Two brides today.

"Larry"

We interrupt the travelogue to report on the wedding fever which hit London today, Friday 29^th April 2011. Yes folks, today the Royal Wedding sent Londoners into mad British holiday mode. The British appear to equate their Royals with serious patriotic fervour, and the town was painted red, white and blue. Now, I didn’t plan to take too much notice of it all, except for noting a photo of Larry, the Downing Street cat, posing in a Union Jack bow tie for the occasion, and the fact that Carluccio’s was completely empty this morning (except for me – the manager suggested I go home so that they could close). But then my baser instincts overcame me and I watched the proceedings on the internet. The sky was overcast but it didn’t rain, the bride wore her hair down, the dress was conservative, the ceremony traditional, there was no soloist (though the choir boys were lovely), and the fly-past by Blitz era fighters shook my windows. Harry didn’t drop the ring, the dear old Queen looked nice in yellow, no one made any interesting mistakes.

Oh, and the ration of utterly ridiculous hats reached what must be an historic high. An enjoyable day of ritual, pageant and a very chaste peck (or two) passing for a kiss on the balcony.

Hot off the presses: first pics

That completes my report of one Royal wedding. This evening I attended another, in a manner of speaking. Co-incidentally (because operas need a much longer lead time to organise than Royal weddings) Covent Garden tonight had scheduled “The Tsar’s Bride”, a Russian opera by Rimsky-Korsakov. It was a fitting way to spend the Wedding Afternoon and Evening, I thought.

Royal Wedding Street Party

First, I set out just after The Balcony Scene at Buckingham Palace, and made my way on the trains to Earlsfield, dodging Union Jack-draped monarchists wandering home from The Mall. In Earlsfield I was seeking the home of a couple of die-hard republican friends, and what should I find in their street but a genuine Royal wedding street party, complete with bunting and balloons. The republicans admitted to taking a peek at The Wedding on TV, and eventually they abandoned their principles sufficiently to spend the afternoon discussing the hats, the Dress, the Queen, the carriages, Diana, the horses and Prince Harry’s paternity. We ate roast lamb and toasted the happy couple with a nice Spanish Rioja.

Then off we set for the opera house, and were very pleasantly surprised with “The Tsar’s Bride”. Although popular in the Russian repertoire, the opera is rarely performed in Western Europe or the USA, and in fact this production is the first in any major English opera house. Now, if someone says that an opera is 3.5 hours long (with only one interval!), in Russian, dark and tragic, and nearly everyone dies, you don’t really expect to be in for a jolly evening. But in an inspired move, this production moved the action from the reign of Ivan The Terrible in the early 1500s to present-day Russia. The result was absorbing.

In the first act the scene was a cheap restaurant with vodka-drinking secret police, half-naked table-dancers and an impressive mink coat. Action moved to a derelict street corner, with girls in short skirts and mobile phones. After interval, the scene opened on a rooftop swimming pool terrace where an oligarch was throwing a party for tastelessly overdressed women; and the final scene was in the oligarch’s sumptuous reception rooms, where everyone was dressed for the wedding in – you guessed it – tails and hats. The cast was almost all...Russian.

The swimming pool scene.

Not wishing to stereotype, of course, but the theme here was about authority, power and money, historically and currently. Have you heard the one about two oligarchs who meet in the street? “How much did you pay for that tie?” “$500”, comes the reply. “You fool, I know a place where you could pay twice that!” They say there’s rich, there’s super-rich, and then there’s Russian rich. There are 25 billionaires in Moscow, as well as most of Russia’s 88,000 dollar millionaires.

