new year's eve

On New Year's Eve 2001 I was in Siracusa (Syracuse), Sicily, with my then-boyfriend M. I remember the next day the euro officially debuted. Sicily was not my favorite place but I would probably go back just for the food.


From the home page I kept at the time:

... A very ancient city indeed. In those days it [Siracusa] was generally limited to the island of Ortygia (which is only about 300 feet away from the mainland), and Ortygia is where we generally looked around, the rest of Siracusa being generally modern and uninteresting. One very odd highlight, if you can call it that, of the modern part is a very strange church built around a statue of the Madonna that was said to weep. Hence the building is supposed to resemble a tear. It’s just ugly, like a big evangelical church you’d see on the side of the highway in Kansas or something.

Ortygia itself is not that big. Almost all of the buildings date from after 1693, when there was a devastating earthquake. Giovanni Lanza took the opportunity to refit the entire city in the Baroque style, again not my favorite. But there were plenty of winding narrow streets, lovely decrepit buildings, and of course, great views of the Ionian sea. The first day there, while meandering through we stumbled on quite a good restaurant that wasn’t in any of our books, but we noticed a Slow Food sticker on the door, so we decided to go off the book for once. Mike had some really excellent shrimp, like nothing I’ve ever tasted. They were barely cooked and quite sweet. I had some sort of tiny fish fried that look like extremely small transparent squid or something. Everything was fresh fresh fresh needless to say.

That first day we also noticed a man selling raw sea urchins in one of the piazzas. You can just eat them raw right there. I really wish we had bought some then, but we weren’t in the mood—it was a bit early—and we thought we’d see him again. But we never did! I think sea urchins may be overfished around there—and he did have sort of a shifty look about him. We also had some great fruit juices—I had some good lemon juice and another day we got fresh squeezed orange juice, with blood oranges. Another day we stopped at an alimentari by the daily market and picked out some cheese and salami. Then we asked the guy about bread, and he gave us some really great stuff, spicy and with bits of olives in it. I wish I knew the name of it. One night we were too stuffed to eat a big dinner, so we just stopped at a panino hut, which seemed to be very popular. They had all types of sandwiches, including…horse meat! So of course M. had to get it. It was tasty—like beef only more so. But I just kept thinking of poor Mr. Ed.

We were in Siracusa for New Year’s Eve. For some reason I felt like we had to go to dinner, so we made a reservation at a nice place. Of course we ended up not being hungry at all, and we were facing a 7-course meal. It was not even that wonderful. At midnight they gave us a bottle of sparkling wine. I didn't really want to be inside the restaurant at midnight, but there was no way we could leave with the bottle without looking like jerks, so we stayed. Afterward we just walked around for a bit, watching drunk people and trying to avoid fireworks set off in the street. Then we went home and tried to ignore the huge patches of mold on the wall of our room. Happy 2002!

For me, I hope 2010 brings a lot more travel, to Italy and elsewhere! May the New Year be joyful and prosperous for you and yours.