Christmas in Angers

It’s that time of the year, yes, Christmas time! Last year, me and Mathilde spent Christmas apart, so we decided we would definitely spend it together this time. So Angers it was then, this time. We decided to drive via Montpellier and Auvergne this time, since we quite like the motorway, A75, that goes up from Montpellier to Clermont-Ferrand. And best of all, it’s cheaper, and there’s less traffic. We spent the first night in Monptellier, which is a nice enough city we’ve stopped over at before. Our hotel was a bit outside the time centre, and a French movie “classic” (Rien à declarer) was on later on Canal+, so we decided on a quick dinner at a local eatery recommended by the nice lady at the reception. And it was a very good choice indeed, a pity we had to rush back for the movie. But hey, what could possible beat Dany Boon and Benoit Poelvoorde (of “Man bites dog” fame) playing out French/Belgian clichés?

The next day, we carried on, making a stopover in La Couvertoirade, a rather well-known fortified town (apparently?) just off the motorway. This little gem of a village dates back all the way to the 11th century, and was at one point owned by the Knight’s Templars. It’s certainly one of the most picteresque villages I’ve been to in France. Judging by all the shops, the place must be a bit of a tourist trap in the summer, but this time around, there was hardly a soul in sight (tourist or local). Perhaps due to the icy winterly wind ? Be that as it may, it was pretty much the perfect little stop-over on our trip.

The rest of the trip was eventless, as we took in the nice landscapes of Auvergne. We arrived in Angers pretty late, but well in time for dinner (that’s the main thing, right? :) ). We celebrated Christmas Eve in a rather quiet manner, just us, Joel, Francoise, Marcelle and Herquise – the food was fabulous though, as always (foie gras, some wild boar, and of course a Bûche de Noël to round off the meal.




On Christmas day, we were having more guests over, Francoise’s children and grand-children, namely, as well as Magali's parents. As tradition would have it, I spent the morning opening up oysters – I must be getting quite good at it by now one would’ve thought? The christmas lunch was, as always, fabulous again. All the children brought a bit of liveliness to the proceedings as well. Later on, we picked up Mathilde’s niece Alix at the train station, who came to Angers for a few days. And, then of course, came the time for the pressies, yippee! But, best of all, it was just really nice to spend some “family time” together, eat good food, and just relax!

On Monday, it was all about relaxing, and eating the left-overs from the previous days’ feasts – something I rather excel at ;-). We also did our traditional “round the lac de Maine” jogging with Mathilde – in rather freezing and foggy conditions (but boy did it make for good photography, just look at the picture here).





For lunch, we headed to Le Mans, to pay a visit to Mathilde’s aunt Danielle (& her husband Francis) as well as her granddad. As expected, Dani had prepared quite a feast for us (and yes, I was opening oysters again!). Two of Mathilde’s cousins also made a surprise visit, which was pretty cool.



The next day, Mathilde's nephews, Paul and Lucas (energetic as always) and little Sihem (cute as always), joined the frey together with their grandmum. We spent a very exciting, and tiring day with them.




In the evening, as a kind of climax for our trip to the west of France, we’d been invited over to Corinne for a party with Mathilde’s friends from her days in Angers. Most of the usual suspects were there, and a few surprise ones: Aude, Magaye, Aldo, Dorine, Marion, Delphine & Christophe. It was all a very good night out, I had a good time hanging out with the other lads (Aldo, Magaye and Christophe). Especially good to catch up with Aldo (who was a great tour guide to us in Arequipa during our visit to Peru, quite a few years back), it’s been quite a while since the last time we met up, in Paris. Big thanks to Corinne for organising a great bash!

The next day, it was time to head back towards the Cote d’Azur. We spent the night in Montelimar, another nice, historic town, located in the Drome (kind of “at the gates of Provence”) department. Montelimar is mostly known for its nougat. We had time for a quick walk around the old town, before having dinner in a nice-looking little bar/restaurant.

From Montelimar, it was an easy 3 hour-drive up to Cagnes, where we had a few hours to repack our bags, before heading to Istanbul for new year!

Dining and lunching with friends and famliy

Christmas is approaching – which often for us means meeting up with friends for a last meal of the year type of thing.