But the story? I hear you ask. It is based on the true life story of Marfa Sobakin, the third wife of Ivan The Terrible, who died of suspected poisoning within days of her wedding to the Tsar. The opera opens with the Tsar choosing a new bride: 2000 girls have been gathered from across Russia for him to make his selection. If this were a Zefferelli production at The Met, we’d probably have had 2000 girls, but as it was we made do with somewhat fewer. The plot is complicated, but satisfyingly operatic, with secret police, a baddie who loves the heroine, an innocent tenor who is the childhood sweetheart of the heroine, a spurned mezzo, a love potion, a poison potion, and – naturally – a mix-up of the two. In the final scene, the colour scheme is heavily purple. You know what they say in show-biz: “If there’s purple, someone dies”. First the tenor is wrongly accused and executed, then the spurned mezzo is stabbed, then the baddie has his throat cut, then the Tsar’s poor bride wastes away. Here's a review.

The cast takes their curtain call.

I must say that the Buck House do was rather more cheerful. But at curtain call one of the cast unfurled a “William & Kate” Union Jack, to the delight of the audience – at least two of whom appeared to have come straight from Westminster Abbey, since they were wearing tails (him) and a substantial hat (her).

Just to finish off the day, the cab driver who drove me home told me that he had been a policeman at the time of Charles & Diana’s wedding, and had been on duty at The Mall the whole day. Everyone has a Royal wedding story in this town. This has been mine.

As waved tonight at the opera.

Images from:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/royal-wedding/8483450/Royal-Wedding-highlights-best-27-moments-of-Will-and-Kates-wedding.html

http://www.shopstyle.co.uk/product/john-lewis-cups-mugs-john-lewis-william-catherine-mug/225643805

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/apr/17/tsars-bride-operashots-proms-review

Vulcano!

The Aeolian Islands

The dreaded hydrofoil

If you drive to a place called Milazzo on the north-eastern coast of Sicily, they will let you park your car for the grand sum of four Euro per day. Right by the docks. Moreover, it may even still be there when you come back. Then you can take the hydrofoil (an ugly, uncomfortable but fast way to travel) to the Aeolian Islands, those specks of mystery and myth somewhere out in the Tyrrhenian Sea, formed by volcanic activity, and still being formed by volcanic activity. But here’s a word of warning: just because the ticket office sells you a ticket to the island named Vulcano, and you show your ticket when you board the hydrofoil, and the timetable says it is going to Vulcano, this may not necessarily be so. Indeed, like me, you may end up with an unscheduled stop on a completely different Aeolian Island, and you may not even realise this until you are standing rather bereftly on the dock with your suitcase, watching the hydrofoil speed off, wondering where your hotel shuttle is. You may forlornly ask a passing old lady which island you are on, and she may reply ‘Lipari’.

Lipari. Not impressed.

Ah, Lipari. The largest (although not large) island in the group, which you may have wished to visit sometime during your stay, but for which you now conceive an unreasonable dislike. The old lady offers you accommodation in her house in rive al mare, but all you want is a boat. And possibly someone to blame. The old lady says this happens all the time. The guy in the ticket office, who receives the full force of your customer complaint, says this happens all the time. When, after an hour, the next boat takes you on the ten minute journey to neighbouring Vulcano (so close you could probably have waded, if it hadn’t been for the suitcase), the shuttle driver says this happens all the time. The people at the hotel reception say this happens all the time. Everyone shrugs their shoulders. Why doesn’t the boat service announce the arrival destination? You ask. Calmly and reasonably (hah!) Everyone shrugs their shoulders.

Vulcano. The right island.

But wiping the despised Lipari from your mind, you look around, and discover why everyone has been telling you that you are very lucky to be coming to Vulcano. A tiny island with a two-horse town of shacks and fishing boats, black lava sand beaches, a divine resort indistinguishable from Paradise, and a great smouldering volcano. What more could you desire (other than an efficient boat transfer service)? Fresh fish every day? Check. Hot sulphur pools you can swim in? Check. Glorious sunsets over the sea every night? Check. Cocktails to go with the sunsets? Check.

Fish for dinner? No problem.

Pesce fresco!

