Sicily - part three

A selection of Sicilian scenes and subjects that caught my attention, but unlikely to be used in the following posts. And again, if you want to skip the text, but quickly check the pictures, click on this first photo and scroll through.

Sampling the wares in a Palermo market.

Dodging scooters in the same crowded market.

The Piaggio APE 50 (first with a cab came out in 1964) continues to be made.

Here’s one in the style of a traditional Sicilian cart, a carretto.

The carts, often with depictions of medieval knights and warfare (this from a display in Marsala) …

… were once seen frequently as in these postcards.

A rather forlorn cart I came on in Siracusa …

… and super snazzy Vespa version in Taormina.

More knights in Palermo’s puppet museum …

… and a street market.

Sicily’s scenery is striking … in the west Monte Cofano …

... the island of Mozia also in the west …

… hilltop village in the east …

… and coast near Mazzarò.

Beach combing, boating and swimming at Mondello in late October.

From a hillside in Taormina, I spotted a terrace …

… where the Kaiser (far left) and his retinue breakfasted in 1904.

The Kaiser later rented the entire hotel for a month in 1906. Edward VII and Queen Alexandra also came that year. Another early 20th Century visitor was Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II.

While eating they had a view (presumably minus aerials and satellite dish) of Mount Etna.

Stating the obvious, English is now globally inescapable … helpful for the monolingual, even in an age of smartphone translation, but somehow drearily omnipresent.

I came on this sign outside a café part of a Conad supermarket, in various forms Italy’s largest chain. However, this was not a supermarket in a touristy town, but Petrosino, a relatively small place on Sicily’s west coast:

Good morning! HAVE A GREAT DAY BEGINNING with Breakfast!

More entertaining was this mural in a Mazara del Vallo café (with excellent sandwiches and pistachio gelato) ...

... and a cat busy cleaning its Taormina neighbourhood.

Finally, I prefer this shot in black & white as it’s somehow more evocative, sort of Cinema Paradiso-ish … movie posters and a backstreet in Mazara del Vallo.

Sicily - part two

'Without Sicily, Italy cannot be fully understood. It is here one finds the key to all things.’ Goethe (1786)

Even on this, my longest visit to Sicily, I can't claim but the most superficial understanding of the island. However, I can claim hundreds of pictures whittled down in hopes of a digestible few posts. 

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I arrived armed with my usual, splendidly useful, out-of-date travel guides, including the 1943 "Soldier's Guide to Sicily'. This was issued to invading Allied forces, along them 26,000 Canadians.

The soldier’s guide tells me:

‘Greeks, Romans, Carthaginians, Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Germans, French, Neapolitans, and the Italians have ruled the island. It makes for a complicated mix and history.’

And according to Penelope Turning’s 1966 Your Guide to Sicily (21 shillings) … 

… ’There is splendour in the sunlit towns, and squalor too, wealth and poverty, faith and sorrow’. 

Hmmmm ... I find a café and people watch with mid-morning coffee and croissant or, on Sicily, cornetto. I particularly enjoy off-season when places are reasonably quiet.

For a start, here's a collection of those, some unwittingly, who have made my Sicily trips so enjoyable, including book lovers (bookstores still thrive on Sicily), a chanced on modelling session, welcoming friendly cat and young lovers understandably oblivious to all but themselves. Remember you can click on a picture and simply scroll through. 

In Mazara del Vallo I was delighted with a father showing his son how to skip stones. A scene, if ever there was one, calculated to induce nostalgia. 

Perhaps, as a friend suggested, he's reacting to a football score!

In fashionable Taormina's busy Piazza IX Aprile (there's a Garibaldi connection, if you care to look it up), passersby, including myself, gawked at a professional photographer, assistant and model.

And finally, a lady who, without my asking, turned and so kindly posed in front of this mural depicting neighbourhood goings-on.