Chasing the Sun: April 2011

Cefalú

(Written on a terrace outside Sora sitting under the Italian sun in a valley shielded by snow capped mountains, listening to the roosters, birds and cattle.)

Palermo – Wednesday 6 April to 9 April.

Wednesday 6 April

Diary reads: 'I love this place! It was so strange to wake up in sleepy, quiet Maida Vale and for us to now be falling asleep in Sicily listening to busy Via Roma below'.

For both of us this is our first trip to Italy, before 6 April the closest we came were the couple of times Luisa came over laden with platters of Mama Bonvini treats.

Our Alitalia flight took us from Heathrow to Milan and then down to Palermo. I felt like a dag as soon as I stepped off the plane in Milan (and how do those Italian women stay so slim with all those carbs?). We were booked in to a little hotel named Palazzo Savona on the corner of Via Roma and Via Vittorio Emmanuel. After wandering through a market full of sunglasses, shoes and watches we found our way down a back street to a little place doing kebabs.

And that’s where we had our first Italian feast.

Platters of tasty lemon flavoured chicken and pork, vegetables smothered in this amazing olive oil, chips and Panini washed down with a couple of jugs of beer. Bliss! We left hypnotically satisfied with the situation.

And then we got lost.

I tried to take a short cut back to Via Roma thinking it’s where we had come from. My mistake, I started taking us in the opposite direction! Of course everything worked out ok in the end and although it was a tense hour or so it was lovely to stumble upon Quatro Canti, just one block from our hotel.

Impressions: male runners don’t mind a lycra short; scooters won’t stop for you.

Flying over towards Milan

Feast number one

Thursday 7 April

No longer appreciate the noises of the street below, or of the rooms next to, below or above us. Not a good sleep. Not yet adept at ordering espresso.

Rough start to the day, began with a breakfast at the hotel and then a walk around the city, heading back towards the main train station and then down to the water and back up to the hotel. I was in search of some markets the lady at the hotel had recommended, not realising she was recommending the Carrefour supermarket!! Saw a lovely botanical garden full of statues, a fantastic arch and a dozen little back streets.

After a quick down time at the hotel we headed out again for the bus to Mondello. I was determined to find myself some markets, so we made a detour that again resulted in no markets, but did get struck in awe by the Fontana Pretoria behind Quatro Canti.

By now we were both stinging for some caffeine, so I took the plunge and tried out some very poor Italian on a guy in a café behind the bar near the Fonatna. It basically included me holding up two fingers, saying ‘espresso’ and tapping the bar. Best €1.40 I ever spent!

Between this café and the bus station we found our way into a great side street full of delis and grabbed ourselves a bag full of supplies for beachside Mondello. A bag of green olives, a bottle of wine (that the seller opened and re-corked for us with pleasure and then gave me a taste of the best anchovies on bread I’ve ever had), some prosciutto, a €0.90 loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese. I guess that’s one way of saying This Is Italy.

Our 15 minute bus ride took us straight to the white sands and aqua waters of Mondello. I was slightly put off by the locals playing soccer in their tighty whiteys and by the contradiction that was a guy in a pair of budgy smugglers bearing the Australian flag, but I was well overdue for a dip in the ocean… even if it was just my toes and neither of these would stand in my way. We plonked ourselves on the sand with our picnic, classily necking the wine for lack of glasses and started soaking up the Dolce Vita.

Picnic complete we set about to achieve two goals –
Jono’s: walk to the end of the beach;
Mine: find some gelato.

After catching the bus home and accepting the siesta-way-of-life into our lives we headed out for some grub. It turns out the scowl I use down on the corso in Manly to try and prevent the restaurant pimps from hollering at me doesn’t work in Sicily. After a few too many pleading pimp eyes and overpriced menu we took a walk in the opposite direction.

Some general interest in a menu outside an unassuming restaurant drew our attention and the €18 fixed price menu drew us inside.

And that's where we had our second Italian feast.

The charming mix of locals and tourists was a good start and the excellent finish came after a ½ litre of wine and ½ litre of water each; bread (naturally); an antipasto platter to start with bruscetta, eggplant ragu with something else that was fried and cheesy and yummy; an eggplant pasta for primi and a pork chop for secondi and then a semifreddo for desert! We were stuffed and very happy.

The view from our room to across the street.

The view along Via Roma from our room (the bus station is in the opposite direction)

At the botanical gardens

Palermo Port

Fontana Pretoria

Mondello. I love my sun and my salt!

I got my gelato!

