Not Home for the Holidays: San Vito lo Capo, Sicily

It is a little over a week before Christmas and we are heading out to the farmers’ market around the corner from our San Vito AirBnb. It must be 20° C outside and the air has a softness that only occurs near the sea. As we leave the house in t-shirts, a lady in her forties wearing a thick pink sweater drives unsteadily by on a scooter. She turns with a wobble at the end of the street and drives past us again. She is doing laps, practicing. 

At the market, I am seized by a fit of festive spirit, and seeing a wee Christmas tree, I ask the old man how much it costs. He hesitates for just a beat (this should have been a warning), and then tells me four euros. I have no idea what constitutes a fair price for an 8-inch Christmas tree in Sicily, so I dig for my wallet. In the meantime, another merchant calls out to the old man, asking him how much for the largest poinsettia plant I have ever seen. It is at least three feet tall! “Tre euro”, answers the old man. “What?” I say in Italian, “Four euros for this little thing, but that is only three euros?” He looks slightly sheepish and gives his excuses, but I think it is really just Gullible Tourist Tax. Fair enough!

It seems strange to see all of the familiar icons of a Canadian Christmas here in Sicily: pine-tree shaped Christmas trees, jolly Santa with his sleigh and reindeer, and snowmen wearing top hats and scarves. Somehow, most Christmas symbols come from chilly climates. Here in San Vito, a little peninsula whose climate is tempered by the surrounding sea, snow is a very uncommon occurrence. Children must look upon Frosty with considerable puzzlement: what sort of alien creature is this, and what sort of frozen hell does he come from?

The next day, we head to the improbable town of Erice. Improbable because it is perched on top of a rather steep-sided mountain, a location that would have been perfect for fortification in ancient times and impractical for everything else. It was founded by the Phoeneticians thousands of years ago, and subsequently destroyed, rebuilt, taken over by the Aghlabids, and then the Normans. It was named and renamed. The German Luftwaffe held it as a base in WWII until the Allies braved climbing up the side of the mountain in 1943. Now it is famous as a centre for physics and a pastry-maker named Maria Grammatico. During the war, eleven-year-old Maria was sent to a convent as an orphan, where she was put to work before dawn making pastries. Fifteen years later, she opened her own shop, which now ships its creations all over the world. This is a town with a past! 

And it is a rather cute place! The old gates to the town still stand, allowing only residents’ cars to enter. The streets are narrow, some are very steep with moss growing between the cobblestones. The town is decked out for Christmas. I ask Ulysse to stop so I can take his picture beside a charming little shop, but we are interrupted by the rare approach of a car. As we squeeze over to allow it to pass, the driver-side window rolls down and it’s Santa Claus! He looks a little sweaty, with his hat discarded on the passenger seat and his white beard pulled down beneath his chin. Despite his discomfort, he says with a smile that he is sorry to disturb us, but that he has to go shopping. Brilliant!

We explore Erice for the rest of the afternoon, touring old churches, popping in shops, tasting the wares of Maria Grammatico. We stumble upon what I understand to be a very Italian penchant: a reimagination of the town from years gone by, in miniature, and mechanized. The display sprawls through two large rooms, and while most of the scenes depict merchants, tradesfolk, and religious scenes, the creator of this miniature has a sense of humour. There is a priest sitting beside a miniature of the town…a miniature within a miniature! Best is the scene where a man on a ladder holds a bouquet of flowers up to a lady on the balcony, while below, an old lady with a broom attempts to whack him off his perch. 

By the time the sun sets, and the Christmas lights flicker to life, the pastries of Maria Grammatico are long gone, and our stomachs begin to rumble. We try to find a place to have dinner at around 6:15 and walk hopefully into an open restaurant. It turns out to be a café/bar as well as a restaurant, so when I ask if we can get dinner, a look that blends disbelief and disapproval flits across the man’s face, as though I’d instead asked what colour underwear his grandmother wears. He sighs and tells us that they don’t serve dinner until 7pm. As he is writing our names in the reservation book, I notice that the other reservations are for 8:30. Ah, right! We are back in Mediterranean time! We humbly retreat to find a glass of wine somewhere. 

