Going out with a bang

So my time as a tour leader in Italy has come to an end and I am writing this in Bologna airport waiting for my flight back to London.  Competition for places with my company is tough and having had more than one bad trip and more than a couple of unhappy passengers, I will have to wait and see if I get offered another contract to do the same next year.  Sticking to my life motto of ‘no regrets’, I can be happy with the thought that I certainly made the most of the opportunity to travel around Italy for the last seven months.  My love of the country could mean that if tour leading is not on the agenda, I may well come back and try my hand at something else here.  But the world is still my oyster and there are other possibilities elsewhere on the table.

 

I have learnt an incredible amount about the culture, places, sights, art, history, food and wine of Italy.  My language skills were perfect for the job I did, but I did not push myself to learn more so my conversational Italian was only aided by Spritz when socialising.  Being fluent, or at least nearly fluent, will be an aim for next year if I return to Italy.

 

Prior to tour leading, I was hoping that my thoughts on the nature of people, particularly those from the English speaking western world, were a little harsh and that my opinions would change.  Unfortunately, they were just exemplified.  I think I am just going to have to get used to the fact that people are the way they are, and that my values and philosophies on life are only shared by a minority.  Also that most people walk really really really slowly.

 

My last days in Italy were spent doing my own little tour of Emilia-Romagna, a region known for its cuisine (where isn’t in Italy!).  I treated myself to a three course lunch and dinner everyday, making sure I got to try all the local specialities.  I also went a bit crazy shopping, instead of doing all the touristy things.  And, of course, I took the opportunity to have a few last Spritz with a newly found friend.  Speaking of which…Does anyone know where you can buy Aperol in London?

 

Although this is not an award ceremony, I want to say a big thank you to all the people I have met this year that have made my time in Italy so enjoyable and memorable.  You know who you are!  I have had many great times (needless to say, usually nights outs) along the way with Italians who were charming, or crazy, or cute, or charismatic, or chivalrous, or all of the above, and who I look forward to meeting again in the hopefully not too distant future.

 

When I return to London, I wonder if my family and friends will think I have changed much.  I don’t think my personal traits have changed, but my priorities for the future have, and then to some degree, my outlook on life.  I have also now got a stupid inflection at the end of my sentences.  I don’t know where it came from but the two major suspects are from listening to Australian passengers, or asking a lot of questions in Italian.  Either way, I will have to train myself not to do it.  I will however, be incorporating a few choice Italian words and phrases into my everyday English.  My favourite of which means “I don’t know” but is more truly translated as a wordless shrug of the shoulders.  It will come in very handy when being asked “What are you going to do now?” by probably every person I talk to in London over the next couple of months.  Please expect my answer to simply be “Boh”.

 

Last legs

So I am about to start my penultimate tour.  It is a trip through Umbria and this will be my last time in the region.  I am terribly sad about the season coming to an end and having to leave Italy, but it is probably for the best that I take a little break from tour leading.  Don’t get me wrong, the job is more fantastic than you could imagine in so many ways but, as I anticipated, I have gotten a bit tired of other people’s moods affecting mine.  No matter how hard you try, sometimes you just can’t take your work head off at the end of the day, even if you are away from your tour group and out with other non work related friends.

 

As I have mostly lead the Northern Italy and Umbrian trips this season, it is the latter that I am glad to be saying goodbye to first.  The trip activities are awesome and the towns we stay in are wonderful.  I have my favourite bars and eateries in each place which I have had great times in but luckily now, or unluckily then, there has only been one person in Umbria that I will say a fond farewell to.  The Italians I deal with on this trip are lovely but I have not built any great relationships with any of them apart from the head bar man of Fusion cafe in Gubbio.  This place serves the best free aperitivi food I have had anywhere in Italy and this modern cafe in the most medieval of towns makes for an interesting juxtaposition.

  

Finishing with the Northern Italy trip will be a heart breaker.  I have met some really wonderful people working in the hotels, bars and restaurants, and even in train stations and boat ports we use along the way.  Saying goodbye to these people that I now call my friends will be difficult, and it is these relationships that I will miss more than any of those I had with passengers on my tours.  Just the thought of not going back to the best wine bar in the world, All’Antica Vinaio in Firenze, or getting cannoli from the stall outside Lucca’s Porta Santa Maria, or hiking and kayaking along the Cinque Terre, or sipping Ruché in Castagnole Monferrato, or swimming in Lago di Como with a spectacular mountain backdrop, or knocking back spritz in Venezia’s Campo Santa Margherita, brings tears to my eyes and this summer will be remembered as the best of my life yet.