Our martathon of meals started with a visit from Mathilde’s uncle, Didier, who had made his way all the way to the Cote d’Azur from the distante Mayenne department, to visit some friends. Naturally we invited him over for dinner. Mathilde prepared a “Petit salé aux lentilles”, one of those hearty, simple, yet so good French dishes. The meal was accompanied by a nice Piedmont red wine – so can’t really go wrong with that then. Good to catch up with Uncle Didi as well – who seems to be enjoying his little stay on the Riviera.

The next evening, we had rendez-vous with our good friend Youcef in Nice. We picked a nice little wine-bar/restaurant near Rue Massena, Le Cave d’Origine, for the occasion. It was a rather good choice – the food was really excellent. I had some pata negra – really succulent stuff. They had some good wines too – but unfortunately getting served proved a bit of a challenge since the wine service is handled by one guy, and the place was very busy indeed. But anyways, it was a very good restaurant indeed, and a nice night out!

On Thursday, it was time to have Hyem over for lunch. I haven’t seen her since her brilliant birthday party a couple of months ago (I can still remember her belly-dancing show!), so it was good to see her again.

School reunion in the Var

Our dear friends Valerie and Gilles, and their kids Celian and Hector, left us for sunny California a few months ago. They were back in France just now, staying a Gilles’ mum’s place in Mons, in the Var. So we decided to pay them a visit this Monday evening, together with some other ex-colleagues of Gilles and Valerie’s.

Since I was working that day, I decided to make my way there together with Maite. I left early, to give myself time to find the place. Good thing, too, since finding the place turned out to be a bit of an adventure. To cut a long story short(ish), I hit the road without any address or driving instructions. I figured Maite could call somebody on the way. Good idea, in theory, except it turns out that the mobile phone coverage isn’t very good over there. Anyway, to finish off the short(ish) story; rather a few wrong turns and successful and failed phone calls later, we eventually found the obscure dirt track that lead to the house (which was very picturesque I’m sure – unfortunately I didn’t see it in daylight).

The soiree itself was of course great. It was great to see our exiled friends again, as well as Mathilde’s other colleagues. Not surprisingly, Gilles and Valerie have had a very eventful 6 months in the US (things always seems to happen to them?), and despite some of the difficulties they’ve encountered they seem to enjoy life in sunny California. They had quite interesting things to tell about life in California… As always in France, we ate well, drank well, and had a great evening all in all!

We’re definitely looking forward to seeing our dear overseas friends in California next April! :-)

Scandinavian christmas lunch

Christmas is approaching – which means meeting up with friends for Christmas meals. We’d scheduled one for this lovely, sunny Saturday with Henna and Aki (unfortunately, Mikko and Marianne couldn’t make it). Henna and Aki suggested we do it at Fjord, in the port of Nice, and a good idea it was.



The weather was about as good as it gets on the Cote d’Azur this time of the year, which was rather nice after 10 days of Finnish darkness… This being the case, we decided it was definitely the perfect day to cycle into Nice on the Velo Bleu. It was just the perfect day for cycling – the weather was just about warm enough for me to cycle in a tee-shirt. And the ride along the Promenade down to the port is pretty superb…





Fjord is a Scandinavian delicatessen/restaurant run by a Swedish lady and her Nicois husband (who, funnily enough, speaks Swedish with a Skåne accent!). The place is very nice too, serving authentic Scandinavian fare – and at surprisingly reasonable prices as well. I went for the Christmas platter (all the classics were present – including some fishy ones I’m less fond of), and we finished off with a couple of shots of akvavit. A great little lunch session with friends then.


Naturally, we had to do a bit of shopping in the delicatessen as well. Unfortunately, there were no Finnish specialties to be had apart from Lapin Kulta (a pretty poor Finnish beer) – apparently it’s very difficult to import Finnish products to France – has to be done through the other Scandinavian countries… So we had to content ourselves with some Swedish “pepparkakor”.

Finland, Finland, Finland...

After our wonderful weekend in Oxford, ‘twas time for me to continue my European Odyssey – the next stop was Finland, where I had about 10 days of hard work (and a bit of seeing friends and family as well, naturally) to look forward to. Thankfully that hard work was carried out at the Ruoholahti office, just down the road from my parents’ flat at Fredrikinkatu. Thing didn’t start very well, as somebody grabbed my bag at the airport by accident (thankfully, his mobile number was on his bag, so I was able to get it back quickly).

