Taormina, Sicilia

May 7

I really fell hard for Sicily. I forget how much I love the ocean until I smell that air again and hear the waves and absorb the negative ions and maybe a prop plane flies over or there’s that smell of grilling on the air and it feels like I’m sixteen again at the shore for the weekend.

After writing that I realize maybe what I love is actually the expansiveness of youth?

From Siracusa, I took a bus up the coast to Taormina, where I spent five nights at a sea-view rental apartment owned by my Italian teacher. Taormina is gorgeous, clinging to the cliffs with lemon and orange trees in front yards and on street corners. It is definitely a resort town, though, so the main drag of shops and restaurants is a little flashy for my taste. Thankfully where I was staying was a 10 minute walk from that area so it felt calmer; I was able to stock up at the grocery store and make some lunches and dinners at the apartment heavy on the vegetables, a food group I’ve almost entirely replaced with cured meats on this trip. :/

I had dinner down the street from the apartment at L’Arco Dei Cappucini my first night as they were about to close. I sat outside and had a pasta with clams and mullet roe. They were sweet to me and gave me a bitter digestivo that I want to say was wild fennel based but I could be making that up.

My second day I went to a cannoli making class AirBnB experience. Surprise of all surprises — there were other people there! It was delightful! The group of us was me, a couple from Poland, a couple from the UK, and a couple from the US currently living in the UK. We made the dough, rolled it out, shaped it, fried it and made two fillings under the kind tutelage of pastry chef Maurizio, and of course there was wine flowing freely. First a kind of Sicilian almond wine and then red, and after we fried and filled a lot of cannoli, like more than anyone would want to eat ever, we sat in the restaurant’s courtyard chatting and trying to make a dent in the four platters full in front of us.

Everyone starts chatting about how long they’re in Italy, what do they do for work. It gets to me and I’m like ummm soo and I launch into my spiel that’s probably now seeming too canned, where I’m explaining oh yeah well LOL just got divorced! yes please make the Eat, Pray, Love joke! Mostly just eating HAR HAR! Live with my parents in Delaware. Nope I actually quit my job! But I used to work in violence prevention and response at colleges! Yep, sexual assault! Am I lawyer? Sure ain’t! and so on and so forth into the pit of conversation death. It’s just my own insecurity, obviously, and I’m not giving myself enough grace or this group enough credit. They were kind and encouraging, suggesting jobs I could look at, sharing LinkedIn and IG info, etc.

I am grappling with how to ‘message’ the divorce, excuse the gross corporatization of my life. I am trying not to define myself as a divorced person, but it also becomes salient as soon as people find out I’m traveling for almost two months alone. And I don’t want to hide it because it’s nothing to hide, and why start any relationship, even a tour bus acquaintanceship, with so much as a shade of duplicity. I need to retrain myself to show up every day as I am, not as I think ‘they’ want me to be and this is a small step in that direction. But I do have shame amidst these complicated feelings, and in response to that perhaps overcorrection toward honesty, I sometimes feel overexposed.

A couple days after cannoIi class, I had another AirBnB experience booked: a group Etna wine and food tour. I was meant to be picked up at five after 10 in the morning. The weather had turned sunny the day prior and I spent that whole day eating a spicy salami pizza and reading The Wine- Dark Sea by Leonard Sciasia on the beach. I even polar plunged into the water and was in actual bodily shock gasping for air but when faced with the ocean, one must make every effort to baptize.

It’s 10 after 10 and I’m still waiting, no problem, it’s Sicily. But by 20 after, I message through AirBnB just checking that we’re all good. Just wait five minutes, sorry, first group was running late. Tour guide Diana* (name changed for protection) pulls up in the white Mercedes van and she’s already got an older couple in there, presumably the delayers. But whatever, again, it’s Italy, it’s been a half hour, what can you do? We set off to pick up our remaining group in Giardini Naxos and arrive at the hotel maybe 10:45 to pick them up. British ladies. Very frazzled that we’re late. Asking if we’ll get extra time on the back end because they paid from 10am. Tension! Like it’s a GROUP TOUR ON AIRBNB. Read the room. I gave my front seat because one of them had a mobility issue, which was fine, but as we stood on the pavement doing the seat switch, another one asks, “Were YOU the one who was late??” I said no. “It was them??” gesturing to the couple, and I noncommittally chuckled because no it was the ghosts in the trunk who were delayed.

So these broads did not pass the vibe check. But Diana kept it rolling smoothly, talking about the change in vegetation as we moved up the winding roads on Etna. We had a nice tasting at Gambino Winery with a generous local food spread - meat and cheese selection, couscous with veggies, and among other things, hard boiled eggs, which are meant to be eaten before drinking so they ‘coat the stomach'.

After the winery, we visited an agriturismo for lunch - I recall the sauteed local mushrooms and fried goat cheese being particularly good. Then back down the mountain to Taormina. We dropped off the Brits first, then the elders, and then when it was just me and Diana in the van she started going IN on the women and their attitude, and that’s another good thing about traveling alone is you end up being a confidant and getting the hot goss.

My week in Sicily was not nearly enough and I will be back to see this island jam-packed with messy delciousness and sunshine.