 

High

My Dolomiti adventure is now over. I counted my week and a half in the mountains as my real summer holiday, and it was certainly a good one. I have wanted to hike the Dolomites for many years and was disappointed when I found out that no tours by the company I work for visit the area of Südtirol. After some intensive internet searching I found a way to hike in a group in the region I most wanted to go to at a reasonable cost. The hotel I found near the Tre Cime di Lavaredo (= Three Peaks) offered free guided walks four days a week. On top of this, there were excellent summer offers on the price and the hotel had a renowned chef heading the restaurant, a swimming pool, a gym, and a spa. Having normally stayed in hostels, eating supermarket food when off work in Italy, this was certainly a break from that. I would have said before that a half board resort type place was not really my thing, but I certainly adapted to it very quickly and would not be adverse to going to such a place again. It was great having the pool and gym there whenever I wanted to use them, and the food served up for was generally as good in quality as my favourite restaurants in London, although the mix of Italian and Tirolese was at times a little weird. The family and staff at the hotel were wonderfully welcoming and I was just as sad to say goodbye to them as some of the other lovely people I made friends with who were also staying there. I was the only non Italian or German staying at the hotel and found it interesting that there was very little mixing between people of different languages. I stuck to the Italian group as my German was not up to scratch to join in their conversations, plus I think the Italians were more sociable anyway.

 

The hikes were amazing. On average they were about six hours long, going up and over mountain passes, or around different peaks, or down into valleys, in various national parks with Dolomite mountains. We used a cablecar that went up approximately two thousand metres which was crazy steep, and one day we also visited some local farms that made cheese and jams. I still cannot quite believe that I have seen the Tre Cime up close and hiked around them. It has been a dream of mine to be there and now that I have, it still feels like a dream. I can’t quite register the whole experience and it is metaphorically like my head is in the clouds about it, but in actuality my head really was in the clouds. I look at the pictures from that day and have to remind myself that I took them and that I was actually there. It is for this reason why I can’t say it was my best day yet in Italy. Maybe after a while the reality of that day’s hike will be more comprehensible and I may consider it better than hiking on Etna.

 

Südtirol is obviously very different from the rest of Italy. The local people do not identify themselves with a country, not even Austria, only with the region. I found it hard to understand their spoken German but I was told by Germans that they also found it difficult to understand because of the strong dialect. Along some of the walks it was evident of the devastation and change that occurred in the region during the first world war, less than one hundred years ago, and how it certainly has not been forgotten, and perhaps not really forgiven either.

 

Even in the height of summer, the temperatures were about ten degrees less than most places in Italy. The weather held out the first half of the week but it rained quite a lot by the end of it. The rain did not stop me from being one of the very few hikers on the last day and it certainly did not stop me from enjoying the forests we were walking through, but it has now left me with a cold and I have been sniffling all the while I’ve written this. Let’s just hope I don’t snot all over my passengers at the welcome meeting tonight.

 

Getting my money’s worth

This is a note to aid digestion (read on to find out why I cannot go to bed yet) and about a newly found favourite in Italy.  It is not a town but the first hotel I am staying in, other than those when with tours. 
 

Today I arrived in an alpine town called Villabassa (or to give it its real Tirolese name, Niederdorf), near the Austrian border, in the region of Trentino-Alto Adige.  The day started with a train journey from Bolzano and through the Alps, catching my first glimpses of spectacular Dolomite mountains.  I arrived at the small mountain village, and the road from the station led straight to the town centre, a whole one hundred metres away, with a church, a general store, and a few alpine lodges.  Hotel Adler is one of these residences and it is also going to be my home for the next seven nights. 

 

I have wanted to hike the Dolomites for many years and since coming to Italy in April, I have been looking for a way to explore these peaks.  However, given that I am a lone traveller but not a solo hiker, I was limited in options, until I found out about this hotel.  Although my budget normally only allows accommodation at hostels, I couldn’t resist the offer of the free guided hikes it leads four days a week.  It was just an added bonus that I got a couple free nights, that it has a swimming pool, gym, spa (not that I would use it), and the price was for half board (something new to me) all for only about double the price I would normally spend on a dorm bunk for the night and a day’s food from a supermarket.