This week could be quite well summarized by that famous expression “work hard-play hard”. The play hard bit started on our first day actually, on Monday. Things started off by us Finns (me and Olli) taking our foreign guests (David, Leif and Tony) to Savotta for a proper Finnish meal. Savotta is a very typical Finnish restaurant in the sense that they do serve Finnish dishes (like reindeer, bear, elk) - but also in the sense that it’s really expensive and the service is rather morose… Well, it was pretty entertaining in an Aki Kaurismaki way (the morose service), and I did get to try bear (I was a bit disappointed though – 42 Euros for minced meat and cabbage is a bit much – even if the minced meat is bear).

We carried on to a real Helsinki institution – Zetor. It’s a place where no self-respecting chic Helsinki person would be seen dead (the main attraction of the place is a tractor by the entrance), but it’s a place foreign visitors of Helsinki simply must see. Anyway, we had a great night out there – especially David who I believe didn’t pay for many of his drinks that night (I couldn’t believe my eyes when three Finnish guys – who all at least seemed very much heterosexual – actually bought drinks to another bloke!). In spite of his bold statements to the contrary when we entered the bar, David ended up on posing on the tractor!

After a relatively civilized Tuesday (it was, after all, the Finnish national day), we decided it was time for a proper night out on Wednesday night. We were joined by a few more guys this time (Dmytro, Gunther, Frank and Jocke), things kicked off in Cantina West. After a rather typical Tex-Mex meal, things picked up in pace at Kajsla, when we decided to give our foreign friends a bit of a “quick tour” about Finnish shots. We tried “Fisu”, “Kossu”, “Finski”, “Leijona”, “Fish”, “Jallu”, and of course the legendary “Salmari”. The waitress was very much impressed by our exploits. We continued the fun at Molly Malone’s, another Helsinki institution (THE Irish pub in Helsinki). It was all like a bit of a flashback from my youth – with one upside (this time I actually one at Blackjack!). We finished off the night at a snagare, where else (snagare is a Finnish snack shack where drunken Finns buy unhealthy fast food – it’s a place of many an interesting encounter). I have to admit that the next day at the office was rather difficult…

Thankfully, things were civilized on Thursday, I headed over to my brother Janne’s and Katja’s place for an evening of board game play, my cousin Rasse also joined. Great to catch up with everybody – and best of all I won ;-)

On Friday, after a day of Finnish winter at our Tampere office, I was supposed to just have a couple of quiet drinks with my good friend Jani. It all went quite well, we were planning to call it a night, until my cousin Rasse turned up with some friends. Needless to say, it meant a rather extended night out at Praha bar, and me getting back home rather late, again.

Saturday was Sauna ilta time, as Jani had invited us over to his place at Vantaa. The usual suspects, that is Aki, Riku and Janne showed up. It was a rather special occasion since both Aki and Riku will rather shortly become fathers (which means, in spite of the brothers’ assurance to the contrary, that there will be considerably less “hanging out with the boys” in the future – mind you I don’t get to do much of that anyway; living in France). Anyway, it was a pretty typical Finnish Sauna session, involving (in addition to the sauna) a fair few beers, serious brooding male bonding and of wathing Jean-Claude Van Damme of course! (I get the feeling, as the muscles from Brussels must feel, that I’m getting to old for this stuff…). I finished the evening in Gallow’s Bird (the best Irish pub, or in fact best pub of any kind in Espoo – which isn’t saying much, actually) with Aki and Janne.

Sunday it was time for the Turtiainen clan to assemble – the chosen venue was Ravintola Perho, which is the restaurant of the Helsinki restaurateur school, where my niece Julia works. We had a pretty good turned up; with my parents (who had gotten back from Antibes the day before), Janne & Katja, Maikki & Jarkko, Tomi & Leena as well as Julia, Sofia and Nanna all present. The food at Perho was actually very good (of course since we followed Julia’s excellent advice), it was definitely the best meal I’d had so far on this trip! We carried on at my parent’s place at Freda. Great to catch up with everybody again.

My trip was nicely summed up with a sauna evening with my brothers Janne and Tomi on Monday. All in all, it was a very intensive week, both work- and otherwise. It was really great to catch up with everybody again, especially since I won’t make it to Finland this Christmas, unfortunately. It was, as always, too quick… A pity about the typically miserable southern Finnish December weather (dark, wet, no snow – the worst) – well at least I saw a bit of snow in Tampere.

