February 19-20
We were running late Sunday morning, but we made it to the church on time. Early, in fact, because we got there a little after 11 and found that the service didn’t start till half past.
Time for more coffee. We went to a colorful looking place called Punto G, in a corner of the Piazza Duomo. I had noticed it the other day when we were eating crepes across the street.
It sells chocolates, sandwiches, coffee, and drinks.
I had an Americano, which is espresso with extra hot water added. It’s a little smaller and has less kick than a cup of coffee at a New Jersey diner, but two or three in the morning are usually enough to hold off my caffeine withdrawal symptoms.
The bartender was singing “Come Together” along with John Lennon when we got there. It was still early, I guess, because there may have been people at one other table.
When it came time to leave, he offered to put a plate of something together for us. It sounded good, so we told him we’d be back.
In the plaza near the church steps we saw families with young children in costumes. The girls tended to be princesses, although there were a couple of tiny Teddy bears. Among the boys, we saw an astronaut, a cavalier, and a page.
One of the big activities was to throw confetti into the wind and watch it eddy. The kids got a kick out of that.
The cathedral service was fine but strange. The only other Sunday morning mass is at 8 o’clock, so I expected 11:30 to be the principal mass.
Only about 50 or 60 people attended. There was no music, and that was the strangest thing of all to me, a Sunday morning service at a cathedral without so much as an organist, let alone a choir.
We saw a sign on the way in asking tourists not to visit the church during its religious ceremonies.
Somebody in the back started to take flash pictures during the sermon. It didn’t seem to bother anybody, so that may have been for the church bulletin.
But after the service, we took a quick peek into the side chapel where the martyrs’ bones are. When we came out, there was a group of people pointing cameras.
They were about the same number as the people who attended the service. Were there that many tourists at mass?
No, this was a new group, listening to a tour guide. They must have been waiting on the porch for the go-ahead.
When we got back to Punto G, the guy was glad that we hadn’t been pulling his leg. The place isn’t big and was beginning to fill up.
The bartender would run into the back now and then to come back a short time later with stuff. He was bouncing to the music. He was juggling oranges before he cut them and held them on the juicer.
Joanna had water, but he mixed a great Campari and soda for me. He came back from one of his trips with two plates of appetizers for us.
There were little squares of pizza and others cut from what appeared to be a croissant filled with ham. There were olives and a few cold cuts as well.
The guy’s music selection had shifted to some interesting Italian pieces, including one that sound hauntingly familiar. I could even hear the English lyrics: “We will come from the shadows. ...”
A mild cocktail, salty and savory snacks, a Leonard Cohen cover. I was in pig heaven.
I talked the bartender after the track finished. Something like this: “What was that song? There is an English-language song by Leonard Cohen called ‘The Partisan.’ This sounded like it.”
He said it was the song in Italian. But I’m not sure that he understood the question. He wrote down the names of several performers on his playlist, but not the Italian name of the song.
Doesn’t matter. I had just found another favorite bar.
The bartender had a good command of English when he spoke to us. So Joanna asked him for a few vocabulary words, specifically names of vegetables so we could order them in restaurants.
He didn’t quite get the gist of the question. He recommended a restaurant down the street and said we could even mention his name. That’s how we learned that he is called Gabriele.
We wandered a while, but it was Sunday, and afternoon besides, so very little was open.
According to Gabriele, the afternoon shutdowns are seasonal. In the high season the restaurants stay open all day long.
We were back in the hotel a little earlier than usual. It wasn’t bad to rest on the day of rest, so we stayed in until dinner time.
I had an inspiration. At my age, I should know better, but anyway, I led Joanna on a walk in the chilly wind to the third of the restaurants that the man at Villa Politi had recommended to us.
I even know how to get there. It’s the Osteria da Seby on Via Mirabella, near the Leonardo museum. You walk down the east side of Piazza Archimede into Via Dione and right past the Street of Dyers.
Of course, the restaurant was closed and dark. The whole street was closed and dark.
We walked back looking for a place to eat and finally came to Dioniso again. It was open, key in the door and everything.
It’s hard to pass up pan-fried stuffed sardines, so we started with that. They may have been the best sardines we’ve had so far on this trip.
They were tasty but not overpoweringly fishy. They may have been stuffed with cheese. Whatever the stuffing was, it was very good.
