Eureka!

I took up a new hobby this year. Prompted by men I umpire baseball with, and seeing that there was a need for it here in Naples, I started officiating basketball games. The season took me to the US Navy Air Base on Sicily twice, once over the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend. Since the boys had the day off, and DoDEA was paying for my trip (and one hotel room) we decided to make it a quick family trip.

We got an early start on Friday morning to make it in time for the basketball games that evening. It was a seven-hour drive that took us through some of the most picturesque scenery that we’ve yet seen. In fact, much of the drive goes through a national park, where we found a pretty cool restaurant for a breakfast stop. We enjoyed a typically Italian breakfast of pastries and coffee (for me, juices for everyone else) and looked around the interesting building to discover that it is built on the site of a historic battle. They had a gift shop that sold a variety of local farm-fresh products, jams, cheeses, etc., and we stocked up before we got back on the road.

To get to Sicily (Sicilia to the locals), you have to cross the Strait of Messina, and since there’s no bridge there, you have to take a ferry. The entrance for the ferry is easy to find off of the Autostrade (which is the main toll road through Italy), though it requires some winding through the seaport town of Villa San Giovanni. The toll for the Autostrade was remarkably cheap considering the amount of time we travelled on it, and the toll for the ferry also seemed reasonable.

As you approach the piers, there are clearly marked self-service and manned toll booths. We tried a self-service one but ran into a problem and were politely directed to the manned toll booth where we purchased the round-trip fare (the trips are date specific) for the truck and its occupants (five of us since Joel was home from school) for around €40. The ferries run about every 20-30 minutes, so it wasn’t a long wait to get our ticket scanned as we drove aboard the ferry. Of course, there is a café where coffee and snacks are available, and his is where we grabbed a quick lunch before loading back into the truck for the last leg of the drive. We had about a 90-minute drive left to get to the Navy Lodge.

Friday night and Saturday morning were spent on base while I officiated my first basketball games. (At least, I had an excuse for being bad at it.) and from lunch Saturday on we were explorers.

After a quick lunch we drove to Syracuse (Siracusa) to see the home of the great scientist Archimedes. Our first stop was the ancient ruins of his tomb, which turned out to be misidentified (thanks, Google maps). They are certainly Roman era tombs, just not that of the ancient mathematician. By the time we got there the other archeological museums that we went to see were closed. We couldn’t enter, but we did get a few good pictures.

A highlight was visiting the Chapel of St. Lucia, the patron saint of Syracuse. The relics of the saint, martyred during the Diocletian persecution of the early 4th century, were discovered where the chapel is now built. Its antiquity is made obvious by the depth below grade of the chapel’s entrance. Inside is an altar piece with her statue and the excavated cave where they were found.

After the chapel we drove to the Old Town, which is an island called Ortygia, to walk its quaint, narrow streets taking pictures, and find a couple more things to see.

The first is the Duomo of Siracusa, its cathedral Church. Now dedicated to the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, it is built on the foundation of a 6^th century BC Greek temple of Athena. In the 6^th Century AD, it became a byzantine Church, and has been expanded over the centuries. It opens onto the largest square in the old town, and inside is unbelievably beautiful. The cathedral also houses the relics of St. Lucia.

After looking around the cathedral, we went to find the Fountain of Arethusa the freshwater fountain formed, so it is said, when the Greek nymph Arethusa escaped Arcadia under the sea. It is remarkable close to the saltwater bay of Syracuse, separated only by a seawall now, and is one of only three places in Europe (all in southern Italy) where papyrus grows.

From there we walked back towards the center of the town to see the Fountain of Diana, which is lovely—especially lit up at night—and the streets radiating away from the circle of which it’s the centerpiece, were all still decorated with Christmas lights.

Before we got to the Fountain of Diana we stopped for cannoli, which is the signature pastry of Sicily. The place we got them, Mangano, was next door to a ceramics shop called Kalimera, which we thought was funny. The cannoli and coffee were delicious, and Nora picked up a prickly pear liqueur from their store which, she says, was delightful.

By now it was late, and dark, and so we decided on a place for dinner the Dock Café, which, at 7pm was just opening up for dinner. We ordered some traditional Sicilian cuisine, which for us was pasta and pizza with seafood, and a nice fava bean soup. The service was courteous and attentive and spoke English willingly and well. The price was far less than I expected to pay for the five of us. After this, it was back to the hotel.

Sunday morning we attended the Divine Liturgy in the nearby city of Catania at the Church dedicated to St. Leo of Catania, an 8^th century Bishop and wonderworker. The community was quite warm and welcoming, though the Church was rather chilly. It is a very old building. We left from there bound for the northern shore of Sicily and the city of Palermo.

Outside of Palermo is a cathedral of Monreale, an 11^th century Norman structure filled with more than 70,000 square feet of mosaic byzantine icons, cataloged here. With the afternoon sun shining in through the western windows, the apse lit up and was exquisitely beautiful. The ceilings of carved wood were also intricate and colorful, even the floor is beautifully made. Of all the cathedrals we’ve visited in Europe so far, this is one of my personal favorites.

There was a museum in the cathedral, and you could walk up to the ceiling for a view of the neighboring monastery cloister and the valley below. Before we left, we also got a whirlwind tour of the Archbishop’s residence.

We finished our day in Monreale with dinner across the street at Trinacria , named for the symbol on the flag of Sicily. We ate there because the banner out front said it was street food, and that sounded like just what we wanted, and it was good. We had a collection of fresh baked rolls stuffed with various meats and cheeses, a local favorite, and some fried foods. On our way back to the car we stopped for gelato, because…gelato.

We got back to the hotel with enough time for a nice long sleep before waking early for the long drive back to Naples. On the way back we took a little detour through Scilla, to climb the infamous rock and look out across the Messina Strait for the Charybdis. We didn’t see it, but the view was amazing, nonetheless. We parked at the beachfront and climbed through the small cliffside town through narrow streets past homes accessible only by foot (or maybe an adventurous scooter) that would make bringing home the groceries better done daily than once a week. This way of bringing home the bacon is so pervasive here in Italy that even in on base housing our refrigerator is not large enough for a week’s worth of groceries. Having large teenagers in the house doesn’t help.

The drive home was just as lovely as the drive south and we made it back in before it got too late, which was our goal. It was, after all, a school night.