Sicily and Malta 2025. Part One: Siracusa

 

March 2020

We last went to Sicily in March 2020, the excuse being I needed to do further research for my nearly-completed novel that no agent wanted to read on account of it having nothing to do with Katie Price. We had heard news of this recent thing called the coronavirus, but nobody was advising us not to go. A flight to Catania and bus to Siracusa, we were picked up at the station by the son of the Airbnb owner. “Aren’t you worried about this pandemic thing?” I asked him. “Nah, that’s just in the North of Italy,” he answered like a true Sicilian, but he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box and drove us three times around the island before he remembered where the Airbnb was.

This was on the Tuesday and Siracusa was deserted. The next evening BBC News informed us that on Thursday all Italian schools would close until further notice. On Friday the Italian Government announced that the whole of Lombardy, Liguria, Veneto, Tuscany etc... (the North) were to be completely locked-down, starting Sunday.

Of course, this gave all the Southern Italian and Sicilian workers the chance to leg it, and on the Sunday the town was buzzing with unexpectedly reunited families. Monday evening, I checked the news and found that the whole of Italy was to have a lockdown for the foreseeable future. Starting midnight.

Early Tuesday morning we planned our escape and snuck out of the house. People were emptying the mini-markets of toilet paper and bottled water in trolleys, and police cars on patrols edged cautiously through the narrow streets, uncertain as to their instructions. Luckily, this is Sicily and nobody had told the bus driver, or he didn’t care, and we made it to the airport. All flights were cancelled apart from ours and a couple of others, the Italians all wore masks, the foreigners not. An English lady was coughing her guts out and the Italians silently moved 100m away. “Don’t worry, it’s just hay fever,” she smiled at the only people in the vicinity - us. At Gatwick, all the Brits did their usual thing and stood up as one as the seat belt sign went off, and a frustrated Italian shouted: “For the love of God, sit down!” A few days later I had the worst headache of my life, stayed in bed for three days and distinctly remember not being able to smell or taste anything.

Anyway, we’re going back.

Tuesday 8^th July 2025

At Gatwick they now let you keep your liquids and electrical items in your bags, which means I breeze through security in two minutes which gives me extra time to wait for Mrs Mad whose handbag needs scanning three times. She pleads innocence but the usual suspects lined up against the wall are a very long nail file, giant toenail clippers and a collection of lighters.

South Terminal is no longer fit for purpose. Judging by the seating availability, everybody is travelling solo as there are no two contiguous free chairs. And which genius decided that there should be no clocks at all in the entire departure area? Some bright young marketing executive who persuaded his bosses that people who miss planes buy more duty-free?

The plane leaves 30 minutes late because, as the pilot explains, they’ve just come from Ibiza. The thinly veiled suggestion is that he’s had to deal with a hundred and fifty simians who tore out all the seating, while those who go to Catania are far more refined. Nobody’s particularly concerned, as those who go to Catania know that departure times are fiction and the plane arrives at the time it should. For once I don’t dislike a BA flight. The seats are wide and comfortable - they’re actually the same as those in first class although these have a little table that covers the middle seat, as well as a curtain to keep out the plebs and make sure we don’t use their toilet.

We rush through the airport and make our bus with one minute to spare. It arrives 15 minutes later despite having started ten minutes away. The driver is a maniac and we reach Siracusa in 30 minutes where we are given a tour of every street in the suburbs in case someone wants to get off, and then we’re dumped in the middle of nowhere and told ‘terminal.’ They’ve moved the bus station.

It’s 9pm, 31c and 75% humidity. I suggest we get a taxi rather than walk 45 minutes, but Mrs Mad’s just lit a cigarette. It’s dark when we get to the Airbnb down a narrow alley and I can’t read the long, convoluted instructions to enter the property, hold a torch and open the lock box at the same time. Then it’s up four flights of stairs and the lights suddenly switch off halfway. Then another lock box, another set of continental keys and we’re in, drenched in sweat, or at least I am. Very nice. Hang on, there’s only one room.

