A few weeks ago I packed my bags, warned everyone that I’m going to return with an enviable tan, and boarded on a flight to Palermo, Sicily.
Sicily felt like a trip back in time.
The Sicilian Diaries I
Category: Travel Diaries
The Sicilian Diaries: An Ode to Palermo Food
Sicilian food tastes like what I imagine food in heaven is going to be like. If not, I’m more than happy to rot in hell. [Provided that there will be abundant supply of sushi.] As Matthew Fort writes in Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons, “Sicilian cooking embraces contrast, discord, counterpoint, counterpunching, variance and the absence of delicacy … the dishes are as bold and baroque as any flamboyant building.”
The One About Kythera – Sunset in Avlemonas
Kythera (also transcribed Kythira) is a picturesque Greek island lying opposite the southeastern tip of Peloponnese, between the Greek mainland and Crete. Despite having fewer than 4,000 permanent residents, the small island is spangled with dozens of small villages, some consisting of only a handful of houses. After driving around the island for a couple days, there was a definite winner for me: Avlemonas.
The One About Serifos
Serifos is like an introductory class to the typical landscape of the Cyclades islands, a small group of Greek islands in the middle of the Aegean Sea, southeast of mainland Greece. The name refers to the islands around (κυκλάς) the sacred island of Delos.
Steep mountain slopes with low, scarce vegetation that end abruptly in mesmerizing blue sea. Long sandy beaches with nowhere to hide from the bright, ruthless Aegean sun but for a few tamarisk trees here and there. Low, square buildings in the unmistakable white and blue that sets Cyclades architecture apart and narrow unruly streets that resemble a maze. Read more
The One About Marseille
Marseille felt effortless.
Marseille felt like going back home.
Bathed in sun and caressed by the sparkly Mediterranean sea that haunts the dreams of all south European expats, life in Marseille moves at its own slow, calculated, resilient pace despite being France’s second largest city after Paris. Read more