Nick's big party!

After my week in Ulm, ‘twas time to head straight to lovely old England. The occasion was rather important, our good friend Nick was turning 50 years old, and was organizing a party at his sister’s country house near Oxford. I met up with Mathilde, Olivier and Rapha at Heathrow, from where we made our way to Oxford our rental car. Upon arrival, we started by hecking into our “very English bed and breakfast”. By this I mean our room was very cute, but naturally had no heating, and the double glazing that did nothing to keep the cold out – it’s not as if though there’s any need for such things in December, right?

Having checked in, we made our way into town (as always, we were most impressed with the shortnerss of the skirts the English ladies were wearing), where we met up with Philppe and Aniko for dinner in a proper English pub. We were well into the Christmas season, we were also treated to Christmas crackers and the bad jokes that go with them. All in all, an excellent start to the weekend!

After a reassuringly greasy traditional English breakfast, we made our way to explore Oxford. Actually, the exploration turned out to be mostly running back and forth along the streets of Oxford, trying to meet up with everybody (we were joined by Nathalie and Patrick), doing shopping, paying for the parking (the parking meter was far too complex for me and Ollie to figure out – and we’re after all engineers!) and trying to find a place for lunch. We ended up lunching in a nice enough restaurant on the Thames – even though the place was a bit too trendy for my taste (they had organic cider, for god’s sake!).

In the afternoon we found a bit more time to explore the touristy side of Oxford – it has to be said it’s a rather lovely city. We visited Christchurch College (colleges in Oxford are self-governing organizations within the university, and offer accommodation for students, but also heavily contribute to the education) – probably the most famous of the 36 colleges of Oxford University. We were especially impressed with the Hall – which will be familiar to people who have seen the Harry Potter films or read Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carol was one of the many famous residents at Christ Church). Christ Church also houses the cathedral of the university – a most impressive edifice also.

Enough with the touristy stuff then – we had a rendez-vous at the pub, where we met up with some more party arrivals (Winston and Weng, arriving from Coventry; Sinhung from Fleet, Richard from Barcelone; Flore and Christian from France and Nick of course!). It was a most happy reunion, especially great to catch up with Winston, Weng and Richard, whom we’ve not seen for a while.

Then it was time to head to the party venue, tucked away in the Cotswolds, not far from Oxford (the Cotswolds are, I suppose, what one could call English countryside at its cutest – a really lovely part of the country). So well tucked away the place was that It was an absolutely miracle we found the place at all (forget about GPS’es here…), basically we randomly followed a car which happened was also going to the party!

The party was absolutely fantastic. The venue was amazing - a proper English country house with a modern touch, in the loveliest of settings. The party was great, of course. There was a great mix of people at the party – for us “ex-pat friends” it was a great reunion; of course. But it was great to get to know Nick’s family as well – and to see his mum again. Things kicked off in relatively civilized fashion with some initial socializing and some Indian food for dinner. We then continued by sending off some Chinese sky lanterns (and setting some on fire!). Great fun – something I’ve never tried before in my life.

After the fun with the sky lanterns, things degenerated predicatively (in the positive sense of the expression, of course!) as the booze flowed. One by one, the party goers had enough and went to bed – until only me, Nick, Richard, Philippe, Nick’s sister and childhood friend were standing. That’s when we were treated to childhood stories about Nick (something about an overturned car and stuff, it’s all a bit hazy unfortunately!). All in all, a great party then!

The next day, people were obviously a bit low on energy after the previous night’s activities, but we did get to appreciate the lovely country house and the surroundings in its full splendor. For lunch, the plan was to have a proper English pub lunch at the Falkland Arms. Unfortunately, we were in a hurry to catch our flight, but decided we could not pass on the chance for yet one more pint.

Good thing we decided to check out the pub, since it’s located in an unbelievably picturesque Cotswolds village called Great Tew. It reminded me of Hobbiton in the Lord of the Rings films. The pub itself was exactly what an English country pub should be like; cozy, with creaky tables, serving overcooked English food (oh well, that bit’s not mandatory) and most importantly, offering a good selection of real ales to its customers.

That was pretty much the perfect way to end a brilliant weekend in the UK! Almost made me want to move back… Next, it was time for Mathilde to head back to France, and for me to carry on to Finland.