 

My welcome to Hotel Adler was certainly warm coming in from the crisp mountain air, and within two minutes of talking a mixture of Italian, German, and English, I was on first name terms with most of the on-duty staff.  I dumped my bag in my bedroom, and as quickly as I noted the carpet (a novelty for most of Italy), I headed straight out to get supplies for the next few days.  Rather than exploring the new surroundings, I couldn’t help myself but race back to dive in the pool, to try out the equipment in the gym, and to snuggle under the biggest, fluffiest, feathery duvet I have ever had the pleasure of being under.

 

Not entirely sure about how half board works, a sign for aperitivis at seven pm seemed like a good place to start.  Tables were set up out the front of the hotel with the perfect ingredients for a spritz, and tasty canapés to accompany the drinks.  I managed to get myself into a conversation with a lady who lived in the town but that I soon thought must have been the closest this place came to the ‘local drunk’.  Thankfully dinner was called soon after my realisation.

 

There were six items on the menu (salad buffet, speck mousse, fennel and salmon soup, chanterelle risotto, entrecote, and pineapple).  I figured that everyone helped themselves to the salad, then the next two items were your choices for starters, the following two items were your choices for mains, and pineapple was for dessert.  My waitress, who obviously was not happy that I wanted to converse in Italian rather than in German (because my conversational German is far too rusty), asked me if I would like to have what was recommended and so I agreed.  What I didn’t realise until after I faced six courses was that all the items on the menu was recommended, but I could understand why as the food was exquisite.  The mousse was light and the soup delicate.  The risotto was one of the best I have ever had, and the steak was cooked (or uncooked I should say) to perfection.

 

Apart from my completely full stomach, I have to mention that I was unsettled by the sommelier.  He looked sixteen and wore braces (the kind on teeth, not to hold up trousers).  I know there is no legal drinking age in Italy, but still!

 

Knock knock

Since tours in Italy have come to a stand still like the rest of the country in August, I am currently on my own summer holiday.  Having just spent another week lazing in Lucca with some more of my nearest and dearest, I am travelling around northern Italy on my own for almost three weeks.  All places visited are obviously different from those I go to with my tours but still there are so many things I want to visit which I won’t have a chance to get to, that it is a good job I have decided to come back next year to Italy, rather than tour leading elsewhere.

 

Torino was a ghost town, often walking alone past blocks at a time with not even one shop or bar open for business.  I had expected nothing else given the time of year I was visiting it but still the city seemed to allow me to get the feel of it even without its usual amount of residents.  Torino surprised me, as given my normal disdain for modern architecture and urban landscape, it was this part of the city that I found most charming.  The large avenues were mostly empty – but I could imagine the thousands of Fiats driving along them in rush hour throughout the rest of the year – which allowed me, at times, to stand in the middle of the thoroughfares and admire the weird sculptures, fountains, and lights dotted along them.  The Manhattan street layout also meant that it was easy for me to take a different path to and from the hostel every time (just one of my OCDs is not walking the same route on a return journey).  Along the forty minute walk between the hostel to the train station, I enjoyed not being able to differentiate offices from residences because the buildings could be, and were, used for either purpose, and for both.  For me, there was not much of interest in the historic town but, having to eat my words from a previous blog, La Mole Antonelliana, was even more spectacular from the inside, especially in the higher towered levels.  In there I got to re-enact a scene from what was probably my favourite childhood movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (not the newer Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).  When in the panoramic lift, I really felt like I was in the great glass elevator  and the opening to reach the viewing platform was so small it was as if we would break through the ceiling to get out.

  

On a day trip to Aosta, an alpine town near the French border, yet another possibility of what to do in the off-season came to mind, skiing.  It is something that I have not yet tried, having never had the opportunity when I was younger and, now older, choosing to travel to places in warmer months of the year for hiking.  However, various people have on different occasions mentioned how they think I would really enjoy it.  Having the world as my oyster for a few months in between tour leading seasons is turning out to be more difficult than I thought.  I do not normally have trouble deciding on things but with so many options open to me, I may be tempted to leave things to the last minute and just see what happens.  Although my scheming brain matter is not being neglected – after having chatted with my friend the other day, it looks like a trip to Cabo Verde is on for November.  But I digress, Aosta was beautiful and interesting.  Seeing ancient roman remains with mountains in the background was certainly dramatic, and made for the perfect outing from the industrial landscape of Torino.

 

The next stop on my travels came about because of the location of a hostel.  I wanted to see some more of the Italian lakes because of my love for Lago di Como but with no cheap accommodation around Lago di Garda, I travelled to Lovere at the northern tip of Lago d’Iseo.  This smaller and less well known lake is not mentioned in guide books and with the lack of other information available on the town I was staying in, I knew the area was not going to be very touristy.  I was amazed to find no other non-Italian tourist over the two days I was there, not even in the hostel – an important step checked for my idea of holiday heaven.  My first evening on arrival it rained.  The miserable weather continued the following morning but I set off to find the tourist information office to find out what there was to do in the area anyway, given that the conditions weren’t great at that time for swimming and laying on the grass reading a good book (currently Marcus du Sautoy’s Finding Moonshine).  I should have known better with the fickle Italian weather but it was brightening up by the time I reached the centre of town.  In the tourist office – while checking out the boat timetables for heading to Monte Isola, an island in the centre of the lake, recommended to me by a couple of Milanese at the hostel – I saw a paragliding poster out the corner of my eye.  Paragliding is just one of the things I often do while travelling but never back in the UK because of the elevated (sorry couldn’t help myself) costs.  My luck was in as paragliders were due out that morning (weather conditions permitting of course) and they still had room for me to fly.  Ignoring the tight budget I was supposedly on, I prayed the clouds would clear.  They did, and before I knew it, I was in a 4×4 driving up the mountains across the lake which I looked out onto from my dorm window not long before.  Flying was great.  I had forgotten the rush you get when catching the air for take off.  I am not wanting to say this but unfortunately I was a tad, and only a tad, bored in the air.  Even with though the scenery was spectacular (Val Camonica on one side and Lago d’Iseo on the other), my paraglider would not do tricks in tandem, which I was accustomed to, although other flyers were not either so thankfully I was spared the green eyed monster.

 

Back at lake level, I didn’t stay on solid ground for long, catching the boat to Monte Isola.  I started walking on the lakeside path, looking for a good place to swim, but got distracted by signs for a sentiero and ended up walking around, up and over the mountain in the middle of the lake.  This impromptu hike was wonderful.  There was not a cloud in the sky and the sun was smiling but not making me melt.  The path was also a road but as cars are not allowed on the island, I only had to share it with a couple of motorinis zipping past.  Along the way fruit trees with perfectly ripened figs and apples, and also blackberry bushes screamed out “pick me, eat me”, and I just couldn’t resist reaching over fences and plucking the fruit off for the most freshest of lunches.  The only bad thing was that a couple of pear trees teased me, displaying their juicy fruits just out of my short statured reach.  When I finally settled lakeside and dived in to Lago d’Iseo, I could not have dreamt up a better way to spend the afternoon, swimming in a lake with water so fresh it tasted like it had been poured out from bottles of overpriced mineral water.

  

Having spent the first couple of months in Italia finding the best gelati, my tastes of late have been concentrating on granite (a cross between snow cones and slushies).  After tasting my fair share I now normally only go for the ones premixed with flavour in the churners, rather than those in which the syrup is added to order.  Only the later was available in the small but main town on Monte Isola after my walk, so I had one anyway.  I tried a new flavour, mirtillo (=blueberry), and it was by far the best one I had in which syrup was added at the end.  Sweet but not sickly sweet, I am not entirely sure it tasted of blueberries, but it certainly tasted good.  Finally, the long boat ride back to the north end of the lake did not fail to delight because the typically flirtatious, but atypically tall Italian boatman (needless to say  gorgeous) supplied my Aperol free of charge, taking me one last step closer to holiday heaven.

 

Crowd control

The small Tuscan town of Lucca is home to a summer music festival. With acts such as David Bowie and Eric Clapton previously playing in Piazza Napoleone, the main square within the medieval city walls, I was glad to hear that one of my stays in Lucca would coincide with Lenny Kravitz performing as part of the 2009 line up. 

Although I have never been a huge follower of his music, the hits of Lenny Kravitz have always managed to get my rock on, and his star magnetism has not gone unnoticed. So I was excited with anticipation when I managed to get tickets for his gig a few days before, and at a reasonable cost too. The ritual I have of picking my favourite tracks that an artist has to play for me to go home really happy at the end of the gig resulted with Where Are We Running at the top of the list.

 

I was interested to see how Lucca was going to block off the concert area, knowing that at least six roads led onto the open square. So I headed to Piazza Napoleone during the day, and even then the stage looked impressive. I wandered how early I would have to go there to get a good spot near the front. Vaguely remembering I had read that Lenny Kravtiz was on at 2130, the support act Alain Clark was due to start at 2030, and doors were at 1930, I thought getting there when it opened would suffice. The only thing written in English on my ticket was that it was forbidden to take photos, videos, or audio recordings during the concert. It was then surprising when I arrived at the ticketing gates and walked straight through, with only a rip of my ticket, and no airport style security as with events in London these days. Even bags were not being checked.

 

Towards the front of the stage about a hundred people had congregated before me. Some were standing, some were sitting, many were eating pizza from a side stall, and only a few were drinking alcohol (whereas gig goers in the UK would have foregone the food and concentrated on the booze). I found a spot right in the middle of the stage, about four or five people back from the front. I was surrounded by Italians, mostly in their twenties. Given USA’s occupation of Firenze not too far away (see previous blog entry), I presumed more Americans would be at the gig. Perhaps the train strike also taking place that evening had put them off travelling to a place that they could not have got back home to.

 

Waiting for the gig to commence, I started thinking about how hot it would get when everybody would be jumping to the sounds of Lenny Kravitz, being right in the heart of the sweltering, sweaty mosh pit. Whether a good or bad thing, it would just be part of the great experience of going to an outdoor festival in Italy, under the hot summery Tuscan sun. When the support act promptly came on, there was no immediate push forward within the crowd. Those that were seated got up but everyone stayed in the same positions that they had been for the hour waiting beforehand. I thought that maybe Alain Clark was not very popular. I had only heard of the artist because of seeing a song him and his father sing being played on Italian MTV a few times over the past month. Throughout the opening gig, the Italian girls in the crowd seemed more interested in the tall Dutch blond male band members than in Alain Clark or his music, but when his father came on stage for the penultimate song (and the only one I recognised), he was warmly welcomed.

 

Given Italian train delays I have to cope with on an almost daily basis, I was amazed that the man himself, Lenny Kravitz, punctually made it on stage as scheduled. I was however, even more amazed that the crowd stayed in their places, everybody still had their perfect personal space bubbles around them, and there was no sign off people pushing and shoving each other to get closer to the midget rock god on stage. I say midget because Lenny Kravitz was far shorter than I ever imagined he would be.

 

Everybody seemed to be enjoying the concert but there was not too much sound from the crowd. I would say about three quarters of the people around me had their phones or cameras out, taking photos of Lenny Kravitz. After the first couple songs I thought it was strange that these people still had their arms in the air, continually filming the gig. When my favourite song started to play four tracks into the set and I was dancing, jumping, and singing harder, higher, and louder than ever, I got annoyed by the people surrounding me and wondered why they didn’t just watch the spectacular show that was right in front of their eyes, rather than through their small screen filming devices.

 

The crowd push finally came when Lenny Kravitz took the professional photographer’s camera from the side of the stage and stepped down into the area in front of the crowd to take photos of the audience. I suddenly found myself in the second row and I couldn’t help myself from sticking my hand out to touch the man himself as he walked past. I finally felt like I was at a gig and there was a rock star on stage but when Lenny Kravitz scrambled back up, the crowd push was over. I thought that seeing I was so near the front I would stay there, but the people around me did not like my presence, a foreigner in a neighbourhood where everyone had gotten to know each other. I looked around to find everyone else had reverted to the exact same positions before the surge to get close to Lenny Kravitz off stage. After a couple of comments and evil glares, I decided to show those around me what it was like to be in a gig elsewhere in the world. I screamed the words to the songs into the ears of those in front of me, and I danced with my elbows out to nudge those to the side of me for the rest of the gig, and enjoyed myself even more for it, with the desired effect of annoying others. During the chorus of one of the hit encore songs, when I accidentally (and it really was accidental) made the guy behind me drop his camera because I had stuck my hands up in the air gently knocking his, I could not stop myself from hoping that his camera was broken and he had wasted the last two and a half hours of his life filming rather than watching the gig. As I have not been to a big name event anywhere in recent years, I am wondering whether filming is what people do these days, or whether it was just this Italian crowd missing out on the whole experience of seeing the performance in front of their own eyes.

 

It was far from the best concert I had ever been to, but it was certainly a night to remember. Oddly, the smile on my face that evening beamed brightest after the gig when I realised I was actually walking home (home being the apartment I was staying in) without having to take a packed bus and or train travelling across a large city, and that I would be curled up in bed within ten minutes.

 

North south divide

I have recently come back from my first tour to southern Italy. Most of the sights I had been to before on a school classics trip over ten years ago but I was keen to revisit them. Unfortunately not much lived up to my expectations and I was extremely glad to return to northern Italy.

 

I enjoyed going to Napoli and would have been happy to stay a little longer than the one afternoon and night, even if the passengers couldn’t wait to get out of there. You are constantly aware of the dangers of this notorious city but I never really felt in danger. The noise, the crowds, and the traffic of Piazza Garibaldi did not bother me and the small alleyways with motorinis zooming past you in the historical centre were exciting for me to explore. The major sights were impressive too, particularly the Piazza del Plebiscito and Maschio Angionino (with the breath taking gothic starred ceiling beam council room). However, I did find the Museo Archeologico Nazionale lacking, considering the supposed importance of its collection. Pizza from the two best pizzerias in the world were great to sample and I would love to have tried other traditional Neopolitan cuisine. The city itself was not coherent, nothing really matched and different styles were intermingled in all areas. I found this intriguing, and, for an inexplicable reason, I identified with the confusion of it all.

 

We stayed in Pompei while visiting the ruins and Vesuvio. The new town was devoid of character and full of people giving out wrong instructions, even the tourist information was guilty of this. I did have a lovely meal though with the tastiest mozzarella. I was not fascinated by the ruins of Pompei as I had been the first time I visited. Perhaps the hoardes of tourists round every corner did not help me in picturing what life would have been like in the first century AD.

 

Vesuvio was even more of a let down. You only got to walk the last 200m up to the crater rim, with the path clearly defined and even paved in some areas. Looking into the lifeless crater, there was no sense of what devastating destruction this sleeping giant could do, or even just a single whiff of the volcanic activity underneath. For me, the views of the Golfo di Napoli were more than ugly. A sprawling city, and hardly any natural landscape to be seen right up to the coastline was not a sight to behold. I do not want to, but I have to say that I found the whole experience quite boring.

 

Unfortunately things did not get better heading to the Amalfi Peninsula. We stayed in a suburb of Sorrento called Sant’Agnello. Accommodation was in a resort with a swimming pool which is far from the normal style used on the trips, and not what I would choose for my own holiday either. I should not moan though as I did enjoy a good few hours swimming on more than one occasion. Sorrento was nothing more than a seaside holiday destination, and the package holiday goers hid whatever charm the place may have had from me.

 

Visiting the other towns along Costiera Amalfitana proved even more disappointing and having arrived in Positano, I could not wait to be out of there. However, the one thing I did enjoy in that area was the Sentiero degli Dei (Footpath of the Gods), a short walk in the clouds along the cliffs of Amalfi.

 

Ladybirds on warm ice

So the best day I have had yet in Italia was spent hiking Monte Etna. There was only one company that went to the summit craters, so the choice of which tour to take was easy. As with all tours on Etna, this one started with a cable car ride from the Rifugio at 1910m to 2500m. Then the trucks drove us up a further 420m. This is where the fun really began. We were already above the snow line but the weather was perfectly warm with a refreshing breeze. We started our on foot ascent to the summit. The obligatory snowball had to be thrown and amazingly the snow was slightly warm to touch and yet not melting. From the corner of my eyes I kept seeing flecks of red in the air and on the snow underfoot. After closer inspection, I discovered that there were ladybirds everywhere. This place was seeming more like a made up land that I would visit in my weird dreams, rather than a volcano in southern Europe.

 

The hike up was a challenging but easily motivated as the summit craters were nearing, although I was getting the occasional lung full of sulphur as the winds changed. However, the feeling after reaching the Cratere Centrale at 3345m was nothing short of ecstasy. Having climbed a few mountains through my travels around the world, I instantly remembered this sensation of accomplishment and awe of where I had reached, which is the best possible natural high I have been lucky enough to experience. I stared down into the smoky Bocca Nuova and couldn’t quite get my head around the fact that I was right on the edge, looking into the hot gaseous abyss that is Monte Etna, the largest active volcano on the continent.

 

As we were heading to Cratere di Nord-Est, the wind changed unexpectedly and we were engulfed in a cloud of sulphur. Having to run up scraggy crater rims while not being able to see further than a metre, and breathing in poisonous gases that were burning your eyes, nose, mouth, throat, and lungs, was far from pleasant. It was undoubtedly one of the most scariest moments of my life, but one which really just added to the excitement of the whole day’s adventure.

