Sicily

Sunday 21st October 2007 B&B Capricci D'Arte Nicolisi, Sicily
Over 'breakfast' of a lousy biscuit and a jug of ice-cold milk to mix with three teaspoons of strong hot liquid coffee, Salvatore taught me a bit of Italian. He then brought a croissant which was worse than the biscuit!
So yesterday I thought we were in Nicolosi, and all the time we were in Nicosia. No wonder I felt lost and miserable, I felt I couldn't trust the map or the GPS. It is very difficult to navigate as the names are in Italian or French on the signposts and different on the map. (Like Venice is Venizia or similar). We of course don't go along the easy freeways, but meander through the villages and farmlands, so it is easy to get lost.
Through a flatish valley were ripening oranges, grape vines in their autumn colours and wheat just germinating. Today we headed for Etna (again!). It was shrouded in cloud, as expected, and as we neared the cable car area it started to rain, then sleet, then snow. The snow settled all around and on the lava ash and stone and was quite beautiful. We had a lovely cup of coffee (latte) and watched a video on the eruptions (last one in 2001). The areas not effected by recent lava and ash were covered in chestnut trees and, being Sunday, the Sicillians were out in force with their families collecting the ripe chestnut fruit.
The clouds and mist lifted long enough for a magnificent view down the mountain towards Catania city on the coast and Italy in the distance over the Med.
As it is still cold and rainy we are staying in another B&B, in Nicolosi this time.

Saturday 20th October 2007 B&B Casa Albergo, Agira, Sicily
We traveled towards Mount Etna, the smoldering volcano (which has been calculated to be overdue for eruption).
Nev says that I can now put in this following paragraph:
The villages were either nestled in the valleys below precipitous cliffs along the rocky shoreline, or, inland, perched on the top of steep hills. The wrought iron balconies protruded giddily over the retaining walls which bind the houses like bandages keeping the ancient five-story dwellings from falling down the mountains. At the very summit, pride of place, a medieval castle takes an organic form as if in growing, it bled houses down the mountainside, slowly engulfing the chequered farmlands in the valleys below.
How is that?
We had been warned that Mount Etna could be shrouded in cloud for days at this time of the year, and since it was, and it also had started to rain, we headed for the coast, finding this lovely B&B of Salvatore, on the way in Agira. It is pouring with freezing rain now and I am very glad to be snug and dry in the room. For supper Salvatore said he would take us to a pizza place in the village, but instead we landed up in an agricultural hall like a mini Royal Show. This language thing is really difficult. After the designated time, hungry and munching on very salty garlic salami which we had managed to buy at the show, he asked us if we had enjoyed our meal. We were then able to explain somehow that we hadn't eaten, and he then took us to a pizza place, driving through the alleyways in the dark and wet, hitting other car's mirrors on the way. Landy would never have made it, she is far too wide. She had to make a six-point turn to make it down his very steep, curved driveway.) Some of the houses had been hewn out of the stone cliffs, like troglodytes but have beautiful facades to fit in with the general architecture of the village. Landy was very proud to have negotiated al the tight curves, steep hills and narrow allies in Nicosia, but sometimes did go over the white lines and nearly hit the wall on the other side, stopping the oncoming traffic. Luckily Landy is deaf and didn't hear the hooting.
The farmers here grow olives and plough up and down the steep mountains in preparation for the winter, probably wheat.

Friday 19th October 2007 Caravan Site, Sicily
There was no problem entering the ferry and it left an hour or two late. We were lucky to have arrived there early, as having not booked a cabin we had to find a place to lie down and sleep. We were expecting another Wadi Halfa ferry but this was sparkling clean, and very 'first world'. We found a padded bench and stretched out for the night. We woke to the sun rising over the cliffs of Sicily on our right. The passengers who had arrived later slept on the floor, chairs or on the window sills. It was only ¼ full. We had to go through passport control (which took nearly 2 hours) on the ferry, like Aswan, but nothing for the Landy which we just drove off and onto dry land.
Palermo was the worst driving experience so far. The streets are very narrow, there are thousands of tiny cars and everyone double parks, leaving one lane open for two way traffic. We watch in amazement how when they parked their cars they nudged and bumped each other to squeeze into a parking place. We walked down the line of parked cars and more than 50% had been dinged both back and front (which made them even smaller than they actually were!). There are many (unmarked on the map) one-way streets and navigating is a nightmare. Most of the left-hand streets have no-entry signs (no problem for the locals, they go up them) and we ended up going in circles getting further and further away from where we wanted to go. Eventually we found a parking and walked around the city. We started to get city-phobic and headed out eastwards along the coast, Nev muttering that if this is what Europe is like we will be getting home sooner than planned as this isn't fun.
Once we were out of the city we relaxed and took in the scenery and went through several small villages along the coast and there is no flat land around.
We landed up at the campsite and guess who arrived - the Swiss cyclists Corina and Daniel, whom we had last seen in Cairo. They were traveling in the opposite direction to us (towards Palermo) and had been to Greece and Italy while we had been in Libya and Tunisia.
We had a nice catch-up over pizza and ice cream.