A few days in Ulm

After a couple of months without business trips, it was time for me to spend some time with my dear colleagues in Ulm. This time of the year is quite a good time to go, actually, due to the great German tradition of Christmas markets.

So as a nice start for my trip, my team met up at the Christmas market on Monday evening (the Ulm chrsitmas market is rather nicely located on the square in front of Ulm Munster – the imposing cathedral). Thomas, my boss, was kind enough to buy drinks for everybody ;-). It was also a good opportunity to meet up with the new members of my team – Olli and Jose. My old mate David from Southwood was also there – he’s in Ulm on a three-month contract. It was all good fun – we tried quite a few versions of Glühwein, accompanied by some giant hot dogs for dinner. Afterwards, we ended up in Barfuser (where else,) for a few hefeweisses…

Tuesday night was a bit less intense – I went to John Benton’s with Jose and David to have those legendary John Benton ribs – even I struggle with those! Afterwards, me and Jose went for “one beer” (as the somewhat inaccurate expression goes)… By Wednesday evening, I was seriously in need of a quiet night, so I just had dinner with David in the Ratkeller (which is located in the historic town hall – unfortunately the food was a bit disappointing).

On Thursday night, I decided to head to Barfuser again – it is really getting to be a bit of a regular hang-out. I started out with a couple pints of hefeweisses with Jose (a hardy team-mate of mine). Later we were joined by my good friend Sami, who was on good beer-drinking form after some initial threats about drinking coke or water, or something absurd among those lines. Good to catch up with him as well.

That brought an end to my hectic week in Ulm. On Friday, ‘twas time to catch the train to Stuttgart, from where I continued my trans-European adventure to England…

A nice afternoon in Nice

I have quite a few trips ahead of me, so we decided to head into Nice to enjoy the sun for a bit. It’s been a while since we’ve met up with Aki and Henna, so we agreed to meet up with them for lunch at Place Garibaldi. Due to the unsuitable train schedule (or normal mode of transport when heading into Nice), we jumped on the bus instead, which took us into Nice unexpectedly quickly.

We met up at a nice out-doors eatery on Place Garibaldi, with a table in the sun. We were once again reminded of how lucky we are to live where we live – having delicious pizza and salad, sitting outdoors in a tee-shirt at the end of November. Good to catch up with Aki and Henna as well – Aki was just on his way to play at a concert at Acropolis.

Naim joined us later for a coffee and ice cream, and a walk around Nice. We ended up visiting the museum of photography as well (a nice little museum, which is free to boot), where we checked out a nice exhibition of “abstract photography”. Modern art is not always my cup of tea, but this exhibition was pretty cool.

All in all, a pretty nice way of spending a warm late-autumn afternoon, then!

Pranzare al Giardino!

As frequent readers of this blog are well aware, me and Mathilde are rather avid fans of Italy. One of the reasons I love about Italy is the food. It’s different from French cuisine – Italian tends to be less sophisticated than French food, but in this case, simple does not equal bad.

One of our favourite restaurants in Italy is Il Giardino, in the picturesque village of Vallebona, just after Ventimiglia in Liguria (so just an hour’s drive from Cagnes). It’s a rather simple place, without any fancy interior design, but damn is the food good there. The concept is rather simple: you show up, pay 30 euros, and eat and drink for about 3 hours. 11 antipasti, 4 plates of pasta, 3 plates of different meats, and up to three desserts should ensure you don’t leave the place hungry ;-). It’s a bit like grand mum’s food; simple, unsophisticated, but VERY tasty.

This time around, we went with Mikko, Marianne and Naim. I think it’s fair to say that everybody very much enjoyed the experience (even Naim, who unfortunately couldn’t try all the dishes since rather a few of them contained pork – but he actually seemed a bit relieved about that). I think it’s also fair to say we shall certainly be back – perhaps with Aki and Henna next time(who had to give is a miss this time) ?

We finished off our Italian afternoon with some grocery shopping in Latte, just on the Italian side of the border. Good opportunity to stock up on the prosciutto, formaggio and wines, among other things… And of course, Christmas is approaching, so we naturally purchased a panettone!

Mont Bastide hike

It’s been a while since our last proper hike (my last one was with Andy, back in September). So since the weather was back to its sunny normal this Sunday, we figured it was the perfect opportunity to have a walk. We picked a walk Mathilde had already done with her dad and Francoise, near Eze.

