen the latter, but opposites are said to attract.

Speghetti Pomodoro

Duck Breast

Dumplings with Sea Bass

Boston Scallops

Our driving ordeal was set aside with a fine meal in Sorrento’s central square. I was tempted to trying the Boston scallops to judge their authenticity. Rod erased the glutinous memory of the lunchtime gnocchi by trying his luck with a splendid evening plate of the dumplings served with sea bass in a white cream sauce.

For secondi, I had spaghetti pomodoro, while Rod got duck breast that failed to find tummy space atop the fully consumed starter.

And for dessert, Rod has a repulsive conversation with an English [bleach] blonde airhead who just loves Donald Trump. We departed amicably, just shy of  bulimic bout, while I found her older, rich companion a better conversationalist than sommelier of fine women, corkscrew or not.

Italy is filled with cities and towns that have built imposing monuments to the glory and grace of God. Naples is no different except that it appears to have paid for the meal before it was served, as the mosaic at the top of this post depicts (in my imagination). The response from the ill-fed residents is to ignore traffic laws (if there are any), to take what is not theirs from tourists, and to party ferociously into the wee hours. The following video is an example of how hard they have tried to get on the big guy’s good side (Pompey showed, He does not have one):

A satisfactory effort, IMHO.

Stephanie Rogers alerted us to a chapel (no pews) to see some extraordinary sculpture at Cappella Sansevero. This remarkable museum is at the corner of nothing and nowhere. The unadorned exterior is easier to miss than the ticket office with the virtual sign, “Stand here if you do not know how to queue.”

Release from Deception, Francesco Queirolo

Rope entirely carved from stone

Wife, who died young, of founder

Veiled Christ

The body of Christ under a shroud

The builder was a Freemason, so all the artwork is filled with symbolism. For instance, a torn book at the veiled mother’s feet symbolizes “a life interrupted.” I had wrongly guessed “an unruly child.” The ability to make stone transparent is amazing. Why not make the walls of cathedrals with this technique to save on staining glass?

In the creepy crypt below stands two bodies with skin and muscle removed to expose an elaborate circulatory system, with eyeballs. The blood vessels, we are told, are so accurate that many have speculated some eerie technique of injection, but that has, thankfully, been discounted.

We next moved on to the archeological museum, filled with really cool stuff from Pompey, a city that shows how much fun life was before being interrupted by Christian modesty and a mountain’s fart. These people were unabashed devotees of sex, with some outstanding variations on an old theme.

First base before baseball

He doth not protest too much

‘Cause a chicken’s only good for consumé

The chase

Last call at Julius’s

The case for circumcision

Getting your goat

Another phony Trump promise

But Pompey wasn’t just about sex. There was plenty of mayhem.

Alexander…look ma, no helmet

Darius about to get his ass kicked

I’d want more protection if wrestling a bull…or a cat

Hercules’s secret weapons + a handful of apples

HBO Rome anyone?

The mosaics were outstandingly preserved beneath many feet of volcanic ash. Soon we shall visit the city of Pompey, as it has been gradually uncovered.

One hears questionable claims of marauding bands of pickpockets (don’t rest on my luck), but the threat from vehicular chaos is harder to exaggerate. I found an article on the web that had me laughing until my dinner was cold. Because web pages are unreliably maintained, I have stolen borrowed the text:

Italians are known as “crazy” drivers, and Naples is infamous for having the “worst” drivers in Italy!  However, this is because they simply follow different rules than Americans.  Or, more precisely, they only follow one rule:

The First (And Only) Rule of Italian Driving: Do not hit anything that is in front of you.

Corollaries to the First Rule of Italian Driving:

• There are no other “rules.”  This means that quaint American rules like “always stop at stoplights/signals”, “stay in your lane”, “don’t drive on the shoulder/sidewalk”, “stop for pedestrians”, “don’t drive in reverse on the highway”, etc. don’t apply—as long as you don’t hit anything/anyone!
• Sometimes this rule is mis-stated as “the car in front has the right of way.”  While usually the car behind will get out of the way of the car in front, Italians don’t think of things in terms of “right of way”—it’s just a matter of getting to where you’re going without hitting anyone.  For example, if someone is about to cut you off, your job is to let them in…or honk your horn so they know you’re not letting them in.  See?  No “right of way”—just a practical means to avoid collision.
  • Note that you do not own the space in front of (or around) your car in Italy.  When cars use this space, Americans perceive this as getting “cut off”, but Italians see this as “no accident, no problem”
• When merging, getting into a traffic circle, changing lanes, or even crossing the street as a pedestrian, you just have to ensure that the cars behind you have sufficient time/space to avoid you.
• Making eye contact means that you see each other and one of you will therefore get out of the way of the other.  Since it is often confusing which one will do so, it is often best to avoid eye contact.

I had an embarrassing moment right after the museum when I dropped into a small men’s shop to find a couple of shirts that were exactly what I wanted—cheap. In fact the original price was about six times the “sale” mark, which I guess is called pre-bargaining?

As I considered whether to try a medium or large, the amply bosomed seller snatched the garments from my hands before I could test the sticking strength and handed me an XL! Perfect fit. Very trim. You guys do this on pasta and pizza? Madonna!