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The Insider’s Guide to Travel, Food and Wine
Adventures in Sicily
The stakes were high. The group of us, a family of six sisters ranging from our late 40s to early 60s, would take our 82-year-old mother to Sicily for a week. We would take her to the town where her mother was born before it was, you know, too late. A week with Mom; living all together like when we were kids—were we crazy?
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The author (first from Right), her five sisters and their mother called themselves the Sicily Seven
The hilltop villa with its patio and pool
The author and her mom at the outdoor market in Taormina, Sicily
Giant porcini mushrooms at Taormina's farmers market
Cafes line the narrow passageways in hilly downtown Taormina
Everyone in the tiny town of Trecastagni seemed to share the Petralia name, even the mayor
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Adventures in Sicily
Story by Rosie DeQuattro
Edited for Global-Writes by Kim Rahilly
The stakes were high. The group of us, a family of six sisters ranging from our late 40s to early 60s, would take our 82-year-old mother to Sicily for a week. We would take her to the town where her mother was born before it was, you know, too late. A week with Mom; living all together like when we were kids—were we crazy?
The spectacular view from the author's villa in the hills of Taormina, Sicily
On Friday evening, the seven of us boarded an Alitalia flight to Rome. My sister, Susan, an anxious flyer, sat clutching her aisle seat, forbidding anyone from opening the window shade. Once, during a period of turbulence she burst out of the bathroom with her pants still part-way down to take her seat at the captain's insistence. Mom had trouble sleeping, she complained, but Debra said she had heard her snoring. And so it went.
Touching down in the sprawling city of Catania on Sicily's East Coast, we found it was sunny and 70 degrees (this, in November) and the hot-flashers amongst us began peeling off layers of clothes. At Fontanarossa Airport, we picked-up two, roomy rental cars with standard transmissions. The roominess was for Mom, and the standard transmissions were to save a little money. Boy, did we get that wrong.
The precipitous hills of Taormina
In tandem, we bucked and lurched out of the rental car lot and snuck into the blur of speeding traffic on the infamous, Italian autostrada. We were the slowest two cars on the highway -- even the three-wheeled carts were faster than we were -- but we doggedly maintained our steady, slow pace and ignored the Italian daredevils as they flew by, honking and gesticulating with both hands. Mom, in the backseat, who was pretty tired at this point and already missing her ordered life back home, closed her eyes and recited the rosary. Our two cars managed to stay within sight of each other the whole way, even around Taormina's steep, switchbacks. Together, we crawled up, up, up the mountain to our villa aerie, arriving in two hours flat—an otherwise 45-minute drive. At least it was still light out and for that we were grateful.
All the major attractions in Taormina are along the main street, Corso Umberto I, far below our family perch. With her knees, Mom refused to walk. We could reach the Corso one of three ways: by walking straight down hundreds of ancient, intermittently-crumbling stone steps; by walking on the road where pedestrians were regarded as expendable; or by driving -- risking life, family harmony, and car parts. We experimented with all three ways, and after transforming one of the rental cars into a cash-for-clunkers candidate (my sister Joyce got wedged in a narrow, picturesque alley she wandered into, where no car had ever been, and emerged scraped and dented, and riding a cloud of burning clutch fluid), we chose the steps. For Mom, we called a cab.
The famous volcanic Mount Etna could be seen from the author's villa (Upper Right, through the clouds)
Our daily routine during that brief week in Taormina consisted of rising at about 7 am and, in an effort to adequately caffeinate seven American coffee addicts, appropriating every vessel in the Italian kitchen for the purpose of making coffee. That meant every pan, pitcher, vase, kettle and bowl plus the coffee-maker itself, a puny four-cup espresso pot.
During the day, we visited vineyards, strolled along glitzy Corso Umberto 1, shopped at the local farmers market, and basked in the views of smoldering Mt. Etna from the villa's lush patio.
The author's mom prays in front of some artful church doors in her hometown of Trecastagni
But we had come to visit Mom's ancestral home—the town of Trecastagni, about 30 km away. We weren't prepared with much information, only that the name we were looking for was Petralia. We traveled in two cars, got lost, then separated (who knew there was more than one gray church!), and finally arrived at the Municipio, the office of the keeper of family records, just as it was about to close for lunch—the Italian three-hour lunch. We hung around long enough to discover just how fruitless our search would have been though, for not only is the mayor of Trecastagni named “Petralia,” but so it seemed, everyone in town had that last name! Without information on names, dates of births and deaths, it would be next to impossible to track down a Petralia directly related to my mother. We consoled ourselves with a grand lunch at a local trattoria, followed by a large sampling of marzipan confections and candied fruits (specialties of the region); all the while eyeing our waiters for a family resemblance.
The last day of the trip was uneventful, thank goodness. Mom's cab driver, Roberto, took us up to the town of Castelmola, high above Taormina. At the Bar Turrisi, known for it's display of wood, ceramic, terracotta, even marzipan penises — an accepted symbol of life and beauty there — we toasted to our Mom's continued good health, to each other for pulling together to make the trip happen, and to our strong enduring family ties — oh, and to getting back to the airport the next day in one piece!
© Story by Rosie DeQuattro, 2010
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