'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I arrived armed with my usual, splendidly useful, out-of-date travel guides, including the 1943 "Soldier's Guide to Sicily'.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) …
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… ’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.
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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.
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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.
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Perhaps, as a friend suggested, he's reacting to a football score!
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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.
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And finally, a lady who, without my asking, turned and so kindly posed in front of this mural depicting neighbourhood goings-on.
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