I know I shouldn’t play favorites, but of the five meals a day enjoyed by Sevillanos (breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner) my hands-down preference is for the midday meal. Here in southern Spain, lunch o’clock rolls around about 2:00 PM. It is NOT about inhaling a sandwich at your desk or (shudder) gulping fries while driving down the freeway. It’s meant to be a hearty, leisurely meal at home with the family, or if that’s not possible, in a cozy restaurant surrounded by people murmuring with pleasure over the menu del día. Which is why my two luncheon disasters hit me so hard this week. Wednesday’s catastrophe involved a couple of fresh, ready-to-cook poultry burgers Rich bought at our favorite market stall in Plaza de la Encarnación. All I had to do was peel off the plastic wrap and drop them into the heated pan. You can imagine my shock when I flipped over a patty and discovered a disk of scorched plastic — how had I missed it?!? — seared into its underbelly. My kitchen rang with cries of horror and the clang of metal as I scraped the sizzling mess into the trash. Soldiering on, I tossed together a salad, and Rich and I sat down over this modest repast to plan the following day’s lunch. This was intended to provide a dashing first entry into my new project for this blog, something I’m calling “Out to Lunch.” The idea is to blend the quirky lunacy of the Nutters’ Tour with the mouthwatering culinary adventures of the Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour. Yes, it’s true some definitions of the phrase “out to lunch” also suggest a certain daft inattention. I refer you to the paragraph above about Wednesday’s plasticized poultry patties. Enough said. I was planning to call this week’s post “Out to Lunch with the Peacocks.” One of the peculiar charms of Seville is the muster of peacocks living in the gardens of the Alcázar, the ancient palace that still serves as home to Spain’s royal family when they’re in town. The peacocks have become wise to the ways of visitors and have a knack for being on hand whenever a leftover scrap of croissant or sandwich needs a good home. The food in the café is modest, hardly more than snacks, but the setting is incomparable: the gorgeous pleasure garden built in 1365 by the notorious king Pedro the Cruel. On Thursday, filled with pleased anticipation at visiting this favorite corner of the city, I walked through the palace into the grounds only to be brought up short by padlocked gates. Days earlier, a windstorm had knocked down massive tree branches and toppled an ancient pillar near the entrance to the gardens, causing the entire area — including the café — to be cordoned off as a public hazard. Rich asked a workman when it was likely to reopen and got an eye roll and shrug. “I can’t believe it,” I exclaimed. “This garden has been open for 658 years and it closes down four days before I want to write about it? What are the odds?” I made a beeline for the exit and stood, lost in thought, among the heaving mass of visitors milling about between the palace and the cathedral. Time to take stock of my options. There were at least 100 eateries within ten minutes easy walk. If I wanted to write about a place with magical, only-in-Seville character… “Something old-school?” suggested Rich. “Casa Morales?” Perfect! Minutes later we strolled into this long-time favorite, which stands just steps from the northwest corner of the cathedral at Calle Garcia de Vinuesa, 11. True, Casa Morales is sadly lacking in peacocks, but the excellent food and homey atmosphere have been charming guests since the current owner’s great grandfather opened his doors in 1850. The main bar is very congenial, but for me it’s more fun to slip around the corner and go in the unmarked side entrance to the “secret” back room, presided over by the enormous clay tinajas once used to store wine. One of my favorite dishes anywhere, and especially at Casa Morales, is tortilla de patatas, a fluffy yet dense omelet with potatoes and onion. Now, I know what you’re thinking; isn’t a tortilla that thin flatbread we find wrapped around tacos and burritos? Not in Spain. The name simply means “small cake” and each culture has its own version. To avoid confusion, the Spanish omelet is generally shown on the menu as tortilla de patatas or tortilla de españa. On days when I get to Casa Morales too late to grab a seat, or even to elbow my way to standing room at the bar, I have a backup just a few yards away: Bodega Díaz-Salazar, Calle Garcia de Vinuesa, 20. Here, in 1908, wine merchant Ángel Díaz-Salazar began distributing the best vintages from his Ciudad Real vineyard. In the 1940s it became a wine bar frequented by writers and artists. Today it serves traditional food, but wine is still very much the heart of the experience. And don’t worry, this is Spain; if you decide to have a glass of vino at lunchtime, nobody is going to raise an eyebrow or