I contact Giuseppe, who’s very charming. He apologises because he’d assumed wrongly and the cleaner hasn’t left out the key to the other bedroom which is up a further, particularly dangerous, flight of stairs with another terrace. Then, if it wasn’t already, it becomes an escape room. We’re told to open a secret door in the corner of the laundry room. This gives us two puzzling magnetic plastic keys. These are used in the master bedroom to open a secret door to a cupboard, which takes nine attempts and a video tutorial, and in this we find keys to the second bedroom along with a case of the free white Grillo in the fridge. Sofa bed, no sheets. We find the sheets in the secret cupboard but can’t work out the sofa bed. Giuseppe, who looks like Young Montalbano, comes over, sorts out the bed and puts another bottle of Grillo in the fridge.

It’s 11pm. The restaurants are shut, but our favourite cocktail bar is still open. I’m willing to pay anything as all we’ve had today is a miserable Pret sandwich and a BA biscuit. Set in an old palace courtyard, the cocktails are imaginative and use rare ingredients. The bruschetta are burrata with raw red Sicilian prawns; bottarga and mozzarella di buffala; prosciutto and pickled plums; and mackerel, onions, pepper and mango. I took a picture which I’m not going to show you as I’d eaten half of it by the time I remembered.

Oh well, we’re just going to have to get used to it.

Wednesday 9^th July 2025

Giuseppe said that yesterday was the hottest day of the year so far - getting up to 41c by 3pm, with high humidity. Anyway, it’s much milder today, a paltry 32c with 60% humidity, much the same as you’ll soon be experiencing in London, although I doubt you’ll be walking 10k.

Ortigia is the ancient heart of Siracusa, a peninsular colonised by the Corinthians in the 8th century BCE, that became an island once they cut canals to connect the Great and Little Harbours. I defy anyone over the age of thirty not to love it, Trump supporters excepted. There are buildings from every age here, even the magnificent Cathedral is built around the structure of a 5th century BCE Temple of Athena, and you can still see the ancient columns in its outer and inner walls.

We start with a clockwise periplous of the island, the locals happy to find any tiny bit of sand or rock from which to bathe. We rest to watch the crews of the super-rich prepare their yachts for their masters’ lunch. And then to the canal with the ridiculously low bridges where on boat trips you have to lie on the floor to avoid getting your head knocked off.

We first went to Siracusa in late July 2012. It was during the London Olympics, which we were unable to watch on any device, stupidly hot and staying in the basement of a palace belonging to a former Prince and F1 driver, which had 100 acres of grounds studded by tacky Graecia statues, an Olympic-sized swimming pool and its own private chapel, for our exclusive use. I directed our chauffeur to the underground car park on Ortigia. Directly opposite was… who knew?

And you can forget all your other food markets - Barcelona, Borough, Budapest etc… this is still my favourite ever. It’s not that big, but everything is the best. Pistachios and cherries from Brontë, almonds from Avola, walnuts from Noto, tomatoes from Pachino etc. - all rated the best in the world, probably by the Sicilians. And, oh my days, the fish - especially the red prawns from Mazara. In London they cost over £100 a kilo for a frozen packet. Here they are considerably fresher and sixteen Euro a kilo. So, we buy half a k, half a k of fresh scampi, half of k of Pachino’s, half of k of mozzarella di buffala, local olive oil, salami, lemons, oranges, basil etc… and lug all this back to the Airbnb along with beer, Prosecco and Campari. You eat well in the restaurants here, but even better at home.

You can’t get lost on Ortigia - you’re either on the east coast, the west coast or in the middle. The breezes in the shaded alleys cool you down, it’s only when you climb stairs, carry shopping or enter an air-conditioned shop that you begin to sweat. We have lunch at the Ortigia Fish Bar who wait 20 minutes to take our order and serve the food 5 minutes later. They deep-fry the prawns unshelled for extra crunch. The staff are boat people.

There are only 88 surviving Caravaggio’s in the world, many being copies of the same painting and lots are in private collections. Siracusa has a particularly good one in the Church of Saint Lucy and it’s free to view. But, hang on, which one is it? Turns out, none of them as it’s been lent to some other museum. The one in the photo below is a print.