You can wander down to the town, or take the shuttle. Or, since the resort only opened for the season the day before and there are about two guests so far, just ask and the shuttle guy will take you anywhere. The whole island is only 21 square kilometres. In town, you can make friends at the local fish place (‘Da Vincenzo’) and choose from whatever was caught that day, plus local veggies in season, fava beans and artichokes. And excellent Sicilian wine – even a little more than you might otherwise imbibe, since the hire car has been abandoned to its fate on the mainland.

Vulcanologist. Pleased with self.

Watch out for the locals

Ah, and then the volcano! The Romans named the island Vulcano and contributed the word we now use for volcanoes. They believed the island was the chimney to the god Vulcan’s workshop. Vulcano’s own volcano is known as the Gran Cratere (although there are several others as well, including the smaller Vulcanello). Its height is 380 m, and it takes about an hour to walk up the well-formed path, dodging a few goats and a lady who wants you to pay 3 Euro for the privilege. The volcano is one of four active non-submarine volcanoes in Italy, but it hasn’t erupted seriously since 1888-1890.

Views to die for.

Oops - wrong path down.

The walk is a fine one and the views from the top quite amazing – both down into the sulphurous, steaming crater, and across towards Lipari and the other islands. If you climb on for a further half an hour you can reach the highest point and a magnificent 360 degree view. Almost all the Aeolian Islands can be identified from up here, if the misty distances give you a break: Lipari immediately below you, Panarea to the east, and the active Stromboli just visible beyond it; then the two smaller islands of Filicudi and Alicudi to the west (they that enhance your sunset). And you could kid yourself that you can see Salina but really it’s behind Lipari; and little Basiluzzo out near Stromboli really can’t be made out. Once you’ve swooned over the view, you climb back down around the volcano crater, and if you’re not careful you will find yourself taking a different path down through what turns out to be some pretty active fumaroles spewing rather disgusting sulphur gas and almost taking out a group of lost French tourists. Picking your way gingerly over the yellow rock, you will probably decide that swimming in the sulphurous pools in town (“throw out your bathing suit afterwards”) can probably be skipped; although it is fascinating to see some hot springs actually bubbling up in the ocean just off the beach.

Back to work.

Location, location, location.

Sundowner.

Vulcano was originally called Therassia (by the Ancient Greeks; it means ‘source of heat’), and whoever built the delightful resort of the same name knew how to choose a location. 'Therasia' sits on the end of a small island joined by an isthmus to Vulcano proper, and Lipari is right across the channel. The infinity-edge pool, cactus gardens, pictures windows, cool terraces, and possibly the most magnificent sunsets on the face of the earth are nicely complimented by some very friendly staff, in their first week of the season. The sunsets – ah, let me tell you more about the sunsets. As well as the usual magic of a sunset over the sea (forgive my raptures – I’m from Sydney and a sunset over the sea is impossible there), on Vulcano you only notice the two small islands emerge from the mist when the red ball of the sun drops slowly behind them, silhouetting their pyramid volcano cones against the red of the setting sun. Add a gin and tonic and anticipation of a fresh fish dinner, and I think you’ll understand why I was reluctant to leave Vulcano. Very reluctant.

Oh, and the car was still there when I got back to Milazzo.

Sicily

Taormina

Regular blog readers may have noticed a slight hiatus in my up-until-now pretty excellent daily blog update record. This has of course been due to spending the last two weeks luxuriating in my wonderful holiday in wonderful Sicily. But now I’m ready to tell you more about this amazing island. Somewhere I read that the best description of Sicily is that it is constantly surprising, and this was certainly true for me. Food, scenery, people, traditions, food, stories, beaches, mountains, history, food...

Sicily - the red bit.

Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean. It is an autonomous region of Italy, and has been since unification in the 1860s – Garibaldi rode in with his ‘Thousand’ and liberated the island from the Bourbons in grand style, resulting in every town on the island having a ‘Via Garibaldi’. When I wanted to program the GPS in the hire car for a town centre and didn’t have a specific street address, I knew I could rely on getting to the centre of town by putting in ‘Via Garibaldi’. There are those, I’m told, who no longer revere Garibaldi (the old ‘sold-out-to-the-north' tune) but Garibaldi remains rather legendary anyway.