Two days before Christmas, my dear friend Julia arrives from Oslo. Generous soul that she is, she comes laden with Norwegian Christmas treats. As there is no turkey in sight at any of the grocery stores, we opt for a Christmas feast that involves an appetizer of roasted chestnuts, so fresh that you have to be careful not to run them through while scoring them for baking. The main dinner is fresh whole fish, baked with white wine, onions, cherry tomatoes, and herbs, as well as curried green cauliflower (which is so common and cheap right now). We are combining the food of three or four cultures, but who cares? As we are preparing this feast, we run into an interesting problem: the power goes out. In this apartment, cute and cozy though it is, you can only run two major appliances at a time. By major, I mean not just the things you might expect, like the oven and the heating unit, but also the kettle and the hair dryer! Push it to three at once and you will almost certainly be making a trip outside to reset the breaker for the entire apartment. A new Christmas ritual?

On Christmas Day, we attempt climbing in the sun, near the beach. We sweat. A lot. The sun setting over the calm sea is spectacular. As we return home, the lady on the scooter pulls a shaky U-turn in front of our building. This time she is wearing not only her pink sweater, but a scarf around her neck. 

After a few days of enduring the sun beating down on his shaved head, Ulysse finally decides he needs a hat. As we walk toward the downtown, we pass a quaint street, lined with lemon trees with little cat houses beneath (small doghouses, inhabited by cats!). Ulysse leaps up to snatch a ripe lemon, but as he pulls it down, another dislodges, and with perfect comic timing, lands square on the top of his head. 

Ulysse does buy a hat:  a rather dapper, cream-coloured summer fedora that will surely look like a disaster by the end of this trip. In a nearby shop, I find sunglasses. The man tells me that these sunglasses came for the Couscous Festival. The what? Really, there is a couscous festival here, in September. Then I am confused. Is he telling me that these sunglasses are inferior, because they didn’t sell during the festival, or that they are the latest in fashion, arriving only this past September, in contrast to some of his dustier numbers? I ask Mr. Couscous if he has been busy with customers, and he says no. But with surprising confidence, he tells me it will be busy tomorrow for St. Sylvester Day (New Year’s Eve). 

That afternoon, I am upstairs in the enclosed part of the roof-top patio, perhaps my favourite part of this place. The walls are all glass, the roof a white awning stretched over large timbers. It looks out on the sea and has fantastic light. For a while, it is quiet, except for the twitter of birds and the lady doing laps on her scooter. I am working on my now-late Christmas gift for Ulysse, a drawing of a baby sea turtle, when I hear “Jingle Bells” being played by a marching band. It’s Dec 30^th…aren’t they a bit late for Jingle Bells? But it is Jingle Bells with an attitude and now I want to see what is going on. We head toward the town square, and eventually pick up the sound of music again, faintly, coming from a side street, so we sprint walk in that direction.

The marching band approaches, led by a tall, skinny Santa with Harry Potter glasses and a dishevelled beard that has seen many years of use. He eyes us with a rather serious expression, like we are interlopers in a sacred ritual meant only for children. Without changing his critical expression, he digs into his sack and gives us each a handful of candies. I can’t help but wonder about the spectacle. This is the eve of New Year’s Eve. Why is Santa running the show?

On New Year’s Eve, we are just starting to prepare another feast when the door buzzer sounds. We are looking at each other in confusion as no one is expecting visitors, when we hear singing through our open window. A group of children giggle and enthusiastically sing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas!” in accented English. Then they wave and run away, calling “Bon Anno! Bon Anno!” How sweet!

This time, we try to stick a little closer to local customs for our feast. New Year’s Eve dinner in Sicily, according to one source, consists mostly of wine, but we decide to add caponata, a delicious Sicilian specialty combining eggplant fried in a lot of olive oil with tomatoes, capers, olives, celery, and pine nuts. We also make a local salad with fennel and oranges, but somehow, I can’t help myself from the adding an outlier of fish curry to the menu (at least the fish is local). The curry and caponata are delicious. No one has room for salad. 

