summer in ames: April 2009

ready for a big one!?

SICILY!!!

this was the week long trip I took before spring break with my architecture program.

for the sake of not making this an hour long ready (and 5 hour long type) I am going to breeze through some details, however I will still list them briefly.

This trip was a very fun trip, for a lot of reasons, but it made my views of Sicily change from fear, to love.

We arrived in Palermo and had a 30 min. crazy taxi ride, the craziest you can imagine, it included yelling Italians, they yelled at each other before we left, then they yelled at each other through the windows as we were driving 200 kmh on the highway, and they stopped at lights, got out of the car and yelled more at each other. It was intense. At one point my driver put the parking break on and got out while the car was still rolling, we just hoped that it would stop before it hit the car in front of us... it id, by about a foot.

That was my introduction to Sicily.

We were supposed to go visit a villa of sorts, however as Ben, Max and I were wandering around to find a place to eat we stopped at a restaurant right by the sea to get some beer. The owner came out and chatted with us, he asked us how long we were in Sicily, and if we wanted something to eat. We said sure (thinking it would be a small assortment of plates) .

the harbor of Palermo

mussles

octopus

here is the antipasti (1st course), octopus, mussles, eggplant con parmisan, and salmon

we thought we were done after those plates (didnt even finish them) we were wrong.

primi, rice with assorted sea, fruitti del mare

primi, spagetti with clams

the waiter saw us photodocumenting so he stole the camera and took our picture

Max is trying to comprehend whats happening

then came the secondi (3rd course)

giant shrimp

fried calamari

fish platter, tuna steak, makeral

and then came the fourth course, the contorni

salad with olives and tomato

he asked us if we wanted desert and we said.... no.... so he said, ok, I will bring you the fruit then

sugared orange

then the bill came

E75 for the three of us, written on a piece of graph paper.... pretty good deal

Just to recap that meal, here is what the three of us attempted to eat:
-3 liters of beer
-2 loaves of bread

antipasti
-salmon
-octopus
-mussles
-eggplant con parmisan

primi
-spaghetti with clams
-rice with frutti del mare

secondi
-tuna steak
-makeral
-giant shrimp
-fried calamari

contorni
-salad with olives and tomato

dolce/frutti
-sugared oranges

which makes this a 13 plate meal. The only plate we finished was the oranges, and that was not an easy task.

In order to recover we went to this nearby park (best park Ive ever been too, and passed out)

Later we saw the Duomo, which speaks of the ecclectic nature of Sicily. They got invaded by everyone and it shows in many things, including the architecture. The Normans, Arabs, Northern Italians, French, Argonese, Spanish... the list goes on and on.

cool islamic patterning

this chapel has the most mosaic in the world.

Palermo was one of the landing sites for the Allies invasion of Sicily in WWII, they bombed it (unnecessarily) and destroyed the historic center, no one has money to repair it so it just stays in a bombed out state.

It was pretty late at this point and the rest of the class was passed out, so to just make sure we had eaten enough we wandered around to find a bar. We found a cool little bar and walked in, we were looking at what they had when numerous people came up to us and talked to us about what they thought was best. After getting all 13 peoples advice and tasting numerous things, we ordered what we thought were fried potatoe balls. 3 of them. However these turned out to be enormous fried potatoe ball sandwhiches which we got 6 of instead. for E1.50, quite a deal. So we once again had far to much food....

Sicilians are nice.

Day 2:

This day we took a tour of a cooperative of farms and vineyards that used to be under the hands of one of the 3 biggest mafia bosses, Brusca. I would try to give you all the Mafia history we learned but its incredibly facinating stuff, in short, Brusca was jailed in the 1990's and his land was then donated to the state who then passed it along to this coop.

Just as an example of mafia ridiculousness, this bridge was built because the mafia was trying to waste the governments money, and this was a unnecessary bridge that the mafia got built.

this is the site of a massacre that happened during labor day in 1947. The communist party just won a big election and in response the capitalist mafia shot into a celebrating crowd killing 11 people.

To celebrate this happiness we went to Brusca's old house and ate an enormous meal.

arancini (fried rice balls) with a fried potato bread

lasagna, italian style

walnut sauce pasta

eggplant con parmesian

peas

potatoes

cannoli

Day 3:

Our bus drive, Maurizo, took control of the plans to tour Sicily, and the first stop was to get a sugary dessert that was similar to cannoli but even richer (hard to imagine)

this is Castelamarre, a town we would stay our last night in.

and more dessert.

we then stopped at one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever been too. It had beautiful blue water and sand that you could walk out over 300 feet on. The water was a bit chilly though, and not many people ventured in.

some frisbee

I spent probably an hour body surfing on the 8 foot waves out there.

I then got hypothermic and couldn't warm up until I put all my clothes on (including jacket, had a pot of hot tea, and ran some laps around the beach)

Then it was off to the Medieval hill town of Erice.

super cool place, famous for Marzipan

Finally we arrived in our destination for the night, Trapani.

To celebrate we went out for Cous Cous with fish and spent an hour trying to get to the end of the natural break wall. We had to time the waves right so we didnt get swept in.

Here is Ben celebrating the last rock.

Day 4:

Brian, Ben and I decided to go for a sunrise harbor run

Then we headed off to the ancient Greek town of Segesta

This is a temple

This is also a great example of a greek-roman theatre. Amazing acoustics

George and I balancing on a wall

Then it was off to Marsala where we had a mid day feast

fired veal and fries

calamari

The Isle of Mozia off the coast of Marsala is a small island that was used by the Phonecians 2800 years ago.

The old Phoenician harbor

Bonus ruins

bonus flowers

more bonus ruins, I walked around the whole Island on a trail in about an hour, it was very beautiful at golden hour, very peaceful

Boating back to Marsala

Marsala is famous for its salt industry. These are the old windmills that pumped water between the salt pans.

Salt piles

Day 5:

The next morning I woke again for a solo sunrise beach stroll in the town of Seliunte

Seliunte was another greek civilization in 400BC, a very prosperous city, it was sacked by the Carthaginians who raped, and killed nearly all 20,000 inhabitants.

They have 3 famous temples, one has been reconstructed after the sacking.

this is the temple

this is the temple of Zeus, which was supposedly 3 times the size of the previous temple. We all climbed around on it, I climbed up a 30 ft, doric column that was nearly 3000 years old

here I am jumping down from another column climb

This is the agora (similar to the roman forum), we are getting kinda toured out if you cant tell

Ben walking down the ancient walls of Siliunte

Lunch

This is the quarry for the city of Siliunte, we did some bouldering here.

This is the town of Gibellina Nuova, the old town of Gibellina was destroyed in a earthquake in the 60's it is now an art installation of massive concrete slabs.

The new town was supposed to be a utopia city of modernism, however the mafia got involved and sucked the money for the projects into their personal accounts leaving most of the towns buildings unfinished.