There are festivals all the time here. As I have said before every town has a saint and every saint has day on the calendar that is theirs, so there is always a festival. In addition the Sicilians also have festivals for seafood and agricultural harvests that can keep you plenty busy on the weekends. The newspaper at the base does articles on the festivals on the island each week so we can keep up to date with ideas.
We went to a Ricotta Festival about an hour and a half from us in Vizzini. It was quite a big to do with booths selling everything under the sun, bands and of course many ricotta products. Ricotta is made from sheep or cows milk and comes from a byproduct of the regular process of making cheese- Ricotta is made from the liquid separated from the curds in the process. In Vizzini one could have the freshest Ricotta you could imagine. Part of the festival is the on going process of making the cheese in pots cooking over wood fires. The cheese is made in huge cauldrons and for a Euro you can have them take some right out of the pot it right on your plate when it’s still hot. We tried some of the fresh ricotta, a couple of ricotta delicacies that were offered and bought two pails full to take home.
A couple of weeks later Derrick went with us to the flower festival in Noto. Noto in itself is a pretty impressive town. Noto has had notable visitors such as Cicero, Pliny, Dedalus and Hercules was supposed to have been here after completing his seventh task. However in January of 1693, an earthquake destroyed the entire town. As tragic as this event was, the reconstruction project that followed is what has made a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Giuseppe Lanza, a Sicilian aristocrat jumped at the opportunity to build the town from the ground up. His plan was to enlist the help of the greatest architects of the time (Vincenzo Sinatra, Paulo Labisi and Rosario Gagliardi) to create an entirely new city. His vision created a town designed on a grid and done entirely in the Baroque style.
As a person who may not usually be too excited to go to a flower festival I have to admit this was pretty neat. Basically they shut down an entire street and created pictures out of flowers. Many of the pictures have religious or historical meaning, but some of them were created just to be works of art. There were many people there to admire the flowers, but it was worth the wait.After Noto we headed to one of the premier beaches in Sicily, Fontana Bianca. We met up with James and Isabella there and spent the rest of the day body surfing and enjoying the Sicilian Sun.