We have a beer on the west coast and I’m imagining the great sea battle in 413 BCE where the Athenians tried to escape the harbour which the Syracusans had gated with derelict fishing boats, joined by chains. We spend an hour de-shelling red prawns drinking G&T and Campari spritz, then we decide it might be a good idea to do something. It’s our fourth time here so we’ve already seen most things, but I’ve heard about this palace you can only visit in the evening.

The Palazzo Borgia del Casale surrounds a courtyard where there used to be a very good cocktail bar. It’s 8 Euros to get in and we’re told there’s an audio guide. I take a photo of a bar code. And? Nothing happens, bloody technology, so we wonder through the six rooms unimpressed. Then a guy gives us a glass of Prosecco each. Mrs Mad wants to practice her Italian and this guy gives us a personal tour of each room. I’m still none the wiser. Then we have some astonishing cocktails at our favourite cocktail bar which is located in another palace.

We return to the Airbnb to eat our delicious food. Except we don’t, because we’re both too pissed.

Thursday 10^th July 2025

The plan was to do Ortigia yesterday and Neapolis today, Neapolis being the new city, which it was in 600 BCE. We decide we can’t be bothered - there are no reliable buses, it’s too hot to walk and, anyway, we’ve seen it already. Do I really need to visit the Ear of Dionysius a fourth time? So instead, we undertake a tour of underwhelming museums that we’ve not been to before.

The Galleria Regionale di Palazzo Bellomo (10 Euros per person) purports to be a collection of paintings and sculpture by local artists across the ages. In fact, most pieces are from the Baroque (15th and 16th century) and nobody knows who created them. The most interesting thing is that they were all ripped from the walls of local monasteries and churches (no explanation why) and it shows. If you like art depicting the Madonna breast-feeding the baby Jesus and various saints being murdered then you’ll love it here. Unfortunately, we are sandwiched between a school trip of twelve-year olds and another of ten-year olds. The air conditioning is heroic.

The Castello Maniace, also known as the Dagger Fort, but only by me, was built at the Southern tip of the island in the thirteenth century after the Byzantines ‘liberated’ the city from the Arabs. This much you can ascertain before entering as this is where the information starts and ends. It’s a series of big empty spaces, patched-up brickwork and unpleasant smells. There must have been a fort here in ancient times, but nobody wants to tell you this. This must have been the point from which the Syracusans started their sea gate and where Archimedes destroyed the Roman fleet with his mirrors, screws and boat tongs.

For a further six Euros you can visit a temporary exhibition of Impressionists which contains forty-odd paintings. It has the smallest works that Monet, Manet, Rousseau, Millet and Renoir ever painted, along with lots of artists I’ve never heard of.

The Duomo’s closed so we go to the Secreta Palatii (four Euros). The first room contains scary nineteenth century baby Jesus dolls. The main palace has lots of medieval and baroque paintings with no explanation or air conditioning. The library is impressive and contains thousands of volumes by the likes of Andrea Camilleri, Jeffrey Archer and Dan Brown.

Mrs Mad vetoes the Museum of Papyrus, which is on my bucket list, and instead we return to the Airbnb to eat some of the meal we were meant to have last night, which is very nice. Except I’m no longer up to peeling scampi, which is like wrestling a hedgehog.

A ‘sixth hour’ is needed and then, much refreshed, the inadvisable G&T and Campari spritz re-emerge. We leave for the evening at seven, politely stepping over the old people who use the alley as a social club whilst mumbling ‘maledetti turisti,’ to go to the Museo Della Illusioni. It’s small, expensive (14 Euros each) and sans air conditioning and, yeah, great fun.
  
I had cancelled our booked restaurant last night due to unreliability issues, citing a family emergency. We decide to go there anyway at 8:30 under a false name and are told there’ll be a half an hour wait. So, we have a glass of wine and turn up an hour later. Mrs Mad studies the menu for twenty minutes before picking what I knew she wanted. The food, wine and service is exemplary, but I have to eat for two as usual.

I love Siracusa. I get stressed by everything these days, but not here.

Friday 11^th July 2025 (Part One)

Turns out that a diet mainly consisting of raw shellfish and alcohol isn’t the best for a person with a weak constitution and a couple of Imodium are required this morning.