hand you a card for the Betty Ford Clinic. They’ll be too busy sipping their own glass of Rioja or ordering another beer to notice what you’re doing. When I first arrived in Seville, more than twenty years ago, eateries like these were everywhere. I was told there were 3000 tapas bars in the city, and I saw one on just about every block, offering tortilla de patatas, colo de toro (stewed bull’s tail), carrilladas (pork cheeks) and other traditional dishes prepared by someone’s grandmother using recipes learned from her grandmother’s grandmother. Today, brash new foodie restaurants are popping up everywhere. Some are wonderful, but none offer the same feeling of stepping back in time to a more civilized age, when lunch was savored slowly as the run-up to a nice, long siesta. Call me crazy. In fact, call me “out to lunch.” But in my opinion, we should all be checking out the old-fashioned eateries around us, wherever we may find ourselves, at home or abroad. NASA and Einstein say that time travel is theoretically possible but that most of us won’t ever experience it. I disagree. Just drop in for lunch Casa Morales — or any of a hundred other classic Seville tapas bars — or the oldest bar in your town — and you can revisit the past. Of course, time travel to the future is fun, too. Right now Seville’s trendy restaurants are outdoing each other with outrageous décor and cutting-edge gastronomy. Some are old friends, and in selfless service to my readers, I’ll be checking out the newer ones for this blog. The Spanish like to say, “Desayuna mucho, come más, cena poco y vivirás,” which roughly means “Eat a big breakfast, more at midday, have a light dinner, and you’ll live a long life.” What a wonderful excuse to enjoy a splendid lunch as often as possible! Who’s with me? STAY TUNED FOR MORE OUT TO LUNCH POSTS! LEARN MORE ABOUT MY 2023 NUTTERS' WORLD TOUR AND THE GREAT MEDITERRAEAN COMFORT FOOD TOUR Now an award-winning book and Amazon best seller WANT TO STAY IN THE LOOP? If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so you'll receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] And check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. “Let’s get out of here,” I yelled as the jackhammers started thundering overhead. Again. Rich pantomimed agreement and we shot out the door. We were staying in an otherwise delightful Airbnb in Syracuse, Sicily. It was sheer bad luck the neighbors directly above had chosen that week to smash up their old stone floors and tear out walls. Yes, of course we complained to our landlady, who explained it was nothing to do with her. Crashing masonry, pounding sledgehammers, and buzzing power tools resounded from early morning until late afternoon, occasionally rising to thunderous roars that rattled our light fixtures and made me wonder if they’d brought in elephants to do the heavy lifting. On the upside, we had plenty of motivation to start early and spend all the daylight hours exploring Syracuse. Like most visitors, we began at the city’s southern tip, on the island of Ortygia, where winding streets, ancient stone houses, and quaint tavernas create a sense of seamless storybook charm. But our luck was out in Ortygia too; our first day coincided with the arrival of a massive cruise ship, and the island was overrun with merrymakers. So Rich and I skedaddled north to check out the sprawling archeological site with its Greek and Roman ruins. You can’t tell the story of Syracuse without talking about the ill-fated, ill-considered, astonishingly boneheaded attack launched against it by Athens in 415 BC. By then Syracuse had become the dominant economic and military power in their corner of the Mediterranean, which annoyed the Athenians so much they decided it was time to give Syracuse its comeuppance. Normally the Athenians would have sent a modest force for this kind of job, but infighting among political factions resulted in radical and illogical choices. (Oh, those goofy ancients! How lucky we are not to have that sort of irrational decision-making today!) Athens committed nearly their entire fleet and 30,000 men, then put three ideologically opposed leaders in charge (because that always works out well). Syracuse was stunned by the massive attack, but luckily their ally Sparta sent one of their most kick-ass generals (not that Sparta had any other kind) to sort things out. Eventually he trapped the Athenian fleet in the harbor, enabling Syracuse to sink the invaders’ ships and capture the survivors. Most were sold as slaves, but 7000 prisoners of war were sent to work and live under horrific conditions in Syracuse’s stone quarry. Athens was depleted and demoralized, their enemies were emboldened, and the region’s balance of power shifted forever. Other than that, the plan worked perfectly. On the way to the archaeological site, I noticed an ultramodern building that looked like an upside-down ice cream cone. What fresh nuttiness