Messina

September 20th to 21st

Our final region in Italy and apparently the biggest. Trust us to get the order wrong: Sicilia. A train ride with change to the edge of Calabria lead us to a ferry that took less than an hour to get us across the strait into Sicily, home of the infamous local mafia and other stuff. Our first destination due to the lateness of escaping Tropea is Messina, famed for it's swordfish. After finding very down market accommodation we wandered the town. Built on a grid system after an earthquake -- this is starting to be a recurring theme -- killed 80,000 people in the early 1900's, there isn't much to say about the town. It has a beautiful harbour that you arrive at, and the Duomo is rebuilt along the original Norman lines after it was destroyed in 1600 odd in an earthquake or sacking or plague of lemmings. Who knows. The clock is a wonderful astrological effort done by one of Michaelangelo's students.

As an aside, this time of year seems to be wedding season in Italy. In the last month or so we have seen usually two or three weddings a night. They involve fancy cars, small cars, friends and so on, but invariably there is the happy, or not so happy, couple, a photographer, a video cameraman, and an assistant making sure that the special day is completely captured as they wander around the streets like everyone else. We are in a few videos. In Lecce we tried to get out of the spotlight, avoiding a second wedding, only to be ambushed from another street by the first couple.

We had swordfish, went to sleep, were savaged by a large number of zanzara (mosquitos -- one of the first words of Italian I learnt), got up, slaughtered at least four very fat mosquitoes, had an average breakfast, wandered around a bit and then headed for the hydrofoil terminal for the next part of the journey. This was the good bit. In an attempt to find wonderous Sicilian food -- arancini are deep-fried packages of saffron rice filled with, in my purchasing anyway, ragu and cheese -- I found a shop that smelt divine. Yes, I found the only place we have discovered so far that sold curry powder. After months of Italian food we had worked ourselves into actually wanting to go to England, just to get a decent curry. Now we could cook one ourselves and potentially get rid of the @#$%ing lentils that I've been carrying around since Umbria. Happy days.

Lipari, Isole Eolie

September 21st to 25th

Next stop on the Tour De Force was a brilliant plan of enforced relaxation: Lipari and the Isole Eolie, or the anglicised Aeolian Islands. Hal found a place that had reduced it's rates from the €120 per night to €50 per night for an apartment including cooking facilities. The landlady even met us at the ferry and walked us to the apartment. This was bliss. We cooked for four nights running: chicken, steak, curry, and pasta. Doesn't sound too exciting but we got to eat what we wanted and didn't have to spend €30-40 on restaurant food.

The first day on the islands was relaxing, organising the next two days, and heading to one of the rather stony beaches to attempt swimming with the jelly fish. Stromboli was happily spouting in the distance. Neither of us were overly inclined to spend a full day climbing it, and thus we just marvelled from afar. The second day we took a boat tour around the island of Lipari and of Sdsfjhdsfj (or Salina - Hal), stopping on the second island for lunch and also stopping in four or five locations to leap off the boat and swim. Lunch was tasty but odd given that some blond just draped herself on a wall outside the restaurant. The water was beautifully clear and extremely warm. We swam off the pumice mines at White Beach, where the beach is the only bit that isn't white, almost swam at a bay with impossibly located boat houses, swam in a Grotto with briliant acqua water, and in another bay close to Lipari itself. Tough day.

Day three was diving: we had two dives to about twenty metres. The water was fantastically clear. The fish were generally absent, which is a survival tactic in this country. That's not strictly true: there were large numbers of very small fish, and nothing larger than a couple of inches. The first dive was to find some Gropers who knew what was best for them and were absent, though some barracuda managed to swim by looking menacing. The second dive was more interesting topographically, following a reef: we saw an octopus, eel, and got to peruse the reef a little more closely. It was great to be back diving again. Hal had finished her certificate when leaving Australia the first time. I have around forty hours up, mostly cold water diving in Tasmania. If my Italian actually existed I would have mocked the Eolian divers for being complete wimps. The water was close to being mid twenties in temperature and they were wearing five to seven millimetre wet suits. I wore a seven mil in Tasmania in six degree temperatures. I was wondering if I really even needed a wet suit here at all. Definitely worth the time and effort, although I am now looking forward to showing Hal the life there is in the water in Tasmania (definitely looking forwards to being shown! - Hal).

