Impressions: Sicilia

My travel stories may be less adventurous than many you might read online. I might have done fewer things, been to less places, not discovered as many hidden gems. This isn’t a blog about travel tips, at least not yet. But what I do have is stories and impressions of the places I’ve been.

Like Sicily. I was there years ago but I still have clear pictures in my mind. Like a stone staircase as an alleyway cutting through a town built on hills, with an orange tree hanging over the wall on one side. Or a wide, sun-drenched plaza next to the sea, with a marble floor worn so smooth over the years that we could run and slide in our flip flops, without even rain to help the stone be slippery. There were narrow cobbled streets and twisting stone alleys that wound up and down stairs and between buildings at all levels. Choose one to follow and make the right turns and you might find a hidden square or a tiny restaurant serving food much more delicious than anything you might have found with less effort. Inside the restaurant it is dark and cool, a stark contrast to outside, where everything is dripping in sunlight.

Sicily is an island full of steep, rolling green hills, often just a little too small to call mountains. As such it is also full of valleys, deep and wide, many of them home to vineyards or orchards from end to end. Imagine driving high above a valley that is full of nothing but lemon trees, knowing you’re just a little too early in the year to see it covered in blossoms. Imagining the entire valley looking as if it’s carpeted in white. Imagining the scent.

In Sicily there is a town called Taormina, which lies on the coast, very near Mount Etna. She is like a god, almost always visible, smoking in her sleep. In Taormina you can stand in an ancient Greek theatre, crumbling arches framing a backdrop of the volcano in all her imposing glory. And if you are lucky, you can go out on the beach at night, when everything is so dark that the mountain fades into the night—all except for the lava streams running slowly down her face. If you are lucky, you can stand in awe of this display and wonder at the fact that you are there, with just the right timing, to see something you could never ever see at home.

I’ve never been so near to dancing with dragons as then.