was this? I soon learned the shape was meant to represent a teardrop, as this was the Basilica of the Madonna delle Lacrime (Our Lady of the Tears), built to house the city’s miraculous weeping statue. It all started in 1953, when a relative gave a modest plaster Virgin to newlyweds Antonina and Angelo Lannuso. Soon the bride became pregnant, and preeclampsia caused her to suffer convulsions and temporary blindness. Late one night she woke up, realized her sight had been restored, and saw Mary’s plaster face weeping. Antonina called in family members, who at first assumed she was hallucinating but then agreed the statue really was crying. (Watch videos of the Madonna weeping here.) As you can imagine, the town went wild. Scientists confirmed the liquid was consistent with the composition of human tears. The pope declared the event “real.” Antonina’s baby was born healthy — on December 25. It was all heady stuff. The statue has long since stopped weeping but is still on display in the ice cream cone — sorry, tear-shaped basilica. People used to catch the statue’s tears in handkerchiefs and treat them as relics, but now they just have priests bless bits of cotton which are tucked into holy cards and sold. Oh yes, I bought one and it’s been in my purse ever since. Not that I believe in asking for miracles, of course, because I am a modern and skeptical woman. But let me just tell you about the rich experiences that have occurred since I started carrying around the blessed cotton. For a start, we left that apartment in Syracuse, returning to Catania. What a relief to my eardrums! I visited Catania’s Museo Storico dello Sbarco in Sicilia 1943 (Museum of the 1943 Sicily Landing), which proved surprisingly interesting and deeply moving. If you paid attention in high school or know the book and/or movie Operation Mincemeat, you’ll appreciate how crucial the Allied invasion of Sicily was to winning the war. It succeeded in large part because the British convinced Hitler the invasion was happening in Greece, an elaborate deception involving a dead tramp dressed as an officer, fake papers, and a lot of nail-biting, cliff-hanging suspense. What I hadn’t really considered properly was how it must have felt to be in Sicily — especially Catania, which was bombed 87 times — during the six-week invasion. The tour gives you a dramatic glimpse of the experience. First you mill around in a model of a Catania square. Suddenly the air raid siren sounds and docents rush you into the bomb shelter. Sitting in near darkness with strangers, you hear planes approaching then bombs exploding, closer and closer. The shelter begins to shake, a little at first, then harder until your teeth are rattling. It’s highly effective and deeply disturbing, especially because I couldn’t stop thinking of all the people in Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere who are experiencing this very same thing right now for real. Catania offers visitors a rich array of experiences, including a vast, sprawling street market in the Piazza Carlo Alberto. One day Rich and I lunched there at a café then picked up supplies including a two-liter bottle of wine for 3 euros or $3.16. (It was a lot more drinkable than you might think.) (Yes, it was!) As we strolled homeward past fishmongers and piles of glistening vegetables, stall owners were packing up for the day, chatting and whistling. A woman with a microphone began singing the lead-in to a song. Wait, I knew this one, it was … “Volare,” she belted out. “Oh, oh…” And then, to my astonishment, the entire marketplace joined in. The young guy selling swordfish, the old lady buying tomatoes, the people sitting over lunch in the café, the delivery guys pushing carts — everyone suddenly burst into song, laughing and grinning at each other in sheer delight. Yes, of course Rich and I joined in. It was magical. Afterwards Rich kept muttering, “I can’t get that song out of my head.” “Don’t fight it,” I said. “We’ve gone nearly forty years without something we considered ‘our song.’ I think this is may be it. OK, I agree, 'Volare' is kind of an earworm and could get annoying. But look at it this way: at least it’s better than listening to the jackhammers in that Syracuse apartment.” “Amen to that.” AND THAT, MY FRIENDS, MARKS THE FINAL CHAPTER OF NUTTERS' TOUR OF SICILY 2023. YEP, WE'RE HEADING BACK TO SPAIN TOMORROW. Thanks for joining me on this long, zany journey. It’s been a hell of a ride. I won't post for a week or two while I catch my breath and settle back into my life in Seville. But don't worry, there are lots more looney adventures, travel tips, and mouthwatering culinary experiences coming up. I’ll keep you posted! In the meantime, feel free to browse through my previous posts about THE NUTTERS' WORLD TOUR WANT TO STAY IN THE LOOP? If you haven't already, take a moment to subscribe so you'll receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] And