As we are finishing our meal, we hear what sounds like an invasion, like bursts of gunfire echoing eerily off the low apartment buildings lining the streets. Once again, we walk toward the town square to see what is happening. We pass a group of what seems to be three generations of men on a corner near our place, the youngest boy is perhaps 6 and the oldest man looks to be 76. They are lighting a constant barrage of firecrackers. While some are mostly smoke, others go off with the sort of bang that rattles your ribcage. A haze of gunpowder smoke hangs in the air around them. 

It is getting close to midnight by the time we arrive at the town square and the party is in full swing, complete with a DJ who likes to sing badly overtop of the music. Kids run wild, a few people dance, some carry bottles of champagne. There are even more firecrackers going off here, most of them ignited by a tall, heavyset fellow who looks a bit like a giant toddler. He lights them and then ambles away nonchalantly, hands in his pockets, like the explosions have nothing to do with him. Finally, midnight arrives with an impressive array of fireworks for such a small town. Shortly afterward, sleepy from too much wine, we make our way back to the apartment.  

The three generations on the corner are still setting off firecrackers with zeal, only now they are throwing them around and the kids are running amok. I wonder what the emergency rooms of Sicily will look like tomorrow.

New Year’s Day, Julia and I head out for a walk in the Zingaro Natural Park Reserve. Julia has explained that in her native Argentina, it is a tradition to wear pink underwear for New Year’s, that it brings good luck. I honour this by sporting my only pair of pink underwear. It is a beautiful day for a hike, and the park is sun-kissed and peaceful, with a few people swimming in the blue-green waters of pristine, sheltered beaches. I long to jump in, but had not thought to bring a bathing suit, and we don’t have a lot of time anyway as Julia is leaving for Argentina that afternoon. I am sad to see her go, but it is a nice way to say farewell. 

I return to the park the next day with Ulysse, this time equipped with swimsuits and towels even though the daytime high is only supposed to be 16° C. We had planned to go for a vigorous hike, work up a sweat, and then go for a dip (or at least, that was my plan). However, we arrive at the park gates at the same time as a family from a nearby town: Carlo and Patricia, and their children Marta and Giacomo. Marta is sixteen, smart as a whip, and speaks English very well. She is insatiably curious and so Ulysse and I slow down to walk with this family, chatting about differences between our lives and languages. When we reach the massive Uzzo cave that has been used by humans for over ten thousand years, Carlo declares that he is hungry. They offer us one of their four cookies, called buccellati, made by Patricia. We feel a bit conflicted, not wanting to offend them by refusing, but also realizing that we will leave one of the family members cookieless! Ulysse and I split one between the two of us and I bring out a bag of trail mix and figs to offer them—not nearly as appealing, but something, at least. The cookies are delicious, with a flaky outer pastry and a filling of figs and chocolate. 

Later, we all end up on a beach, but I cannot convince Ulysse to go for a swim. No amount of telling him that it is therapeutic or threatening to think him unmanly will convince him. He hates cold water. I dip a foot in, and it is rather chilly, but frankly less so than most Saskatchewan lakes in the middle of summer. And it is so impossibly clear. I wade in up to mid-thigh and see that I am surrounded by fish. I stand stock-still for a while, not wanting to scare them away, but finally take a deep breath and dive in. When I come up for air, the fish are still there, unperturbed. Some of them seem to be keeping a watchful eye on me, but they aren’t terribly concerned. This is their domain. After all, they did just see my poor attempt at swimming.

By the time we get home, the sun is low in the sky. I am a bit chilled; my hair is still a little wet and I am in shorts. As we park, the scooter lady pulls a U-turn at the end of the street. She’s much less shaky now! She has on sunglasses, a large pink puffy jacket, and an enormous scarf. It occurs to me that she is a much more reliable weather indicator than any of the meteorological sites we’ve tried using here.

Today it is the Epiphany, and we are told by our landlady that it will be a repeat of New Year’s Eve, with a houseful of friends and children over for dinner, with games and too much wine. I have to hand it to the Italians for stretching the year-end festivities into a period that lasts more than two weeks rather than just having a few days off between Christmas and New Year’s. Perhaps we Canadians should take lessons on “la dolce vita”. Nonetheless, I can’t help but feel very lucky to be able to experience all of this. Perhaps those pink underwear really do work!

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