Taormina

Sicily has been occupied by foreigners for about 3000 years – possibly a world record – which some say accounts for the rise of that other well-known Sicilian institution, the Mafia. Whether or not this foreign interference accounts for the hunkering down of the rural community into self-protecting gangs, who knows; but today the only evidence I (knowingly) saw of the Mafiosi was a moving monument on the autostrada near Palermo’s airport commemorating the spot where the anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone was blown to bits in 1992. One month later, the judge who replaced him, Paolo Borsellino, was also blown up after visiting his mother. The airport is now named Falcone-Borsellino.

Sicily’s occupiers started with the Carthaginians in about the 8^th century BC – Phoenicians from the Levant who had built the great city of Carthage in North Africa. They were followed by the Greeks, then some autonomous tyrants, the Romans of course, the Byzantine Christians, the Moors from Arabia for a few hundred years (fried food, sesame seeds, sweet-and-sour flavours); and then a succession of Europeans from Spain, England, and France....until Garibaldi and The Thousand appeared.

Taormina prepares for Palm Sunday.

And the topography? Very mountainous, lush agriculture, a wine industry that supplies a great percentage of the Italian wine production, a fishing industry which must surely do the same; plus honey and olives and salt retrieved from the sea by ancient evaporative methods; citrus everywhere; almond trees, olive trees...a cornucopia. In the past – the not very distant past – life was hard in small rural Sicilian towns, but at least they lived in paradise. In beautiful Palermo, the capital city, the climate becomes tropical in summer, and already the hibiscus, bougainvillea and frangipani are beginning to bloom.

Etna!!!!!

Cable car ascending Etna.

But Sicily is especially known for its volcanoes: Mt Etna (3,320 m) is the tallest active volcano in Europe and one of the most active in the world. It steams away on the horizon in north-eastern Sicily. In fact, there was an eruption about five days before I managed to travel up its slopes. The mountain was closed for the day: the eruption was described as ‘significant’ (rocks flung hundreds of metres into the air), but mercifully short (a few hours). So minor an incident for Etna, that it caused no real ripple nor news bulletins. The main issue which daunted my efforts to reach Etna was the foggy weather that shrouded the top of the mountain for a couple of days, but finally the clouds parted and I made a dash for it. Well, my guide and driver Carmelo made a dash for it...and then loaned me his jacket (“Its-a cold up there!”), put me on the chair lift and waved me off. The lift ascended through fog, arrived at a way station where jeep-style trucks were waiting; they ascended on a lava-grit road through ever-increasing snow drifts and more fog. Finally, spectacularly, we emerged above the fog and the steaming crater of Etna was revealed.

The fog rolls in again on Etna.

Off we tramped with a mountain guide, poked our noses into a smaller steaming vent – the guide assured us that this one would only send out steam now, no hot ash or lava – and climbed a ridge which was formed when Etna last really erupted, in 2001/02. The high point was 2, 950 m. On that occasion, several villages on the slopes of the mountain were damaged (I saw one Baroque church facade on the way up which was still propped up with girders and braces); and the roads and the tourist chair lift near the top had been destroyed. The ones we used were re-built since then. The snowy top of Etna, so close to the beach I had left that morning (only a 40 minute drive away), soon closed in with cloud again. I had been lucky to grab the opportunity.

Looking very pleased with self: on Mt Etna.

Guide Johanna and her red umbrella
In Taormina's Greek/Roman teatro.