check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. “Rich, I’m in trouble,” I said a few mornings ago. “So far our stay here in Catania has been delightful, but I can’t think of a single moment that counts as a Nutter experience. What am I going to write about this week? If I just prattle on about good food and pleasant weather, even I will fall asleep, let alone my readers.” “Well, there was the drive-by soaking,” he suggested. The day before, a prankish young teen on a motorbike, who happened to have an open water bottle in his hand, decided to douse us as he roared past. The little scamp. “Actually, considering how hot the day was, I found it kind of refreshing.” “Hey, I know,” I said. “I can talk about the vomitorium!” Like most kids, I grew up hearing gross jokes about such chambers, said to be popular among ancient Romans seeking relief from extreme overindulgence. I certainly never expected to visit one. But on my first morning in Catania, on Sicily’s southeast coast, I was touring the ruins of the Greek-Roman theater when I saw a faded sign. “Wait, what?” I exclaimed. “We’re standing in an actual vomitorium?” Yes, and it wasn’t at all what you’re thinking. Turns out the term actually refers to the series of passages designed to let crowds disperse quickly from an amphitheater or stadium after a show — literally “to spew forth.” The idea that it meant rooms used for regurgitation? A total myth. I know, shocker of the year. We’ve all walked through countless vomitoria and never even knew it. Clearly Catania was going to prove educational in unexpected ways. For instance, you can’t spend any time here without learning how precarious it feels to live in a city built on the lower slope of an active volcano. For 500,000 years Mt. Etna has loomed over the landscape, belching smoke, just waiting its chance to explode again. As recently as 2021 there was an eruption lasting six months that disgorged so much lava the volcano grew 100 feet in height. Yikes! It's easy to picture these thing happening in the ancient world, but lately we’ve all been reading such alarming headlines as “Italy plans for mass evacuation as quakes continue around supervolcano; Campi Flegrei area near Naples has been jolted by more than 1,100 earthquakes in a month.” Still, whatever catastrophe may lie ahead for Naples, it’s likely to pale in comparison to what happened to Catania back in 1669. Over several earth-shaking months in 1669, erupting lava from Mt. Etna covered 15 square miles, wiping out whole villages, destroying farmland, eventually pouring into the city’s western edge and flowing up to the very walls of the Castello Ursino (Bear Castle). I imagined what it must have been like for the residents standing on the parapets looking down at the vast river of molten rock advancing toward them, filling the moat, and surging against the building’s foundations. When that kind of disaster happens, who you gonna call? No question it’s St. Agatha, the virgin martyr and patron saint of Catania. She was a tough cookie who knew all about standing her ground under extreme pressure. At age 15 Agatha decided to devote her life and virginity to Christianity, rejecting the amorous advances of the Roman governor Quintianus. Enraged, he had her tortured and (here’s the gruesome part; better send the kids out of the room) had her breasts torn off. She was sentenced to be burned at the stake, but an earthquake disrupted the proceedings, and she died in prison in 251. A year later she was credited with stopping an eruption of Mt. Etna, earning the city’s eternal devotion. Today she is invoked against volcanic activity, earthquake, fire, and breast cancer, and is the patron saint of bakers. This last might seem a stretch until you learn about the pastries called minnuzzi di sant'Àjita. “It means Saint Agatha’s tits,” a Sicilian told me. I quickly stepped back to avoid the bolt of lightning that might be expected to greet these profane worlds, but evidently God was busy elsewhere and didn’t notice. Minnuzzi are made of sponge cake soaked in liqueur, stuffed with ricotta, chocolate drops, and candied fruit, then topped with pistachio marzipan and a candied cherry. I never got around to trying them, but they certainly sound heavenly. St. Agatha isn’t the only one providing Catania with miraculous protection. In front of her cathedral there’s a primitive elephant carved of lava rock; whenever Mt. Etna's ready to blow, it's said to wake up and alert the residents. As you can imagine, I take a good hard look at it every time I cross the plaza, but so far I've never seen it stir. Earlier in its career, during the eighth century, the elephant supposedly came fully alive, carrying the sorcerer Heliodorus on its back as far as Constantinople. At the time Heliodorus was in hot competition for the job of Catania's bishop and took up the Dark Arts to outshine his pious rival, Leo (later St. Leo the Wonderworker). Heliodorus