quick reminder

Sicily is wonderful. Fact.
Here you are on the road north and above Monreale, before you get lost in endless little hillside forest villages growing into suburbs and before you know it you are spat out onto the streets of Palermo where the rules of the road are interpreted differently - to put it mildly - and you soon turn into a tiger behind the wheel.

Gianmaria Testa

sing-a-long Italian pop - sticky sweet

più bella cosa non c'è
più bella cosa di te
unica come sei
immensa quando vuoi
grazie di esistere...

(Eros Ramazzotti, live in Rome 2004)

sounds from far away

Summer is over. There are last glimpses of hot sunlight but the winds are cold and the days are shorter now.
Further up towards the main crossing the road is being resurfaced and the traffic conversions are creating a ruckus with horns sounding and shouts carried down into the garden. There is one particular horn going on and off, must be from the roadworks, which calls up memories of standing at the walls of Erice looking down towards busy Trapani on a sunny day in October.

Roma tomatoes and ricotta

For the last two days lunch was fresh ricotta from the whole food shop with delicious overripe Roma tomatoes, some basil and black pepper on pumpkin seed bread.

Memories of a very hot July in Rome on the last day of a week long stay. Down to my very last Lira, just enough to buy a small muslin bag of this white curd-like stuff, warm and dripping and a handful of odd shaped tomatoes at a small market. The seller took pity on me scraping together my last coins and gave me a piece of bread for free. Munching this and licking my fingers all the way on the night train crossing the Alps into Munich.