Forza Italia! (part III)

Last one, I promise. I'm dragging this out.

Back to the main island now in to the port town of Trapani. The seas were much calmer this time so I managed to disembark a little less pale this time. I had booked us into Trapani for only one night. It really was meant to be a stop gap until we could drive to the beach town of San Vito lo Capo. It was also the only night we used Airbnb. It hasn't really caught on in Sicily (not much has) but this was an incredible experience. Nothing to do with the accommodation or the location. It was Nicola, the local who checked us in. He made a point to seat us down and in 15 minutes tell us everything we needed to know about Trapani. His insight was invaluable! The local hotspots that we otherwise would never have known about were all opened up to us. This had the potential to be the 'touristy' part of our holiday but young Nicola spared us. His most seismic contribution: 

Calvino's Pizza!

Seriously guys, this was earthshateringly good pizza. Without any question of a doubt the greatest pizza I have ever tasted in my life. Nicola warned us before we went to get there right when it opened at 7pm otherwise we would not get in. People drove from Palermo (over an hour away) to eat here. Only locals of course. He also warned us that these guys were rude, grumpy and ignorant but promised us that we'd forgive them. When people first think of Sicily they think of the Mafia. Sicilians hate this association and from being there it doesn't really seem that influence is evident. But this place I'm sure was being run by Mafiosi. The servers, the cooks, the cashiers were all grumpy looking middle-aged men with white shirts, black slacks, black thick-rimmed glasses, the bushiest eyebrows you ever did see, sons of Vito Corleone himself! Zero English of course and I almost buckled under his scrutinizing stare as I attempted to order in terrible, warbled Italian.  Decor? Non-existent. The tables were each in individual rooms off a corridor far from the safety of the streets. All of this accentuated the culinary experience:

I forgive you grumpy pizza men

And just like that it was over

As if one worlds-best wasn't enough, Nicola's other suggestion
was this back-alley granita (kind of a fresh slushee/sorbet) joint.
We got not one, not two, but three of these. Erin is holding a
Granita Fragola (strawberry).

I adopted this pose a lot on this trip

To top the night off we stumbled across an outdoor theatrical production. We
had no idea what they were saying of course but they could have been saying
anything and in Italian it would have sounded magical.

The next morning we took a day trip to an idyllic town called Erice set on top of a hill with narrow cobble stone streets and cute little shops. It was quite touristy but offered us some nice views over Trapani and even out as far as Trapani. We stopped in a well-known patisserie for some breakfast.

The view towards where we were headed later from Erice

The view from the other side. Down to Trapani. Off in the distance is the
archipelago of Egadi, three islands, the furthest you can see on the right
is Marettimo, our home for 3 days. 

The patisserie

Breakfast

On to San Vito lo Capo, one of the few beach towns on the island, and the last stop of our Sicilian adventure.

Fruit was for sale everywhere on the sides of the roads. Nectarines, peaches, grapes
became staples of our road trips

Snorkel-dork

The beach we stumbled across close to our B&B had an impromptu public
BBQ on the go with some pretty fresh fish being offered up

You know us Maddens don't say no to a feed. We made light work of this

Breakfast again. A place where this is an acceptable routine for breakfast
needs to be lauded. This practice should be proliferated in our home lands. 

Erin chose the healthy option (as well as the unhealthy one)

On our last day we headed to a nature reserve on the coast that contained some pretty neat and private beaches. It was a nice way to finish off the trip.

Another best ever. Ask Erin how she found the bruschetta

Deep-fried ball of risotto

Pistachio chocolate ice lollys. Right up Erin's street. 

Any chance I got I was reading that book!

At the airport, homeward bound

Probably a bit excessive of me to dedicate 3 blog posts to an 8 day long holiday but in my defense it was my favourite holiday of all time (excluding SB trips of course). Things will get a lot more boring for us from here on out but we'll keep you posted in case anything noteworthy happens (birth of our child, moving to CA, house purchases, more food, etc.).


Until next time blogonauts!

Niall

Forza Italia! (part II)

On day 2, the hiking intensity ramped up even more significantly. We strayed from the beaten track and were traversing cliffs fraught with peril at an elevation of about 2,500ft. I know, I am not a wise husband (or father-to-be). But this island begged to be explored! Our hike on this day would last close to 7 hours.

Got to fuel up right if you're going to be hiking for 7 hours! Croissants
and Cappuccinos should do the trick.