Day four was time to leave. Bloody good thing too. A huge storm had managed to come through the previous night, the water was rough, and we wouldn't have been able to do either of the previous day's activities. It was definitely time to move on. Pity we didn't get to a local restaurant on Lipari, but we did at least try the capers.

Taormina

September 25th to 26th

Next location: Taormina. Supposedly one of the great gay holiday sites, made famous by raving queens like Oscar Wilde. Now a fancy shopping strip for older immaculately dressed gays who turn up dreaming of the days when you could find the boys with the "almond eyes". Taormina has a beachside resort, but mainly occupies a ridge high in the hills. The main attraction in town is a ruined Greek Theatre with supposedly one of the most impressive vistas in Sicily, including Mount Etna. Etna was having a cloudy day when we looked but the rest of the view was stunning. All in all a very pretty place, and also quite expensive. We, in a moment of inspiration, decided to have Mexican for dinner for a change. This goes along with our other experiences of alternate cuisine in Italy: basically they don't know how to do it. I had a chilli con carne which was made with diced rather than minced meat. It just didn't seem right, but then that was how we felt about Taormina.

Catania

September 26th to 28th

Next Catania. Also ruined at some time by Etna. It seems that just about every place in Italy has been shaken to pieces, covered in lava, eroded away, sacked, pillaged, and/or set upon by the church. No wonder the people have a very inward-looking attitude: these are the only people you can trust. Catania seemed no different

It may be worth an aside at this point. Italians. They really are an interesting bunch. The national identity is very weak, and there really is not a lot of evidence of regional identity being that important either. The local community is more important, and family more important still. This does lead to some wonderful attitudes to family life, but it also has a flip side when combined with the general laissez-faire persona. They really do not given a tinker's cuss for anything other than themselves. It is evident in their driving, their attitude to foreigners and their environment. If you want to know what the majority of Italy looks like it is a tip. Rundown buildings everywhere, acres of abandoned land and refuse filling all the gaps. Occasionally we would happen across a road siding that had been burnt of the vegetation that normally grows over everything. This would expose the excess of empty bottles, metal and tyres simply dumped. Most places don't care about recycling. Most Italians wouldn't put something in a rubbish bin if it involved stretching, and I have seen people drop stuff next to a bin or simply lob it out the car window. Couldn't give a shit and would get pissed off if they ever had to consider not adding to the growing pile of cigarette butts. Most towns have a smell of an open sewer anyway. Let the Government fix it. Even if the Italian government is unable to stop spending and is now lumbered with a debt greater than the country's GDP, and a shrinking population. Nice place for a holiday but I wouldn't want to live here.

Returning to Catania. We spent the first day finding accommodation, wandering the streets and finding out that a friend of mine from the USA, Becca, was going to be joining us that day. This came as news as amongst other things internet access had been hard to come by. Becca phoned Hal while she was doing the do, ie. finding accommodation. So we wandered around the market, treading carefully to avoid fish heads and goat hooves, then to the partially excavated ampitheatre: doesn't everyone have one of these? The main square held the entrance to the market marked by an ellaborate fountain, and a Roman statue of a smiling elephant topped with an Egyptian oblisk, as you do. This all fronted on to a stunning Duomo made out of the local stone. Also of note was a theatre that various guide books and maps described as being both Greek and Roman.

Catania has other sights as well but we really didn't get there. We had a relaxing couple of days meeting with Becca, eating some very good seafood, and having the odd drink. One noteable location being a backpackers place with a natural spring in the basement restaurant formerly used by the Romans for bathing. I know! A backpackers with a restaurant! These crazy Italians...

Siracusa

September 28th to October 1st

After a couple of days we headed further south along the eastern coast to one of the premier cities of Sicily: Siracusa. This used to be some huge Greek settlement before being taken over by the Romans, then the Normans, then the smurfs or something. I don't know, you tell me.

Noto

October 1st to 2nd

Agrigento

October 2nd to 4th

Selinunte

October 4th to 5th

Trapani

October 5th to 6th

Palermo

October 6th to 12th

Summary

Rating time! So again here are my crap ratings of each town: