Family Roots & Mystery Meats
Some of you know how much I was looking forward to our time in Sicily. Both my maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather's families came from Sicily. Distant relatives still live in the villages my great grandparents left - Sortino on my mother’s side and Bivona on my father’s.
While my brother Louie and I spent some time backpacking though Sicily in 2006 - during the summer after I left the Coast Guard, just before I entered graduate school, we never made it to either village. My parents had also never been to Sicily.
So, we intended to spend nearly a month there, dividing our time between Catania on the eastern coast about an hour from Sortino and Palermo on the northern coast about an hour and a half from Bivona. If you’ve been following along, you know that my parents and I did not get to stay in Sicily and that much of Ben and the kids times there was a washout - literally!
Ultimately, our month was reduced to about 4 days in the Palermo region and 1 day near Catania. In between rainstorms (photos above are from our villa in Palermo on the one sunny day we had, which was of course the day we left) we ventured into Palermo, south to Agrigento and the Valley of the Temples, and even made it to Sortino for a quick visit with distant relatives newly discovered (thank you Ancestry.com!).
Valley of the Temples was a highlight, even after all the temples we visited in Athens and Rome.
Palermo was a hot mess. As Ben described in a previous post, not a lot of order there. Every traffic signal or road sign appears to be a suggestion rather than a rule to be followed consistently. It reminded us a lot of Albania.
We enjoyed walking (not driving) around the city and seeing the Palermo Cathedral. We also tried the Marzipan, delicious almond paste molded and painted to look like fruit. Less delicious was the Pane Con La Milza. It looked like a delicious roast beef au jus type sandwich. Unfortunately, what we thought was beef, was actually spleen, lung, and trachea. Ben and Ava took bites before we knew what it was, but quickly deduced it was not for them. Despite knowing what it was, my mom and Paul each took bites. Only one of them kept it down - I’ll let you guess which one.
Though we weren’t able to make it to Bivona, we were able to connect with my mother’s third cousins, who we only learned of two years ago, in Sortino. Sisters Margaret and Lucia (my mom’s cousin’s) along with their husbands Sebastiáno and Alfrado were gracious hosts. They showed us around the neighborhood that my great grandfather grew up in and even the house he and his sister lived in (which is now Lucia's garage). We also got to meet Lucia's son Vincenzo and his beautiful baby daughter. We had a wonderful dinner together at a local restaurant where we shared stories before saying our goodbyes and extending an open invitation for them to all visit us in the United States.
Given the unexpected events (and weather) during our time in Sicily, it probably isn’t a surprise that we were ready to leave. I hate to admit it, but more than once I found myself thanking my great grandparents, on both sides, for having the courage and fortitude to leave Sicily and head to America. While Sicily has beautiful spaces, especially along the coastline, delicious food, and (mostly) warm people, it is not a place I think I’ll need to come back to for quite sometime.