Our breakfast spot on the right

Where's Wally? Oh! There she is. Taking a wee.
She'll kill me for posting this.

Half-way in we went for a swim

Fraught with peril I said. Stupidly, I sprained my ankle
after 3 hours. It hurt but wasn't bad enough to stop (not that
I could!). Then I went for a swim but being immobilized
meant I relied more on my hands which then suffered
severe lacerations on the coral. I'm a walking disaster. 

#selfie - isn't this what all the cool kids are doing?

After so long hiking... this beer...

...and this pizza....

...and... whatever these things were... cafe di crema?? OH! SO GOOD!

#accidentalselfie

The Santa Barbara

Some of the treasures we found that day were truly epic. This place has to
be seen to be believed!

As we hiked home the Italian Air Force conducted
drills over and around the island. I was in heaven.

Day 3, our last, plays on our conscience a bit. After some fresh OJ for breakfast we took what we thought was going to be a boat ride around the island. We had been thwarted in previous attempts to nautically explore this place as the choppy seas had most boats marooned in the harbour. The seas looked calmer this day though and we were excited to see the parts that it was simply impossible to hike to.

OJ to start the day

First stop on the boat - A beautiful cave

Captain's View

Remember that castle I showed you in the previous post? The one that
juts out into the sea all on its own. That was our second, and last, stop (more
on that later). We had it all to ourselves. I even found 2 chairs hidden in
one of the rooms.

I tried to capture the epicness but I couldn't do it justice

Well it turns out that the captain dropped us off at this spot and said "I will return to collect you at 4.15" which I heard as I am dropping you here FOR 15. It was all in Italian so that didn't help. We left our lunch on board thinking he would be back to travel on. But he turned the boat around, returned our lunch to us, then went back to the town. We were stuck here for 5 hours! So we made the most of it. Explored the castle, relaxed, went for one last swim, then hiked the 1.5 hours back in flip flops. We didn't tell anyone (our fellow boat passengers who just lounged on the little cove beach below) which was our first guilty burden. But worst of all is that we were meant to pay on the return leg but we were so dissatisfied with the offering (we could've walked to the castle - it was essential a ferry for the fat and old) that we decided we weren't going to pay full price.... which turned into not paying at all. Worst of all, we had to go to the harbour to catch our ferry back to mainland Sicily and we saw our captain! I was going to go up and explain the situation but Erin suggested I shouldn't (EVE!) and with the language barrier it would have been a tall order. So we ducked our heads and scampered onto the ferry, hearts pounding...and heavy. We must be the first people to steal from that place. We have ruined the innocence of the island. To top it all off, I had to break into the B&B to get our stuff to catch our ferry by climbing through an open window. This is all too long a story but you get the picture.... we are bad people.


There will have to be a part III. Sorry for the length. We are going to celebrate Oran's 30th birthday now. That means a certain Mrs. Rowbottom's must be coming up soon too.... We'd love to celebrate that as well :(

Forza Italia!

Do you ever just feel like your entire life is one big long to-do list? That's how it feels for me sometimes. I bring it on myself mostly. I can hardly function without a to-do list. And if there is one perennial item that is found consistently on my to-do lists - it's this blog! Gosh, compared to:

• Return Drain Unplugger ☑
• File Erin's P46 ☑
• Eat breakfast ☑
• Book Hotel in Sligo ☑
• Make offer on house ☑
• Go to gym ☑

this blog is a nightmare! It's got a perpetual ☐ beside it. Staring at me. Judging me. Making the entire list a failure until it's completion. Months go by and yet I can't tear that page out of my planner until they're all ticked. Why is it so hard? I don't know. You'd think we'd want to keep you guys informed, up-to-date with the Madden latest, bridging the pond. But no, we'd rather you'd just be near us. We want you in the photos, viewing the houses with us, playing on our softball team, and eating the fruits of our ironing-board BBQ.

Having said that, you probably wouldn't have come to Italy with us so I guess this one is a blog worth writing.

You all know me pretty well. Would you think it's fair to say I don't often blow my own trumpet? Self-praise is no praise after all. But guys, I nailed this! No joke! I'm considering selling my itinerary it was so good. I'm a planner and normally put a decent amount of effort into our holidays (with no help from Erin - and she'll admit that). But this... I was having to reserve things in Italian because no one spoke English. These aren't the kinds of places you find on booking.com or your lonely planet guide.