We’re not crazy about gnocchi, a doughy pasta stuffed with mashed potato, but the pork cheek and broccoli made us go for it. We expected that it would be good, but it was indeed surprisingly good.
We also ordered a side dish of turnip greens.
The broccoli in the pasta sauce and the turnip greerns were the same thing, broccoli rapa. I wasn’t disappointed by that. I prefer that to broccoli. “Rapa” is Italian for “turnip.”
We got a bottle of Sicilian Nero d’Avola called Ananke, maybe named for the princess in “The Mummy.” It’s a smooth mild wine.
We were doing fine until the end.
Joanna wanted to pay for the meal. When the waiter brought her the bill, he did the unforgivable: “Do you want to pay in euros or dollars?”
I couldn’t believe it. The food is good at Dioniso, even though there is not much of a selection. It is also expensive enough to border on overpriced.
When they ask euros or dollars, they don’t tell you that they plan to lay a 3 percent surcharge on your bill “for the convenience of paying in dollars.”
I ran into this scam in Amsterdam when I bought bus tickets to see the flower gardens in Lisse. It’s the petty nastiness of it that makes me so angry.
So here was this guy trying to weasel another 3 points out of Joanna on an already inflated bill.
So if you’re anywhere, watch out for this trick. Pay in the local currency. And if you’re in Syracuse, stay the fuck away from Dioniso, just on principle.
Monday dawned bright and cheerful and stayed that way till the power failure. Our street and the next one over went dark.
In Montclair, a power failure takes out lights, of course, along with TV and computer. But the gas and water still flow, so you can cook by candlelight and take a hot shower in the dark. That can be fun.
Here, though, the water relies on electricity. Suddenly, we were no longer on the set of “El Cid”; we were plunged into the age of El Cid.
We set out to pick up our laundry and to scout out places with bathrooms we could use when we needed them.
My suit still needed a touch-up so the lady at the laundry asked us to come back in 10 minutes. We went for a short stroll. I got some cash from a bancomat, and then we got our clothes.
We took them back to the hotel, rather than tote them everywhere, and found that our lucky angel had turned the lights back on while we were out.
It was sweet. We all know how great a shower is when you think you won’t get one. I even put on a clean shirt to celebrate our deliverance.
We went to a castle, Castello Maniace, at the southern tip of the island. It looks like a fort within a fort. The central structure was built by Charles V, who is billed on a plaque there as “emperor, king of Spain and Sicily.”
This may be where he took the stones that used to be in the Temple of Hieron at the Archeological Park.
It’s a fun place to visit. You get some terrific views of the sea and of Syracuse across the bay. You get to look through some cannon ports.
You can climb ramps and stairs, see replicas of the bronze rams that used to be somewhere in the fortress, and walk on the Spanish Walk.
We saw photos of a spectacular space with vaults and columns, but that is being renovated and is closed.
For two euros each, it was a terrific place to go.
We made our way from there to Arethusa’s Fountain and then to Piazza Duomo. It was about 4 in the afternoon, and Punto G was closed, so we went across the street for a crepe and a Campari and soda.
We checked out Osteria da Seby by daylight. From September through February it is open only for lunch on Sunday and is closed on Monday.
OK, so now we know the ground rules.
Joanna seemed to be doing fine, but I was wearing down, so we retreated to the hotel for a couple of hours.
We went back to Kalliope for dinner. No Pinocchio this time.
We tried that Sicilian specialty, pasta con sarde, again. Kalliope makes it with sardines, pine nuts, capers, fennel, and raisins.
The dish was good the first time, at Terrazza Angelo in Taormina, but the sardines largely took it over.
The version at Kalliope balanced everything. The sardines were part of the flavor, and not the main event. It was plain terrific.
The second course was grilled swordfish with caponata. The swordfish, pesce spada, was breaded and roasted.
We had a side dish of potatoes, and the sweet-sour of the caponata actually went better with them than with the fish.
Wine was a Sicilian Syrah called Talia, from a town called Salemi.
It has a little more edge than most of the Nero d’Avolas we have been drinking, and it was time for a change.
And now it’s time to wrap this one up.
So everyone, here’s wishing you good wine and good times.
And don’t let the sardines take over.
Harry
Feb. 21
Harry: Unfortunately I'm recovering from pneumonia and I'm on a restricted diet.
Art
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