PATTI, TINDARI FOR MANHATTAN TRANSFER
We saw in the paper that Manhattan Transfer, my favorite singing group, would be playing at the Greek theater in Tindari on the north shore of Sicily on Steves birthday. So we decided to go and see one part of our world that we had never seen before. We had to stay in the town of Patti because Tindari is isolated on top of a mountain and there are no hotels nearby. But they had a great restaurant and good junk shops (Steve got a mouth organ and I got a fan with scenes from Tindari printed on it). So, we booked into Hotel La Playa, recommended by both the Tourist Bureau and the weekend entertainment section of the paper. What a strange place. Youll see pictures of what I mean, and I would probably go back to stay there again.
Pattis claim to fame is a huge part ancient and part modern cathedral that was built as a convent, but then expanded to contain the bones of the Norman King Roger the seconds mother, Queen Adelaide. Like many cities in Sicily, it was built on a hilltop to defend itself better from enemies. It is a pleasant, small city on the rocky Tyrrhenian coast. On a nearby hilltop was the ancient civilization of Tyndaris with the Greek theater and a city ruled by not only Greeks, but later the Carthaginians, Romans, Spaniards and Arabs. Here, modern day Catholics decided to build a new cathedral. The ruins of the old city and this incredible new cathedral are within steps of each other. The two huge cathedrals are within miles of each other. And so it goes here.
We found our hotel in Patti on a windy afternoon, and we had time for a swim in the Olympic sized pool. It was huge!! We had it almost all to ourselves and started reading the brochures about this place. It was billed as a three star family vacation hotel that lets kids in free. There were the usual animatori, the recreation staff that try to get you to play cards, participate in sports games, organize karaoke, you get the picture. But there were only about 25 people around this huge facility, and that was the most we saw in our entire stay there. The brochure showed a tranquil sandy beach, but we found instead rocks in front of the gardens where beach used to be and a small wind-swept, pebbly patch of dark sand, which we found was the norm on this shore. It made us realize how lucky we were to be on our own bay here that sometimes gets full of beach plants but is generally cleaned up and does not stink. But all of Sicily has lost shoreline and even though the water does look crystal clear most of the time, there is trash all over the shoreline and in the waters of the Mediterranean itself. Snorkeling is so discouraging sometimes when you go out as far as you can and you still see plastic cups and garbage bags. We noticed floating debris on the long distance ferry rides we have taken, from Livorno-Palermo, Salerno-Messina, and the Naples-Palermo one too.
But La Playa seems to have been designed for more than a 3 star family hotel. Its gardens were absolutely beautiful, even if a little overdone with derelict fountains and statuary and I was glad to tell the gardener that he did a good job. We think it might be in use for big wedding receptions or conventions too.
That night we drive to Tindari, parked in a parking lot and took a bus up to the top of the hill. We bought tickets for the performance and had a wonderful meal in the one good restaurant in town, where we saw the members of the band that we had met previously eating too. As Sicilian performances are almost always late, we decided to keep an eye on when they left and to just relax and enjoy our view of the salt flats. So we drank a whole bottle of wine with our delicious antipasti, proscuitto and melon, and pizza.
The performance again got under way an hour late and with a short program of congratulations for the local basketball team and presentation of incredibly big ceramic plates to the winners. And there were also many technical difficulties, for at one point three men were swarming around the drummer trying to figure out a way of keeping the band platform from collapsing. Did I mention that this was the first concert of a series this season? Anyway, the group was fabulous even if the sound was not exactly right. I did not take good pictures mainly because they never stopped moving, so taking non-flash close-ups in the dark was a real challenge with the iffy lighting. But we enjoyed it immensely and when it ended about midnight, instead of taking the packed buses down, we walked from the top of the hill down to the parking lot and from there drove onto the twisty-turny mountain roads back to Patti. A few more surprises awaited us back at the hotel in that the pillows were like lumpy slabs, and the air conditioning did not want to work. But there was a patio door which we left open and we had the garden view to wake up to in the morning. The cacti were opening at night there too, not just off of our terrace at home. Too bad those cactus flowers last only one day for they are really lovely!