Carmelo returned me to the hotel on the beach at Taormina, and I returned his jacket. Taormina is a town with a split personality: the main village is perched high on a rocky ridge, with the beach ‘burbs down below. A funicular (every 15 minutes) connects the two. I stayed in a hotel converted from a private villa, and funicular-ed up to see the village. Verdict? Picturesque, lovely shops and galleries, churches getting ready for the Palm Sunday service tomorrow, views to die for out across the coast. But Taormina’s big claim to fame is its unusual Greek theatre: the ruin is perched right atop the mountain. The Greeks didn’t use a backdrop for the stages of their theatres: the audience looking down at the players would have seen behind them an extraordinary view of the coast - and of Etna. The Romans, on the other hand, liked to erect ‘scenery’ – a back-drop to the stage, such as we use today and still call ‘scenery’. At Taormina, the Romans neither left the Greek theatre like it was (as in Siracusa) nor completely destroyed it. Instead, they built some obvious and interesting adaptations, including the aforementioned scenery (blocking the view somewhat), some porticoes entrances, some side dressing rooms, some pits for the animals they used, some extra seating. In the ruins today it is easy to see the hands of the Romans overlaying the hands of the Greeks. Molto interessante.

Back to the beach: Taormina

Ah, but that’s enough sightseeing – back to the Villa Sant’Andrea, some local fish courtesy of Vincenzo, the chef, perhaps preceded by a prosecco aperitif. Plenty of variety in Sicily.

Sicily: my route - Catania, Siracusa, Taormina,
Vulcano Is. (not on the map),
Trapani, Erice, Agrigento, Palermo.

Maps from:

http://www.1milliondollarphoto.com/phototrips-sicily.shtml

http://www.sicilianfamilytree.com/italytrip.html

Ah, Siracusa. Bellissimo!

Siracusa, Sicily

There is so much that is wonderful about Siracusa, on the south-eastern tip of Sicily, that I hardly know where to begin. One hour’s drive in the rental car south of the airport at Catania, and some rather rough small-town outskirts appear, soon to be replaced by some elegant looking facades and churches. Then soon, across a small bridge, is the island of Ortigia, and you are in Old Siracusa. You are far from the first visitor. Plato came here. More than once. It was colonised by Greeks from Corinth in the 8^th century BC. It is not possible to do justice to Siracusa in one short blog post, but I will try to give you a taste with this list:

Piazza Duomo, Siracusa

a.       Archimedes was born here in 287 BC. The famous mathematician and scientist from ancient times probably actually took his famous bath here: you may recall that it was while Archimedes was soaking in his bath that he worked out the principle that ensured his fame: that a body immersed in liquid is subject to a force equal to the weight of the volume of the liquid that has been displaced. It is said that he was so thrilled with this discovery that he leapt from his bath shouting “‘Eureka!” Today one of Ortigia’s delightful squares is named Piazza Archimedes. I sat in this piazza for an evening aperitif, and saw a bride, in her white gown, waiting at a bus stop.

Piazza Archemides

b.      The Greek Teatro in Siracusa is one of the largest and best preserved to have survived from antiquity. It has about 49 ranks of stone seats still in place (carved directly out of the rock) but is thought to have originally had 69 tiers. This means it would have held about 19,000 people, which is more than double the size of most surviving Roman theatres. Several rulers of ancient Siracusa were keen on drama, poetry and the arts, and plays performed here would have been by such stars of the ancient world as Bacchylides, Xenophon, Simonides, Pindar and Aeschylus. The Hollywood of 300 BC.

Imagine the shows here...

The Ear of Dyonisius

c.       Orecchio di Dionisio (“Dionysius’ Ear”): a huge and haunting limestone quarry where slaves would have hacked out limestone blocks for building. Its entrance is shaped like a human ear, many metres high. Inside, the excellent acoustic accidentally produced enabled a passing guide to treat us to a haunting Sicilian love song (before the school children came hurtling down to try out their lungs). The cave was given its nickname by the renaissance painter Caravaggio in the early 1600s, when he heard about Dionysius (a tyrant ruler of Siracusa) being able to hear the approach of his enemies because of the echo in the cave. Caravaggio was on the run at the time, having killed someone in one of his frequent lively rages. To the benefit of Siracusa, he left behind a number of paintings commissioned during his stay, one of which I discovered in a church on the Piazza Duomo.

