Pandora's Box in Italy?
by Michele Benigno
Over the past ten years, we have seen an explosion of requests for
travel to Italy. With great reason, as Italy is Pandora’s Box filled with some of the world’s greatest history, art, food and wine. Yet, rarely have we been asked about her island of Sicily. Every country has a Cinderella, the proverbial redheaded stepchild – an area that is so often overlooked, that those who step out of the norm and travel there return completely charmed. After twenty years of traveling to “the boot”, I would have to agree, Italy’s Cinderella is indisputably Sicily. She is pigeonholed into a stereotype of poverty and Mafia. Yet once you step off your plane those cliché stereotypes evaporate like a morning onshore mist. Sicily is the kind of place where exuberance abounds and her people live out loud. In Palermo we sat in a café and spoke to our waiter about current political events, pretty soon three other Sicilian families joined in the debate. Everyone wanted to express their opinion with lively gestulations and emotions that lacked hostility. Language is no barrier. Talk to anyone and you will be greeted with a humble smile that dazzles you with a paradox that is typically Sicilian.
There is a very ancient facet of Sicily. It seems more ancient than Rome, Pompeii or Venice. Yet, it is the unpretentious day-to-day living of the Sicilian people that turns this ancient history into a calliope of man’s self expression. One good look around and you will be met with some of the most breath taking landscape Italy offers. A leisurely drive will parade miles of vineyards that will rival Tuscany and the Piedmont, an endless blanket of emerald green groves of olive, shimmering citrus, fig, almond and pistachio trees, rugged mountains with a smoldering volcano, set against a backdrop of the azure Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas. Sicily is the epitome of a Federico Fellini film.
Just about every civilization in the Mediterranean world left it’s footprint on the island. That footprint has left Sicily with an immense amount of world-class art, ranging from Greek to Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, French, and Spanish. From Palermo to Siracusa, Catania to Trápani, Agrigento to Messina and in just about every hill town in between, you will think you have stepped into a time capsule masquerading as the three legged Trinacria (the symbol of Sicily). Goethe once wrote, “To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the key to everything.”
If you have dismissed visiting this fascinating island because of the paparazzi of her northern sisters, we hope our first hand experience in Sicily will provide some very good reasons to change your mind. Call Michele Benigno at Gayle Gillies Travel (858-756-4174) for more information on Sicily.