And Jono got his walk

Friday 8 April

After sleeping in we acquainted ourselves with Trenitalia (the train network) and jumped on the hourly train to Cefalú (say ‘che’ as in cherry), about an hour east of Palermo along the coast and famous for the 12^th Century Jesus mosaic in the dominating cathedral and the interesting shape of the hillside behind the town. We arrived just on siesta, so after grabbing some espressos and Panini at a café we relished in wandering the quiet streets after the noise of Palermo. Not a bad view from the jetty back onto the village with the fishing boats lined up on the shore and the Mediterranean turned on.

After a beer and another espresso we headed back to Palermo. In town we had more fun buying picnic items for our long train ride to Salerno (NB Trenitalia does two for one Saturdays – we saved €48 on those tickets!) and then went in search for a final Sicilian Panini for dinner.

Saturday 9 April

Friday night revellers and Easter processions outside the window meant no sleep at all and our train for Salerno was leaving at 7:30am. Diary reads: ‘So now I write from the train at 7:37am while munching cheese. Hope we are in the right seats because they are awesome! Currently in a private compartment, comfortable seats, space etc. Grabbed two coffees from a machine this morning tat were surprisingly good!’

We weren’t in the right seasts. Promptly ushered from those cosy, almost horizontally reclining chairs in that private compartment to a packed compartment a few carriages along filled with lovers and a guy with his four year old son (who we should give credit to because he really didn’t start to bounce around until the last couple of hours into the trip and took up less space).

About two hours into the journey our train hit the Sicilian coastline and the whole thing boarded a ferry to cross the straights and take us to the mainland.

And that was Sicily.

On a ferry on a train

Ciao Sicilia!

Wednesday March 23 - Tuesday 5 March

With our lovely new visas and hearts full of home we entered the UK early on March 23 and re-entered the real world as soon as we stepped through the doors of that Piccadilly line service to the city. I couldn't help but recall Shawn of the Dead as all the stoney faced, stoney eyed workers joined us on the tube and remembered catching the train with my cousin Alexandra who snickered at the Sydney version of these workers and chanted "I am a cog in the wheel of industry". Hmmmm my passport has gained five new entry stamps since our journey began, I haven't sat at an office desk since September but I'm still not yet ready to return to the world of allocated desk and window space.

So London came as a bit of a shock to us after the anarchy of Africa.

Little did we know that when we arrived at The Girls' (AKA Bek, Roz and Jess's) place in Maida Vale that we would be welcomed by not only our fellow house guest, Ange, but also Bek and a one Sally-Anne Yates making a surprise trip over from the States before heading back to Oz. Happy Days!

After an obligatory trip to Primark (except for a couple of jackets I'd only packed clothes for Africa and even had to pick up a pair of boots in Stellenbosch before we left because the only other shoes I had were havaianas, sandals and my running shoes) we met the girls after work at The Warrington for a Gordon Ramsay pub meal. Such a beautiful pub, but unfortunately we were all a bit disappointed by the food.

Over the next few days we took exploratory runs through the parks in Maida Vale, checked out Buckingham Palace and the city surrounds, wandered through the Borough Markets, caught up with Gwen, Kath and Felicity, did the Tower of London, saw the Oxford/Cambridge boat race down at Putney, got to know the local deli, soaked up as much spring sun as possible and went to check out the giraffes through the fence at the London Zoo (and saw the strangest animal ever - an okapi, he looks like a brown giraffe with a zebra's bottom).

A few days into the London trip we looked up Jono's cousin up in Cheltenham in the Cotswolds and caught the bus over to visit her on the Tuesday. The trip out of London was just what I needed and it really shook the culture shock out of me. So lovely seeing all the stone fences, rolling green hills, daffodils and blossoms.

We caught up with Jess just as she finished work at the Cheltenham Ladies College and she gave us a walking tour of the school and grounds. SO grand! Her home was only about 15 minutes walk from the school and she has a lovely high ceiling apartment in a beautiful old set of flats. That night Jess had a work function, but for Jono and I it was so blissful to be 'forced' to stay at home! It'd been a while since we'd had that luxury!

The following day we checked out Cheltenham, did some shopping and bought little Will a first birthday present for Jess to take home to Australia that weekend, headed to the pub for lunch, sought out a much needed haircut for Jono (my efforts to cut Jono's hair in Stellenbosch apparently not only didn't appeal to Audrey but also to Jono), grabbed a beer with Jess once she'd finished work and then headed back to her place to put on a birthday dinner for one of her friends.

On the last day we took the bus with Jess to Oxford for some classic touristy sight seeing, catching Christ Church college as we went.

Before we knew it our one week trip to London had turned into two and it was time to give The Girls back their lounge room and for us to get back to what we're here for and go and chase some sun!