      

And speaking of the Duomo – this has to be perhaps the most extraordinary church I have ever visited (and as you know if you’ve been following, I’ve visited a few spectacular ones recently). The Ortigia Duomo is a Christian Catholic church built on and around a Greek temple. Now, often churches were built on the same sites as pagan temples, but in this case the columns of the temple were preserved and incorporated into the church. The effect is spellbinding: the great columns of the pagan temple have been enclosed and roofed, and the space they mark out is once again a sacred space. The effect is difficult to describe; but the church interior is medieval with a minimal number of Baroque flourishes, so the overall effect is beautiful and soothing. And there are those great columns, standing where there have stood for about 2,300 years, doing the same job that they were originally carved and erected to do.

Inside the Duomo...incorporating the pagan.

e.      But the Baroque and the medieval mix intriguingly in the backstreets of Ortigia.  Tiny narrow streets date from medieval times, when the island was held by the Arabs; and later through the Baroque period when ornate balconies were added to many windows, almost meeting the opposite houses.  The balconies of Siracusa are a study in themselves. Wandering the alleyways of the Arabs, of the Jews, of the medieval merchants, of the little trattatorias and the rustic restaurants where the smell of cooking fish wafts out...

f.        The small island of Ortigia, attached to the ‘mainland’ of Siracusa by two short bridges, sits in the surprising harbour of Siracusa: a natural harbour, almost circular, with a narrow opening which was easily defended; explaining why Siracusa is where it is. There is also a strange effect where an underground fresh water stream emerges to meet and mingle with the salt water of the harbour in an odd and sudden combination. In a legend of antiquity, one of the nymphs of the hunter goddess Artemis, tormented by a hunter, was turned into a stream so that she might escape underground and re-emerge on the island of Ortigia as a freshwater fountain. Today the fountain of Arethusa can be visited, filled with a few ducks and some clumps of papyrus. Papyrus is another surprising find in Siracusa: lovely handmade papers can still be purchased.

g.       And Plato? He travelled to Siracusa a couple of times, and attempted to convince the tyrants then ruling the city-state that they had a great opportunity to adopt his model for government, based on his ‘Republic’. This didn’t go down very well with Dionysius, neither the Elder nor the Younger, and both ended up expelling Plato home to Athens. It could have been that bit about the ideal Republic being ruled by philosopher-kings.

Earth mother: feeding twins.

h.      The Archaeological Museum: with such a treasure-trove of ancient sites in Siracusa, they need a good archaeological museum, and they certainly have one. Every bit of pottery ever dug up here and in the surrounding countryside, from Neolithic times onwards, has been dusted off, identified, labelled and displayed in the most comprehensive museum of its kind that I’ve ever come across; all housed in an excellent and well-kept purpose designed building. There is also a huge display of bronze pieces, weapons, jewellery, utensils, raw metal, found in a Bronze Age hoard, one of the largest of the “Sicilian Hoards”.

But if Neolithic pottery shards aren’t your thing (and you can have too much of a good thing), the Greeks, and particularly Roman, finds from the archaeological site help to bring to life what you see of the foundational remains. At the outdoor site, in addition to the Greek Teatro, there is also a Roman amphitheatre (gladiators, naval battles, wild animals, cruelty and spectacle); and a massive alter build by one of the Siracusa tyrants named Hieron II in the 3^rd century BC, almost two kilometres long and big enough to slaughter and barbeque 460 bulls at once. As in many of these prosperous ancient cities, everybody’s villa and garden was decorated with statues and carvings and votive figures and fountains. Both the Greeks and then the Romans liked to surround themselves with art and beauty. Bits can be found preserved in the museum, some of them quite lovely.

Add to all these unusual and fascinating aspects of Siracusa an extremely lovely small hotel (Agila Ortigia), one of the best restaurants I’ve eaten at (”Don Camillo”), balmy evening walks around the harbour, Sicilian gelato, Sicilian Marsala, Sicilian fish, Sicilian oranges....remind me why I have to leave?

Siracusa harbour, sunset. *swoon*