 

During the descent all the way back down to the rifugio, skiing ski-less down the soft ash for almost 1500m, the most beautiful views were to be had. We passed above the Valle del Bove where purple, green, red, and grey substrates painted lunar landscapes before looking out along the eastern Sicilian coastline. While sitting on volcanic rock admiring the vista, I knew that no camera could truly capture what I was seeing before me. Unfortunately I was right, but thankfully the image in my mind will stay with me for a long time to come.

 

That evening I went to the opening of a beach bar in Catania’s lido. Apart from dancing to The Pixies, The Smiths, and The Jam, which always makes for a great night out in my book, my Etna experience came to the most perfect end. With my feet in the wet sand and waves tickling my toes, drinking Aperol (my new favourite beverage), and in great company, the bright flashes of erupting lava could clearly be seen, and parts of Etna were being lit up by the hot yellow and orange material flowing down the volcano.

 

Took a walk on the wild side

I’ve spent the last two weeks on holiday in Sicilia. I thought I might have needed a break to unwind and relax after working five weeks in a row but my energy levels were not lacking and I couldn’t wait to get out and explore all the places I stayed in and those that I visited, although I did dedicate one day in the first week to laying on the beach, topping up my tan.

 

A passenger on my last tour was an American, well read version of David Beckham. It then made me laugh when my flight attendant from Roma to Palermo was an Italian, camp version of Cristiano Ronaldo. I had hoped the spitting images would continue to pop up but that was where they ended. Unfortunately the next string of unlikely coincidences was not so pleasant. On the bus ride from the airport into the centre of town, there was a loud thud. I looked up to see the blood spatter, squished organs, and remains of a pigeon on the windscreen of the bus. Every day that I was in Palermo, I saw another dead pigeon in or on the side of a road. I am not making this disturbing sequence up when I say I also saw a dead pigeon on my first day in Trapani, the second place I stayed in Sicilia. Thankfully after four days in a row, there were no more dead pigeons to be seen.

 

When I arrived in Palermo, I instantly knew this was the dirtiest, sleaziest town I have ever been in. There are not many places in the world that I have visited that I never want to return to, but this has to be one of them. There were only a couple of the major sights I found beautiful or interesting, and the men on the street, in their cars, on their scooters, and working in shops did not waste a second in cat calling or doing whatever they thought would get my attention in order to say something sordid to me. I should mention that this was not restricted to Palermo, or Sicilia for that matter, but it was just a whole lot worse than in the rest of Italy. However, it should not have been too much of a surprise for me considering the ‘directness’ of the two Sicilians I had met previously in mainland Italy.

 

The streets of Palermo were covered in rubbish and there were piles of bin bags ten feet high. The reason for this was because of a strike which started a week before I arrived, but even after knowing that the town was not normally this unkempt and trying to ignore all the garbage everywhere, Palermo did not seem anymore appealing. The most enjoyable times I had while staying in Palermo were when I left the city to visit Monreale, a suburb with a cathedral decorated in amazing gold mosaics, and Cefalú, a lovely beach town on the northern coast with a climbable mountain for great vistas, and a seafood restaurant in which I had the best meal yet in Italy (admittedly one of the pricier meals too), also with a view out to the blue horizon and the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks below.

 

As the bathroom was not the cleanest in the hostel I was staying at and the washing machine there was not working, I did not mind going to the launderette in Palermo, rather than spending an hour or so trying to enjoy the town a little more. While I was there I realised that everyone else’s laundry, as well as all the serviced washes, consisted of bed sheets and quilts. Given the mafia connection to the city, I could then not stop picturing the horse’s head in the bed from the first Godfather film.

 

The next stop on my own tour of Sicila was Trapani, a seaside town on the west coast. I stayed just outside the town in a gorgeous new B & B (a little more costly than I would have liked but a bargain considering how nice it was). Where I stayed was just over an hours walk along the beach front to get to the centre, or a local bus ride which seemed the safer option at night. The old town of Trapani was tiny and nothing to write home about. Erice, an even smaller town on the mountain just back from the coast, made for a nice day trip, getting there and back by cable car for added excitement. Although, when in Erice, I did have to avoid a coach load of tourists from north eastern England and on a number of occasions, but not for the first time in Italy, I had to pretend to be Italian so as not to help out my fellow Brits with directions. My last day in Trapani was spent on the beach wondering why everyone else there wasn’t working on Friday as I seemed to be one of only very few tourists.