made himself hugely popular by performing magic for the townspeople. This infuriated Leo, who eventually secured the bishop’s job and promptly had Heliodorus burned alive in the nearby thermal baths. Now is that any way for a saint to behave? I ask you. By popular demand, the sorcerer’s magic elephant remained in the city and was eventually placed in front of St. Agatha's cathedral. Major renovations were made in the 18th century, adding fancy carvings, an obelisk, and a fountain. Legend says the men of the town demanded another addition; they complained the statue's gender neutrality was an insult to their virility, so the sculptor gave the elephant a robustly masculine anatomy. Now, those of you who paid attention in zoology class may be thinking, “An elephant — in Sicily? They only live in Asia and Africa, right?” Not in prehistoric times! Apparently back then Sicily was home to miniature elephants about the size of a Shetland pony. Their skulls, which without the tusks look like oversized human heads, have a large hole — a nasal cavity — in the forehead, giving rise to the legend of the cyclops, one-eyed giants living on the slopes of Mt. Etna. “I guess there have been some nutty things going on around here,” I admitted, when Rich and I had reviewed all we’d learned in Catania. But thinking back over my time in the city, the thing that struck me most vividly was the energetic, buoyant spirit of the people. Everyone seemed to have a bit of extra zip in their step, a little more sparkle in their eye. Maybe this is what comes of living on the flanks of a live volcano, I mused. At the end of every day, I suspect people breathe a sigh of relief and give each other high fives, rejoicing that they'd survived another day without being engulfed by molten lava. Or shaken by earthquakes. Or torn asunder by a lascivious politician. Or trapped by a cyclops. I like this attitude and have decided to adopt it. “Made it alive through another day,” I remark to Rich every evening as I pour us each a glass of vino. “Let’s celebrate that little miracle.” JUST JOINING US? THE NUTTERS' WORLD TOUR SO FAR RIGHT NOW: SICILY Enna: Sicily's Belly Button and Home of the Cereal Goddess Agrigento: "The Devil Made Me Write It!" Palermo: The Good, the Bad & the Nutty SUMMER 2023: CALIFORNIA SPRING 2023: SPAIN WANT TO STAY IN THE LOOP? Subscribe to receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] And check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? Enter any destination or topic, such as packing light or road food, in the search box below. If I've written about it, you'll find it. You have to love the impish sense of humor that prompts a train station to fill its waiting room with sturdy wooden benches then labels them, “NON SEDERTI QUI (PLEASE DON’T SIT HERE).” As if any further taunting were needed, this train station — and, coincidentally Rich and I — stood at the base of a mountain that was 3054 feet high and famously difficult to ascend. Naturally the area was utterly devoid of taxis or buses. I could almost feel the mountain chuckling deep in its interior. Its sheer cliffs had defeated countless would-be invaders from the 14th century BC until the invention of artillery and aerial warfare. Had Rich and I met our match? “I am not walking up the mountain,” I mentioned to Rich casually but emphatically, recalling last week’s adventure involving a grueling hike that ended with shimmying through a chain link fence. “Don’t worry. We’ll find a ride,” he said, fiddling with his phone, which inexplicably refused to function. Eventually we joined forces with the two other stranded passengers milling about the station. A cab was summoned, and we drove up to Enna, the highest and most central point of Sicily, affectionately known as its umbelico (belly button). Speaking of bellies, mine was growling to remind me I’d given it nothing but a cookie for lunch on the train. Sadly my hopes of immediate food acquisition were quickly dashed. “Here we eat at eight o’clock, not before, never before,” said my hostess at the cozy B&B in the center of town. I groaned inwardly. It wasn’t even 5 pm yet. “Here are the best restaurants.” She gestured towards business cards in neat stacks on a table. I grabbed a handful, and Rich and I went out to explore the town. We strolled about, enjoying the impressive baroque buildings, the charming old stone houses, the cobbled streets, and the general atmosphere of tidiness and friendliness. Wandering into the Church of St. Claire, I found a sign demanding SILENCE and a docent who spent the next twenty minutes chattering nonstop in Italian. I managed to grasp that this was a shrine to those who died in WWII as a result of bombing by the Allies. Our guys. It was a rather lowering feeling, and I had to resist the impulse to apologize. Emerging into the twilight, Rich and I happened upon one of our hostess’s recommended restaurants, but it was a pizza place