Sicily Guide

San Vito Lo Capo si one of the first Sicilian resorts to ease the access to the beach for disabled people. This year the city is financing a project to introduce special wheelchairs on the beach for disable people. Two thumbs up for the initiative!

The Mondello Tower in Palermo will reopen this coming Saturday June 28. Built in 1455 to defend the old fishery from the Arab attacks, the tower will be open to the public on Sundays and Saturdays. Entrance will be free for the first four weeks.

99 new archeological sites mainly located around Syracuse and Ragusa have been added to Sicily’s rich heritage: 48 are prehistoric and 51 are dated back to 300 and 500 AD.

The name of the new science museum, the only one of this type in Sicily, will be Domus Archimedea. The museum is dedicated to Archimedes and will be located right in the heart of the city of Syracuse, next to the Archeological Museum. This project is financed by the Sicilian Region.

Frommer’s online offers one of the most detailed list of events in Sicily I have seen on the Internet.

Check it out at
http://events.frommers.com/sisp/frommers2/index.htm?fx=guide&frommers_id=3224

Rich with seafood, citrus, olives, and almond sweets, the cuisine of the sun-drenched island of Sicily reflects the influence of Greeks, Norman French, Tunisians, and Italians, among others. Unlike guidebooks that sweep Sicily into an overview of Italy, this latest addition to the award-winning Eat Smart series focuses solely on the cuisine of Sicily. Eat Smart in Sicily provides an historical overview of the peoples who have lived there and their contributions to Sicilian cuisine, with attention given to the fare distinct to the villages and urban centers of Sicily’s four regions. A helpful guide to Sicilian menus, with English translations of Italian (or Sicilian) words, makes ordering food in Sicily an easy and immediately rewarding experience. Highlighting regional recipe mainstays, Joan Peterson and Marcella Croce provide tips to shopping for traditional ingredients in Sicily and at home. The book also includes a comprehensive glossary of foods, kitchen utensils, and cooking methods to prepare authentic Sicilian specialties at home or abroad.

Joan Peterson is an experienced world traveler and the author of the EAT SMART guides to the food of Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Morocco, Peru, Poland, Sicily, and Turkey. Each book has been designed for travelers and food lovers like her who want to navigate menu and market with confidence.

Marcella Croce was born in Palermo, Sicily, and is a journalist and author. For almost twenty years she has been a teacher and coordinator of Elderhostel Programs in Sicily organized by Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

Eat Smart in Sicily
How to Decipher the Menu, Know the Market
Foods, & Embark on a Tasting Adventure
Joan Peterson and Marcella Croce
Illustrated by Susan Chwae

Published by Ginkgo Press
Distributed by the University of Wisconsin Press
Publication Date: June 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9776801-1-5 Paper, $13.95
160 pages

For more information on the Eat Smart series, visit:
http://www.ginkgopress.com/

Jane Owen took a spring break and found blossom, snow and mudbaths all in three days.

Sicily is one of Europe’s few destinations that can genuinely claim to offer something for everyone including skiers, volcanologists - and, for anyone in search of the bizarre - the catacombs of Palermo where clothed corpses pose in various positions.

Sicily’s popular reputation, untouched by mass tourism and charter flights, is left to films like The Godfather and news items about corruption.

Citrus blossom rather than corruption scented the air when I visited for the first time this April. Sweet blood oranges were part of breakfast taken beside the sea at Mazzaro Sea Palace hotel near Taormina on a picturesque bay along the east coast.

Read more at The TimesOnline.co.uk

Banco di Sicilia can play an important role against the mafia in Sicily by funding sound and competitive companies, the chairman of the Sicilian unit of Italian bank UniCredit (CRDI.MI: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Tuesday.

Speaking to foreign journalists in Milan, Ivan Lo Bello said the mafia had a “parasitic” business culture which thrived on public money funnelled into traditional sectors such as construction and infrastructure.

“Wherever there is an efficient economic system, the mafia is forced to take a step back,” said Lo Bello, who also heads the Sicilian branch of employers body Confindustria.

Read more at Reuters.com

The center-right is ahead all across Sicily in provincial elections. The first figures, though only partial, see the Pdl and allies Udc and Mpa winning the majority in all eight provinces were voting is in progress. In Messina they reach a peak of 83%, followed by 81% in Palermo, 72% in Agrigento, and then Caltanissetta (65%), Catania (77%), Siracusa (70%), Trapani (68%). In Enna, where counts have just begun, the Pdl is winning ‘only’ 56% of the vote.

Source AGI

If the last fifteen years of Italian wine have been a story of ever increasing success and recognition - and this is precisely what developments on the world’s quality markets confirm - a good deal of the credit must logically be given to the unique character and personality of the country’s grapes. Which are not the varieties planted, cultivated, and fermented in virtually every corner of the globe by now: Cabernet, Merlot, Syrah, and Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Sauvignon, to be true, can also be found in Italy and often give surprisingly good results, but they are anything but the main story.

Read more at Roman Forum

Turkish-Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek will head the six-person jury that will award the 54-year-old Taormina Film Festival’s Golden Tauro prize for new films from the Mediterranean region, the festival said Wednesday.

Organizers also announced that a restored print of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” — filmed in part in Sicily — will screen in the festival’s 2,300-year-old Greek Theater as part of a lineup that includes restored versions of Federico Fellini’s little-known 1968 short “Toby Dammit” and Paul Schrader’s 1985 biopic “Mishima.”

Read more at the HollywoodReporter.com

Improving flight connections and “stunning scenery” are making Sicily a year-round holiday hot spot, one expert has advised.

According to property website Rightmove Overseas, the Italian island is an up-and-coming region which travellers are also starting to buy holiday homes in.

Read more at news.holidayhypermarket.co.uk

While the wines from Northeastern Italy conjure up some good memories, Sicily and Puglia hold some exciting new wine discoveries for David Crowley. He is especially pleased to have become acquainted with the Sicilian red grape nero d’avola, and primitivo, the Italian version of the zinfandel grape I enjoy from California. While red seems to be particularly well-suited to Italy’s warm southerly regions, I did also sample a good Sicilian white.

Discover the wines from Sicily and Puglia David Crowley likes at Gather.com

Carol Pucci from the Seattle Times writes about the real people behind vacation B&Bs, farmhouses and apartments bring you more than merely a place to stay in Sicily…

When Patrizia Calvagna, 39, heard the news that conservatives swept Italy’s recent elections, she worked off her frustration by staying up late that night baking a ricotta cake and buns laced with chocolate for her guests at La Girara, a B&B in the foothills of Mt. Etna.

Read more at Freep.com

Carol Pucci from the Seattle Times writes about a tour with a retired fisherman…

Each spring, the fishermen of the little Italian island of Favignana go to sea to hunt giant tuna, which they harpoon and hoist on board their boats in a bloody ritual called the mattanza.

A traveler with a strong stomach can arrange to go out in fishing boats in May and June, the prime season on this island off the coast of Sicily. Other times, travelers with a sense of adventure can count on men such as Giuseppe Messina, 72, on whose boat, the Maria, I recently spent an hour and a half puttering around the island, sans life jackets, as we darted in and out of grottoes chiseled into rocky cliffs.

Read more at the ReadingEagle.com