 

Arriving by coach to Agrigento ruined (literally) the whole reason for visiting the place. When the pullman – as it is known in Italian [how they came to use this word to mean a 'coach' I do not know] – was driving up to the town, we passed right through the Valle dei Templi, getting a perfect view of almost all of the temples. The next day when I actually went to the valley I still had fun clambering over the large boulders and remains of the temples though.

 

Getting to the east coast of Sicilia, I finally found a town I really liked and felt comfortable in. Siracusa was a good mix of old and new, sights and views, with great fresh seafood that you could see being brought into shore for the lively morning market. I visited Noto one day, a quaint town south west of Siracusa renown for its Baroque architecture. Given my normal dislike of frilly things, I found the main street of Noto quite charming. I was also pleasantly surprised after entering its imposing cathedral to discover that the inside decorations were not over the top but simple, enhancing the beauty of the building itself rather than dressing it up with too much make up, giving it a clown like ugliness as many Baroque churches do in my opinion.

 

My love of the east coast was set as I continued my Sicilian adventure to Catania, the second largest city in Sicilia, with the sea to one side and Monte Etna on the other. Of course one day was spent scaling the slippery slopes of the biggest active volcano in Europe (see Ladybirds on warm ice). As a university town, this was also the place to party and so my final day of holiday was spent recovering from a hangover and lack of sleep. I watched Terminator Salvation in a beautiful old theatre turned cinema (which was the perfect way to pass my time in the state I was in), and somehow on the generally soft seats of the cinema, I stupidly managed to cut the knuckle of my left hand index finger so deep that it went past the bloody flesh to the white bone below.

 

I had a great two weeks off, and I was happy getting a reasonable amount of time for my own travelling. I wouldn’t say that Sicilia is an amazing place though. In general, I found the towns were full of rubbish, the beaches were dirty and most were wavy and un-swimmable, the stray dogs were rabid, tourist sights were over priced and uninformative, and the people were rude. However, the food was delicious and the landscapes were inspiring. I would still come back to Sicilia and see Monte Etna again, visit Taormina (which I was going to do if I hadn’t been out partying the night before), and also go to some of the islands with Stromboli on the top of my list.

 

Pop culture

I have a nasty habit of getting a new favourite song and only listening to that song over and over again but my favourite songs are often blasts from the past and long forgotten gems. Loving music, it is a little strange that I did not use to keep up with the latest releases and trendiest bands, but now with not being at home and able to listen to the radio on a daily basis, it would be more difficult to if I did want to. However, a lot of shops in Italy have the radio playing, and of course having the odd drink in a bar here and there, also lets me hear the delights and not so delightful tunes on the local airwaves. I would say about half the songs played are in English and the other half are Italian but I am yet to hear songs in another European language.

 

My new favourite song is Italian, which made me happily realise that I must already be Italianised, quite impressive since I have been in the country for less than seven weeks. The prominent lyrics in the chorus contain the words “niente niente niente” and the title word is only mentioned once in the first verse, so it took me a while to find out what the song was over the internet. The song is by Noemi and is called Briciole which translates as ‘little pieces’.

 

I was then a little surprised to find out that Noemi was actually an Italian X Factor contestant and this is her first release. I always enjoy watching the reality music television shows because of the comically bad auditionees at the beginning of each series. Out of habit I then usually end up watching the rest of the series not caring too much about any contestant winning, although often having strong opinions about who I think should definitely not be in the competition and questioning the taste of the voting public. Perhaps if the UK had contestants like Noemi in our version of the show, and writers that can compose tracks other than the standard four four pop repeat, then the chances of finding timeless and talented recording artists may increase.

 

As it is my birthday today, I thought I would buy myself a present, the Briciole single or album if available. Being in Italy, away from family and friends, is a little weird as I usually have big celebrations on my birthday. Today was a good day on the tour for it though, as the morning was spent in a winery, drinking my favourite wine Ruché, and the afternoon, eating lovely food at an agritoursmo, both in a beautiful Piemonte village called Castagnole Monferrato. On returning to the town of Asti, I went shopping. Knowing where three shops were that sold music, I thought I had a good chance of finding what I wanted. Unfortunately I didn’t, and even though the shopping trip seemed like a little adventure, all I will say on this matter is that I do not think anyone under fifty must buy music in Asti.