so we continued on in search of heartier fare. We hit another of the recommended places. Pizza again. We passed another and another, all pizza parlors. Eventually we found a charming, old-fashioned trattoria with dim lighting and white table cloths. I opened the menu. “Nothing but pizza?!?” I exclaimed. “Where are we — in the Twilight Zone?” An English-speaking waiter took pity and directed me to an eatery offering fish, meat, even (gasp!) vegetables, so in the end we dined well. The next morning at breakfast our hostess told me there was a food festival in the main square. I made a beeline for it. “Are you kidding me?” I exclaimed on arrival. “A pizza competition? Really?” Local chefs were busy pulling pies out of ovens, judges were nibbling, frowning importantly, and pronouncing opinions, and members of the crowd, presumably cronies and bigwigs, were happily receiving the leftover slices. Somehow Rich managed to sneak a hand in and snag one. It was the best pizza I’d ever tasted. The slim, delicate crust was lightly brushed with olive oil and hint of local cheese topped with a sliver of prosciutto and fresh herbs. “Maybe this town is onto something,” I said. I don’t need to tell you pizza is popular. Americans are the world champions, consuming a hefty 28.6 pounds per person per year, with the average Italian downing 17 pounds, about twice as much as other Europeans. By my calculation, Enna’s residents consume their own body weight in pizza every month. I wondered why it was so extraordinarily popular here. Was it a natural outgrowth of Sicily’s long association with Naples, which created modern pizza in the 18th century? Or did the roots go back much, much further? By 400 BC, Enna was the site of the most important sanctuary of the fertility goddess Ceres, who gave us agriculture (and hey, thanks for that, ma’am!) as well as the word “cereal.” Later generations came to know her as Demeter, mother of Persephone, who was abducted by Pluto. No, not Mickey Mouse’s dog, I mean the god of the underworld, aka Hades. Ceres’ ancient temple no longer exists, but her story lives on in Enna’s Museum of Myth, the first entirely multi-media museum in Italy. According to legend, Persephone was carried off from Enna itself, or possibly from the shore of nearby Lake Pergusa. Enraged, Ceres went searching for her daughter in a chariot drawn by snakes. Inexplicably, this detail was left out of the museum’s presentation (possibly due to truth issues). Without Ceres around to oversee the earth’s fertility, the land was devastated; onscreen, the images shifted from waving wheat to scorched earth, interspersed with scenes of hell, which apparently looks like this. Humans begged other gods for help, and eventually Pluto/Hades was persuaded to let Persephone return to the earth’s surface. But he craftily got her to eat six pomegranate seeds to fortify herself for the journey, condemning her to spend six months a year with him. And that’s why we have the seasons. I think it all made a bit more sense a few thousand years ago. My point is that Ceres was pretty hot stuff around Enna for a long time, which suggests one possible explanation for the obsession with grain-based foods. Or maybe it’s just that the residents know a good thing when they taste it. The Museum of Myth, the Rock of Ceres, and the city’s castle occupy the highest, most impregnable part of the mountain. Looking out from the castle tower, you can understand how the original Sicani held it for 1000 years. When attacked, all you’d have to do is stand at the edge and drop rocks; when technology improved, you’d shoot arrows or pour a little boiling oil. Frankly, I don’t know how any invader even got that far. I would imagine that the few soldiers who didn’t die of cardiac arrest or pass out from the heat on the way up sensibly opted to slip away among the trees to wait quietly for events sort themselves out rather than do any serious storming. Throughout its long history, Enna was usually lost through treachery rather than battle. The first to take the castle by force were the Romans, who snuck in through the sewers. You can imagine the pep talk. “Guys, we’re going in at night. It’ll be cooler and no one will see us, so none of those pesky arrows or boiling oil. On the downside…” Enna may not be the easiest place to get to, but it’s worth the effort. If only so you can brag about visiting Sicily’s belly button — and of course, eat some of their legendary pizza. JUST JOINING US? THE NUTTERS' WORLD TOUR SO FAR RIGHT NOW: SICILY Agrigento: "The Devil Made Me Write It!" Palermo: The Good, the Bad & the Nutty SUMMER 2023: CALIFORNIA SPRING 2023: SPAIN WANT TO STAY IN THE LOOP? Subscribe to receive notices when I publish my weekly posts. Just send me an email and I'll take it from there. [email protected] And check out my best selling travel memoirs & guide books here. PLANNING A TRIP? 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