Tomorrow pottery buying, Cefalu again, and finding a Ricotta relative in Caltavuturo!
Pattis claim to fame is a huge part ancient and part modern cathedral that was built as a convent, but then expanded to contain the bones of the Norman King Roger the seconds mother, Queen Adelaide. Like many cities in Sicily, it was built on a hilltop to defend itself better from enemies. It is a pleasant, small city on the rocky Tyrrhenian coast. On a nearby hilltop was the ancient civilization of Tyndaris with the Greek theater and a city ruled by not only Greeks, but later the Carthaginians, Romans, Spaniards and Arabs. Here, modern day Catholics decided to build a new cathedral. The ruins of the old city and this incredible new cathedral are within steps of each other. The two huge cathedrals are within miles of each other. And so it goes here.
We found our hotel in Patti on a windy afternoon, and we had time for a swim in the Olympic sized pool. It was huge!! We had it almost all to ourselves and started reading the brochures about this place. It was billed as a three star family vacation hotel that lets kids in free. There were the usual animatori, the recreation staff that try to get you to play cards, participate in sports games, organize karaoke, you get the picture. But there were only about 25 people around this huge facility, and that was the most we saw in our entire stay there. The brochure showed a tranquil sandy beach, but we found instead rocks in front of the gardens where beach used to be and a small wind-swept, pebbly patch of dark sand, which we found was the norm on this shore. It made us realize how lucky we were to be on our own bay here that sometimes gets full of beach plants but is generally cleaned up and does not stink. But all of Sicily has lost shoreline and even though the water does look crystal clear most of the time, there is trash all over the shoreline and in the waters of the Mediterranean itself. Snorkeling is so discouraging sometimes when you go out as far as you can and you still see plastic cups and garbage bags. We noticed floating debris on the long distance ferry rides we have taken, from Livorno-Palermo, Salerno-Messina, and the Naples-Palermo one too.
But La Playa seems to have been designed for more than a 3 star family hotel. Its gardens were absolutely beautiful, even if a little overdone with derelict fountains and statuary and I was glad to tell the gardener that he did a good job. We think it might be in use for big wedding receptions or conventions too.
That night we drive to Tindari, parked in a parking lot and took a bus up to the top of the hill. We bought tickets for the performance and had a wonderful meal in the one good restaurant in town, where we saw the members of the band that we had met previously eating too. As Sicilian performances are almost always late, we decided to keep an eye on when they left and to just relax and enjoy our view of the salt flats. So we drank a whole bottle of wine with our delicious antipasti, proscuitto and melon, and pizza.
The performance again got under way an hour late and with a short program of congratulations for the local basketball team and presentation of incredibly big ceramic plates to the winners. And there were also many technical difficulties, for at one point three men were swarming around the drummer trying to figure out a way of keeping the band platform from collapsing. Did I mention that this was the first concert of a series this season? Anyway, the group was fabulous even if the sound was not exactly right. I did not take good pictures mainly because they never stopped moving, so taking non-flash close-ups in the dark was a real challenge with the iffy lighting. But we enjoyed it immensely and when it ended about midnight, instead of taking the packed buses down, we walked from the top of the hill down to the parking lot and from there drove onto the twisty-turny mountain roads back to Patti. A few more surprises awaited us back at the hotel in that the pillows were like lumpy slabs, and the air conditioning did not want to work. But there was a patio door which we left open and we had the garden view to wake up to in the morning. The cacti were opening at night there too, not just off of our terrace at home. Too bad those cactus flowers last only one day for they are really lovely!
Tomorrow pottery buying, Cefalu again, and finding a Ricotta relative in Caltavuturo!
posted by Sicilian Mama at 2:57 PM
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