Ok, I sense your soft spot for my sweet, humble Irish charm is fading fast after that chest-beating paragraph. So I'll get on with it. If we each had to summarise the holiday in one photo here is what I think we would choose (see if you can spot a common theme - and which belongs to whom):

Note: these weren't shared and were breakfast

But to say this was a foodies holiday would do Sicily a massive injustice! It is the largest island in the Mediterranean and most people recognise it as the land that the boot of Italy is kicking. Sicilians appear to be the most hospitable, welcoming, friendly people on the planet. They identify first as Sicilians, then Italians. Is that how Californian people feel? I don't think so. 'Murica!

We started our trip at the home of this older couple running a low-key B&B. No one there had any English but wildly expressive gesturing (them, not us! It's the way Italians communicate) got us most of what we needed to know. It was quaint, just 3 rooms, and a nice wee patio where Mama-luigi (that is what we christened her) served up the best of fresh Sicilian cuisine. When we arrived we asked where we should eat that night in broken Italian to which Papa-luigi responded passionately that his wife was the most brilliant cook in all the land (or at least gesturing that suggested the same). Erin and I were hesitant. We had travelled all this way and were willing to drop some serious green at the local ristorante. But Papa-luigi made such a convincing case that we accepted. This, alone, was probably the single most important decision we made on the trip! We had 2 nights there. We ate there both nights. We almost cancelled all our plans to stay with her the other 5 nights. Heck, I even considered letting her adopt us. They were delighted to hear we were pregnant and doted over us like our own grandparents.

Honestly, half the time we didn't even know what we were
eating but we knew it was good. And fresh. She was picking
the things from her garden as she cooked! Sto bene! We did know
the above is frutti di mare. Our favourite dish was the pistachio ravioli.

Our room

Front garden looking out towards Africa

My pregnant wife enjoying her first beach day

This book! I spent 8 days on holiday and the ensuing month at home
reading this thing! I'm on page 450. There are 890 pages. Trinity is one
heck of a book.

Mmmm... Gelato

This is the temple used on the UNESCO world heritage symbol.

You know what was great? So few tourists! And this was peak season.

This isn't directly related to the holiday...but my wife is gorgeous!

Mama-luigi's patio and one bella belle

The luigi's!

From there we set off to a town called Trapani. Here we would board a ferry to a small island 90 minutes off the western coast of Sicily. Marettimo is inhabited by about 300 people year round and is the furthest away and most mountainous of the Egadi Islands. This was the big surprise I had concealed from Erin about our holiday. She really enjoyed our day trip to Capri on our previous Italian getaway so I knew she'd dig this. What I had not planned on was stormy seas! I mean, come on! It's July. It's the Mediterranean. Where can the waves even come from?! If we didn't make it to this island I was pretty screwed! The 2pm sailing got cancelled.  The ferry company running the 3.30pm sailing couldn't promise us we'd travel AND wouldn't give us a refund if we didn't. But we had no choice. I bought the tickets and we prayed.

Hallelujah! 2 hours later we had arrived to rapturous applause for the captain.
I wasn't applauding. I was trying to keep my lunch down.

It didn't help that I pretty much had three of these for lunch before
we set off!

Marettimo is not your typical tourist destination. Life is slow here and English speakers are uncommon. The only industry is fishing (and tourism for mainland Sicilians) and most men spend their evenings out in the street mending their nets and chatting the night away over a cappuccino. The island itself gets its name from the Italian for sea (Mare) and thyme (timo). The place is covered in thyme and rosemary bushes which in the Summer heat makes the place smell like a sauna.

Our apartment

This is how they ferry the produce around the one village on the island

We would spend 3 days on this island. A lot of people had asked me would we not get bored on an island that size for that long. I wasn't worried. There were some gnarly hikes and they ended up taking the majority of our time. The first night we got there we went straight on our first hike. It proved far too ambitious. 3 hours in, darkness was setting in and we had chosen a very perilous and high path. No one else was around (these paths lead nowhere) and ominous clouds were rolling in. I played confident to Erin who was fearful but in reality I had no idea how we could get back and if we could get back before nightfall.

This girl, 14 weeks pregnant, was a trooper. 

There is one castle on the periphery of the island

Rosemary everywhere

That is the only settlement down there

3 hours in. At least we were descending again

Weird and wonderful plants

Casa Romane - I forget the significance. But it's old. And we just stumbled across it.

Again, zero tourists. I'm not surprised. It's quite the hike.

Right! I'm away to bed! You can have part 2 at the weekend!

Oh, and ☑

I'm counting it!  :-)