After catching the down to Eze, we trekked up the footpath, called Nietzsche’s walk actually (he didn’t pioneer the walk or anything – but apparently he was quite an avid hiker and liked this hike in particular). I suppose it’s changed a fair bit since Friedrich’s time – I suppose a lot of those villas we walked by didn’t exist in his day.

But it’s certainly a very nice walk, suitably steep, and offering some pretty stunning views over the coastline. We took the opportunity to walk around Eze for a bit. It’s a very stunningly located village, perched as it is on its hilltop, but we find it a bit touristy for our taste (although it’s more the “Saint-Paul de Vence type” of tourism with art shops and the like, rather than your “Saint-Tropez type” of tourism (with tacky post cards etc.). Anyway, on this particular warm day, we found it a rather pleasant place to stroll around. We found a cute little square with a nice fountain.

From Eze, we carried on up to Mont Bastide, from where we had yet more stunning views towards Eze and the rest of the coastline. Weather like we had on this day is really perfect for hiking – this time of the year the sky can really be crystal-clear, and the sea really Azure-blue. In short, magic.

The descent was pretty easy going, and we made it back to the train station about 1 hour ahead of schedule! Damn we’re sporty. Pretty much a perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon, I would say!

Dinner with the parents

Mum and dad were coming back to the Sunny Riviera after a few weeks in Finland. So we figured a nice way to welcome them back would be to invite them over for dinner. So, straight from the airport to Cagnes it was then. We had prepared a rather nice menu for them: a little salmon and avocado “amuse-bouche”, followed by some parmantier de confit de canard, with a Tiramisu to finish off the meal. The soiree kicked off nicely with some Glögg (Swedish for mulled wine) – Christmas is after all approaching, right? ;)

All in all, it was great to see the oldies again, it’s been a while. They sure picked the right moment to come back, the weather had just gotten back to normal after some pretty uncharacteristic storms and rainfall over the last couple of weeks… They’ve had a pretty tiring few months back in Finland with all their construction projects (planned and unplanned). Anyway, nice to have them back here in the warm south!

Hockey night in Nice

On this particularly rainy Saturday night, I decided to join Aki and Mikko I Nice for a bit of ice hockey action. The Nice Eagles were matching up against Reims, who are leading the league (or 1st division, rather). I joined Mikko (beer in hand already), just in time for the 1st face off. Aki joined us a bit later.

It was all rather entertaining actually, as sports spectacles go. To be sure, the level of play isn’t much to write home about, it’s not exactly NHL-standard play. A lot of mistakes are made, and there is basically no physical contact. But all the same, it’s quite entertaining.

Especially since we had two real experts at hand to give us all the insights of Nice ice hockey – Mikko (who plays in the amateur team), and his coach mister Juha Rantasila (who is a real legend of Finnish ice hockey – the award for the best defenseman of the Finnish top league is named after him). Nice did pretty well, slaughtering Reims 8-1 or something like that, and the Finns playing in the team did very well as well (recruited by Mr. Rantasila).

After the game, we joined up at the Darlington, a “Finnish restaurant” (the chef is Finnish – or I suppose he’s lived in France long enough to qualify as half-French), where we had a rather nice (and long) meal. Nice to meet a few more “Riviera Finns” as well.

A soiree with the profs'

November is, along with May, a very nice month public-holiday wise in France. Today was one of those days off. We weren’t up to anything particularly energetic, since we’d only just gotten back from Siciliy, but we did manage to muster up the energy to meet up with Stephane and Sandra (and Cleglia & Tristan as well, naturally!) for breakfast by the sea. The weather was still bright ‘n sunny, and it was great catching up with our friends again – it’s been a while.


For the evening, we’d decided to invite some of Mathilde’s colleagues from CIV over to Cagnes-sur-Mer for dinner, since it’s been a while since we’ve met up with them as well. We were joined by Claire, Antoine and their lovely children, as well as Aurlien, Julie and Stephane. It was a very nice and lively soiree all in all, great to catch up with everybody again. A pity some of the gang has moved across the Atlantic, but hey that’s life I suppose…

Back to Trapani via the south

From Palermo, the road took us next towards Agrigento. On the way, we just had to stop at a little village called Corleone. The place is well-known as the birthplace of several well-known mafia bosses, including one rather famous fictional one known as Vito Corleone (enough said!). The village is also known for its numerous churches, and its historical heritage. We saw more of those than mafia bosses (fortunately, I suppose?), but I suppose more than anything else, Corleone still feels very much Sicilian (one could easily imagine now the place could make the most of its “Godfather connection” – thankfully that hasn’t happened yet).



