Siracusa, Sicilia

May 4

I left the green middle of mainland Italy on Tuesday, April 26 to spend one night in Rome before flying to Sicily on the unfortunately named WizzAir. I landed in Catania, the second biggest city on the island behind Palermo, in the evening and met my driver to take me to Syracuse, specifically the atmospheric old town of Ortigia.

Yes, I had a private car which usually I wouldn’t because $ and my innate drive to DIY, but I considered that I had been on the move for a couple days, driving between Tuscany, Umbria, into Rome, out of Rome to the airport, having to navigate — I mean, getting to and being privileged to, I know this is not a hardship to be over here, but still, the problem solving does take energy. And I thought what would my grandparents want me to do? Not my parents because their priority is always my physical safety and ease, which like thank you and how lucky am I but my grandparents had that one generation of remove which provides more objectivity, I think, and that shrewdness being immigrant/Depression/WWII products. And they absolutely would’ve been like pay that man to drive the Mercedes. So I did.

I stayed two nights at B&B Maison Ortigia which was akin to what my mom refers to as a pensione from Frommer’s Europe on $5 a Day Era: a number of rooms spread over a couple floors of a building with a central reception/breakfast room. It was no-frills but I could see the ocean from the balcony.

I continue to eat often and well. The caponata was delicious and the service friendly at Taverna Guidecca my first night. The gigantic 2 euro arancino con ragu at L’Antica Guidecca was transcendent for lunch the next day. I ate it sitting across from the place, on a street so narrow that when cars drove by I had to turn sideways and put my feet up on the bench with me to get out of the way. My second dinner was mostly Campari. It started with an aperitivo at Enoteca Solaria. I told the waiter I like a dry white wine, no oak, which is a fancier way of saying Chardonnay makes me ill, and he suggested a Sicilian Catarratto which was lovely. I drank it with my bruschette of pistachio pesto topped with a sliver of pork fat. Texturally and taste-wise, the bread is so much better the further south you go.

Feeling the buzz from a single glass of wine, as you do at age 35, I ambled down the street presumably to find dinner. I bought a 1.5L bottle of water at the corner store and then realized I was in front of Cortile Verga, a cocktail bar I’d read about in the guidebook. It was super Instagrammable, completely translated menu, high prices, but I sat down anyway because when you arrive somewhere in a Mercedes it just changes the tone, you know? And I drank two Americano cocktails (must specify because there’s also the Americano coffee which is espresso with water in it), which are Negronis without the gin. When you order a drink here, they bring you a couple finger bowls of snacks, like the Italian version of cocktail peanuts: olives, taralli, chips, almonds. And I think the idea is you nibble on these? I’ve considered taking up smoking just to have something to do other than clean out the snack bowls, but I’ve gambled that high cholesterol is better than lung cancer, for now.

Ortigia was messy and charming. I didn’t go to Siracusa ‘new’ town this time, but I’ll be back to Sicily for sure.