My wife and I spent twelve days in Sicily on a recent vacation, It’s place that wasn’t at the top of our bucket list until we looked into it in more detail after our daughter visited and recommended it. We are so glad we did. We learned of Sicily’s fascinating history, visited its ancient temples, ate it delicious food, and enjoyed the very friendly people. Sicily is an island about the size of Massachusetts located in the middle of the Mediterranean off the southern tip of Italy.
While it’s a part of Italy, it’s quite different from the Italy my wife and I are familiar with from past visits to its major cities, wine regions, and tourist spots. That’s due in part to its geographic location putting it close to Africa, Greece, and the Middle East. Over the centuries, it’s been influenced by the Greeks, Arabs, Spaniards, Turks, Africans and others that migrated to the island to settle or to fight in one of the many wars. Mount Etna, Europe’s highest active volcano, also dominates the island, having destroyed many communities over the years.
We traveled mostly around the periphery of the island counterclockwise, spanning about three-quarters of the island’s circumference. beginning in Catania on the east coast and spending time in Taormina, Siracusa, Modica, Ragusa, Scicli, Agrigento, Menfi, Marsala, and Palermo, at the northwestern part of the island
Sicily seemed like its own country, isolated from the mainland and self-sufficient with its broad agriculture and fishing industries, much of which goes to feed the rest of Italy. The numerous cities and towns, unlike Italy, were closer to sea level and usually not situated behind a fortress atop a hill. Each town has its own personality and often a favorite specialty it became famous for, usually revolving around food.
We were introduced to one version of Sicily by the Netflix series, White Lotus, that took place in Taormina, a small town on the east coast north of Catania. It’s filled with luxury hotels, high end shops, and dramatic cliffs overlooking sandy beaches. But that is not what Sicily really is; that was an anomaly.
We visited beautiful towns, many of them thriving with their traditional food specialties such as pistachios, wine, cheese, avocados, chocolate, seafood, etc. Some were grittier like Catania and others were beautiful towns on a hillside like Modica.
One of the most memorable areas was Agrigento, a town with a valley filled with Greek ruins, many in surprisingly good shape. It was the third largest Greek city in the fifth century BC. The ancient temples have been preserved and are in much better condition than most anywhere else. The Temple Concordia has a similar design to the Acropolis in Athens but is much better preserved and much more impressive.
We stayed in three different locations as we circled the island, Catania, Ragusa, and Menfi. One hotel was a former winery, a second was on a working farm, and the third and last was the gorgeous Foresteria Resort that’s located adjacent to one of the Planeta Wine vineyards.
We traveled with a small tour company we had used many times, Culture Discovery Vacations. My wife discovered them about a decade ago when they came up number one on Google search after entering” Italy, food, wine, cooking.” Our tours have been small, varying from 7 to 16 people, reasonably priced with no add-ons, filled with excellent food, wine and cooking.
As for the wine, much of it was decent red table wine based on the Nero d’Avola grape. Some of the highlights we experienced were driving up the side of Mount Etna in a four-wheeler. We visited a working salt flats site where local salt is produced and collected in huge piles the size of three-story buildings. And we visited a pistachio farm where we sampled pistachio on most everything.
If there’s one thing that excels, it’s the food. Not surprising because it’s still Italy, but a different style. We found it equal or better than most other locales in Italy. Sicilian specialties include pasta with seafood, eggplant, and a unique fried rice ball called arancini. We both samples the food and cooked our own, including Pasta alla Norma, Eggplant Caponata, Sicilian Sausages, Modica Chocolate, Sicilian Cannoli, arancini, and more, all using locally sourced ingredients. We visited the old food markets in Palermo that have changed little in centuries. Having been to Italy more than a half dozen time, we thought we knew Italy pretty well. But until we visited Sicily, we didn’t realize what we had missed and were so glad to have visited..