We reverse engineer the escape room, say, goodbye to the Giudecca (Jewish Quarter) and walk, inadvisably, through the unloved polluted part of Neapolis to the train station. 45 minutes of broken pavements, avoiding dog poo, drenched in sweat and saying to each other for the third time in as many days: ‘should have got a cab’.

The guy in the ticket office is exactly how I imagined older Sicilian men to be. German guy in front of us: “Do you speak English.” “Yes.” “I have a ticket for an overnight train from Palermo to Napoli. Is it possible to exchange it for a ticket from Siracusa to Napoli.” “No.”
“We are going to Pozzallo but stopping off in Noto for a few hours,” says Mrs Mad in her best Italian. “Do we need to buy separate tickets?” “No,” he says, and issues tickets to Noto only.

It’s an easy and comfortable 30-minute journey. Google Maps says there’s a bag drop behind a gym but we can’t find it, so we ask at the gym. “This is the bag drop,” the lovely lady explains. Of course, I’m required to download an app, create an account etc… but she does all this for me, and I pay 13.5 Euros for the privilege of her wheeling two small but heavy bags into their cloakroom.

It’s a 20-minute climb into the centre of Noto, a beautiful city rebuilt in the Sicilian Baroque style after a devastating earthquake in the 17th Century. It is extremely impressive when you see it for the first time, which was 13 years ago, and on the fourth time you know what to expect. The magnificence is mainly concentrated on one long street - the Corso Vittorio Emanuele - which we trudge along four times as slowly as possible in search of fresh orange juice. After an hour or so we find a lovely non-tourist salameria in the lower street with the best glass of the holiday so far, accompanied by free potato cakes.

There are cathedrals and churches to visit if you’ve not seen them before, and if you’re interested in them, but otherwise there’s nota lota to do in Noto. And Noto is hoto. The pharmacist on the shady side of the street says it 31c, the one on the sunny side 34c, but mainly it’s just muggy. There are loads of sinister security men everywhere in black trousers and t-shirts, perhaps because Bezos has threatened to visit on honeymoon. Noto did feature in season 2 of the White Lotus, after all. Still, there are worse places to waste five hours. Camborne, Derby and Denizli bus station come to mind.

In our state of ennui we give in and visit an exhibition of American Pop-Art which costs 13 Euros each, expecting it to have, in the usual Sicilian manner, two and a half Warhols and a single Basquiat and Haring each. Surprisingly, there are tons of them. The Basquiats look like the work of a ten-year old drawing rude pictures to impress his mates. The Warhols are his classic works, but I guess because they’re prints they’re showing in every art gallery across the world simultaneously. There’s a reconstruction of Studio 54. I like the guitars.

 
 

We arrive 30 minutes early at the station and, worryingly, we’re the only ones here. I point out to nobody in particular that the river valley is the actual place where thousands of Athenians were massacred in 413 BCE, not the place in my book where they took the scenic route. After an eight-minute bell concerto the train does arrive and nobody is remotely interested in selling us a ticket. Thirty more minutes to Pozzallo and finally a cab rather than a 45-minute walk through intense heat. It’s 25 Euros for a ten-minute journey, but I was expecting this.

Two hours before the ferry and we’re allowed to board. Club Class get to ride a train for 60 of the 100 metres walk, but noting how we’re struggling with our heavy cases up the stairs, a guy takes pity on us and shows us the secret lift to the top floor. We’re right at the front and they even serve our new favourite beer - Messina with salt flakes, which is much better than it sounds.

Okay, so where are we going? I have to admit that I hate not going to new countries on holiday. Life’s too short. Last year I went to Greece and Turkey where I’ve been dozens of times, but via a weirdly challenging route I’d not done before. This year I floated the idea of Kosovo and North Macedonia, but Mrs Mad didn’t want to come, and travelling alone is marginally worse than travelling with somebody you’re familiar with. It would have been quicker, easier and cheaper to have flown from Catania, or just go directly from London, but that would have offended our beloved Siracusa. Besides, flying is horrible and I can claim imaginary expenses for this trip by following the route of Pericles and Dionysodoros to the land of the Melitese and Gauls.

We’re going to Malta!

Admittedly it doesn’t make such an impression on my scratch map as would Brazil.