Sept. 18-20 2025: Palermo, Erice and Marsala
My first contact with the history of Italy was Latin Class in High School: 4 years of political speeches of the great orators and the history of a great empire that rose and fell due to missteps and hubris. And I have since traveled all over modern Italy and seen both the ancient remains and the modern replacement of cities and peoples over a skeleton of history. But I had never been to Sicily and decided to take this opportunity to balance my unfairly distorted perception of a poor crime ridden island with the reality of today.
Now I am here, in Palermo, enjoying a visit to Sicily’s top sites and trying to understand the background of a complicated people with its own language and numerous dialects. Our first night on our Intrepid Premium tour we meet our tour manager, an active man who is appropriate for our mixed tour group of 11 — 6 Americans, 4 Australians and one Brit from Manchester, ranging in age from 32 to 85. A good mix of ages and accents. I sometimes find It harder to understand the bloke from England than our tour leader with a strong Italian accent
I am the problem child in the group because of my current diet restrictions: after hospitalization at 3 European institutions last year due to uncontrolled high blood pressure, I am now voluntarily on a very restricted salt intake which makes life complicated in a land of heavily salted cheese and tomato sauce. But I am managing. In Palermo I have my own room in a very nice hotel in the center of the old part of town. Our walk to and from our restaurant at night immerses us among the great number of tourists on the small cobbled streets passing by many ornate churches and older Roman style piazzas.
The highlight off ur fist morning is a tour by a leader in Sicily’s 20-tear old community organization to encourage local citizens not to buy from merchants who line the pockets of the Mafia with protection money. Our guide indicates they have reached an uneasy truce with the other side about how far they can go so that the system still continues although to a lesser extent. We are shown a wall of images of leading citizens and police officers assassinated by the Mafia between about 1972-1992, memorialized in a stone plaza, the most famous of whom was Giovanni Falcone, who presided over a major trial of Mafia members.
This resonates with me as a good friend and neighbor where I grew up on Long Island owned a successful bar in Manhattan for which privilege he had to pay the local Italia Mafia with protection money and then eventually he was forced, given an offer “he could not refuse” to sell his business or suffer the consequences. The home country of these gang families did not fare any better .
A new friend and I walk through the narrow open marketplace, filled with stalls on both side of the shaded path with vegetables, fruit, and fish, as well as piles of imported cheap tourist products, such as aprons and bags with Italian inspired motifs, to reach the local Cathedral next to a beautiful large park.
From there we take a taxi, which was not easy to find, to a neighboring hillside town, Monreale, to visit a famous cathedral – a magnificent barorque building and attached secluded cloister built decorated with incredible glowing mosaics. I think of the poor villagers of the time with little of beauty in their hard short lives sitting down among such magnificence one day a week and reveling in the glory of God. We had a simple lunch in the square while the cathedral was closed from 1-2 which was followed for me by a magnificent huge chocolate vegan gelato cone which I could not finish.
An easy taxi ride back allows us to gather with our group to head for a private cooking class at the private home of a local chef who once owned a well respected restaurants in Warsaw but who chose to give up the 20 hour days of work to spend time with his family. We are shown how to cook shrimp carpaccio, pasta with intense pistachio cream sauce, rolls of swordfish and steak and pistachio semi-fredda for desert. I did not know that pistachios are abundant here. All delicious and I of course tasted only a variation of all of the above. It is a warm and relaxing atmosphere with a voluable guy who really enjoys food and entertaining guests.
And then we are off the next morning in our small bus to the hill town of Erice. Walking up well preserved stone inlaid walkways to the remains of the castle at the top, with a magnificent vista of the sea – which protected the city in medieval times from invading enemies. The town supports itself through its tourist trade and so there is a small fair in an old courtyard with costumed women and men in armor selling their wares as well as small shops seemingly all selling the same imported products we had seen on the streets of Palermo. Our downward journey is on a very long gondola ride, swaying slightly in the hot air, as we descend to the port area to meet our bus in Trappani.
Our hotel for the night is in the charming small town of Marsala, yes, known for its sweet wine.
After a visit to its historic, small town center, and a walk through the old part of town with arches delineating the original city boundaries, the group goes off for drinks before dinner while I decide to wander along the sidewalk hugging the coast toward the local archeological museum. There, to my surprise, a 2-day book fair just opened its doors at 4 pm, so that the museum is free to all to midnight with ongoing seated talks (I assume about books) in small groups inside the building. I wish I knew enough Italian to understand what is the topic of discussions!
There is also an outdoor courtyard filled with tables of individual booksellers and other community groups displaying their wares. I stop at one place I could understand: a table promoting a vegan lifestyle and campaigning against the eating of horses which is a standard staple meat in the region. It is a warm friendly atmosphere, with a special talk and demonstration being given for children. From there I walk further around the coast and enter the lane of a a park where it appears lovers meet on Saturday night as the sun is setting.
I meet our group at the preplanned restaurant and we enjoy dinner together, with a special low-salt pasta prepared for me. And back to our lovely hotel to prepare to leave in the morning. If only I could get a good night’s sleep but my jet lag, and cough, continues on.