Experience Sicily

Category: Seasons

  • Sicily’s Spring Artichokes

    Spring’s purple artichokes are in season in Sicily.

  • Where Are Your Carnevale Masks?

    Hey, guys, where are your masks? For Carnevale, it has been tradition for centuries to dress in costume in order to hide one’s identity. … Let’s start from the beginning. So, “carne” means meat, but really, it means flesh. In this case, flesh is for body. In pre-Christian times, this period of CARNE-vale, before the…

  • The Most Beautiful Carnevale in Sicily

    As we approach Ash Wednesday next week, throughout Sicily revelers are celebrating Carnevale. Acireale, where I was for last year’s party, is the place to be! Over the next few days, tens of thousands of people will process through the town’s streets wearing costumes while throwing confetti, eating Sicilian-style almond nougat and other sweets, making…

  • Happy New Year from Experience Sicily

    Happy New Year! Buon anno! I wish you and your loved ones peace, joy, and good health for 2018! Just as our lives are ever evolving from year to year, so with each eruption, changes Etna’s landscape. There is much to learn from observing this volcano in Sicily–she teaches us that nothing is permanent, and…

  • Sicilian Travel Tips: When To Travel to Sicily

    If you are ambitious and you correctly time your travel to Sicily, you can ski in the morning on Mount Etna and swim in the Ionian Sea in the afternoon–Not every day at the end of February or beginning of March, or the end of October, but some days. And you must really want to…

  • Sicilian Christmas Cookies

    Oh, right about now, I want one of Maria and Angelo’s buccellati cookies, like this one I photographed in September when our Experience Sicily group visited their bakery in the mountain village north of Agrigento, Sant’Angelo Muxaro. Buccellati are very closely associated with Christmas in Sicily. They are pastries often stuffed with chopped dried figs,…

  • Greek Mythology: She Took The Seeds With Her

    Today, the Solstice, we welcome winter. I share this picture of a pomegranate I took in Sicily because in western literature and art, the pomegranate represents the cycle of life and death. This symbolism stems from the ancient Greek cult of Demeter and Persephone. Autumn marks when Persephone returns to the Underworld to join her…

  • Sheep and Green Grass

    Spring comes early in Sicily, and with it come the green grasses. Sheep love to eat the fresh green grass, and that makes us humans happy because that means that their milk, which is used to make ricotta, which is used to make cannoli, is naturally sweet! Oh, and those cannoli … Folks who know…

  • The Olive Report, Part 2

    This is Part 2 of your olive report! On Monday, the team at Agriturismo Villa Cefalà was preparing the nets for the olive harvest. A week after the photo for Part 1 was taken, the fruit looked a bit more plump.