After our brief “organized crime detour , we continued towards Agrigento, taking in some pretty impressive mountain scenery (we were surprised how green Sicily is – we were expecting much more arid landscapes). Agrigento is fore and foremost known for its collection of Greek temples located in the valley of temples. Due to our somewhat tight schedule, we headed there straight away, before going to our hotel, even. The valley is actually a somewhat confusing name, since the temples are actually located on a ridge, rather than in a valley.

Like Segesta, the Greeks chose a pretty stunning setting for their temples here at Agrigento, overlooking as they do the surrounding lush scenery, and the sea. I think I was even more awestruck by the temples here at Agrigento, than at Segesta. The most impressive temples are the Temple of Juno, at one end of the valley, and the extremely well-preserved Temple of Concordia (the reason it’s so well-preserved is that it actually served as a church for some time). There is also the huge Temple of Zeus, which was apparently the largest Doric temple ever built – but very little remains of it (save for a very impressive pile of rubble). The collection of temples was nicely complemented by a sculpture exhibition.

Our hotel was located by the sea-side, and we actually had some pretty nice weather to go with the view this time. But by the time we got back to the hotel, it was almost time for dinner (which we enjoyed in a very nice restaurant indeed, not located far from the valley of the temples).

The next day, we didn’t linger for long, but drove onwards towards Selinunte in the west, where we were spending our last night in Sicily (sniff). Our first stop was at the Scala dei Turchi, at Realmonte (just west of Agrigento). It’s a rather impressive formation of white cliffs – quite reminiscent of the landscapes in Dorset, at the Jurassic coast. After admiring this rather stunning natural phenomenon, we carried on towards Selinunte.

We made another brief stop at Sciacca, a rather pleasant and peaceful town pretty much slam-bang between Agrigento and Selinunte. We really liked the place, it had a quite calm feel to it (nice change after Palermo), and a leisurely pace of life. So very Italian… I spotted a nice barber shop with an old barber chatting to his old mates, and decided it was the perfect place to get my hair cut, and practice my Italian. And I was not to be disappointed, not only did I get a cheap haircut, I also did get to practice my Italian and even got a slight insight into local politics ;-) (apparently, in Sicily you have to choose between the “evil communist bureaucracy” or the “evil mafia” – I wasn’t quite sure which evil they considered the greater one).

One haircut later, we carried on towards our final destination of the day, Selinunte. Selinunte is yet another former Greek colony, and yes they have some darn impressive Greek ruins as well. And yes, they are also rather stunningly located on a hill, overlooking some great scenery and the sea. I’m running out of superlatives. So again, it was all about temples, with an acropolis to check out this time as well. I have to admit that I was more impressed by Segesta and Agrigento, though, than Selinunte (or perhaps we had simply reached our saturation point?). But still, it’s not like I’m complaining or anything.

After my obligatory quick swim in the ‘Med (the water wasn’t actually very cold at all, but the big waves put me off a little bit), we made our way to our hotel – appropriately named the temple of Hera ;). We finished the day with yet another great dinner, in a nice old town located next-doors to Selinunte (the modern parts of Selinunte isn’t very appealing). I have to say, that Sicily would be worth a week’s holiday just for the food!

And then it was time to head back to Trapani, to catch our flight back the mainland. We did have a few hours at our hands, so we decided to make a stop-over at Marsala, famous for its sweet wine. It’s a very nice little town as well, with a rather prosperous feel to it (at times, it felt almost like Northern Italy). We spent a leisurely couple of hours walking around the place, having a coffee, enjoying the sun (after a few days of very dodgy weather, the last few days had been great, thankfully) and just taking in the atmosphere.

After Marsala, we still had time to visit the Stagnone, a big, very beautiful area known for its salt works and windmills. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to properly appreciate the area, time to catch the flight and all that.

All in all, we spent a fantastic and fascinating week, and we will surely come back to Sicily. There is so much to see still, it felt like we’ve only scratched the surface…