Tutto sta nel cuminciare. Everything depends on the beginning. And so it was that we plucked the first 24 hours out of our first Sicilian summer like ripe berries. We talked the whole way to the airport, accidentally wearing matching blazers, fit more for the Luxembourg Gardens than three am at Stansted airport. Travelling stylishly because it was a girls’ trip and therefore worth it.

After flying over The Alps and the little Papier–mâché villages huddled in the crooks of the mountains, we finally made our way to Trapani (pronounced traa-puh-nee). A red faced taxi driver called Giovanni, in typical fashion, herded us into the backseat of his Renault, asking us about our trip in a broken English that was better than our Italian, but still politely kept apologising for the miscommunication. “You will travel many, many kilometres”, he said in shock when he heard we were going from Palermo in the North, to Catania in the South. He rushed us to a bodega to buy tickets for the bus that was -2 minutes away, and we hurtled towards our first stop, Palermo.

Palermo

Even on 2 hours of sleep, my eyes were rolling at the grassy hills and the countless types of fauna the Sicilian countryside boasted. Poppies, wild carnations, star clovers and ‘frangipani’, a flower famous for symbolising friendship. Even on the side of a highway, the island was stunning.

Rolling our suitcases past Quattro Canti, a square at the heart of the city’s old historic district, we couldn’t help but notice that every corner was beautiful. A certain life bounced off the baroque buildings, excitement ran between alleyways adorned by Madonnelle street shrines and fairy lights. On the inside, our hotel was a stark white, embellished with blue tiles and huge windows. On the outside, it was literally a construction site plastered with scaffolding and protective metal sheets. Oh, but the rooftop made up for it not only because of the 360 degree mountain view but also the hot tub.

Never to waste a day no matter the circumstances, I forced myself to unpack and donned a white sundress painted with small pink rosebuds, my converse, a beaded scarf from India to cover my head like a Madonna, and my trusty cat eyes. We indulged on carbs practically the whole time we were there (let my eyes not fall on a plate of spaghetti for the rest of 2023). Our first purchase was a sandwich filled with aubergine and panelle (crispy little chickpea fritters), which we soon learned were a typical Sicilian street food. As vegans, we couldn’t indulge in arancini or cannoli, but starches we had aplenty.

The days tumbled out before us like slightly wrinkled but freshly sun-bleached laundry. We treated the nights like days and left the house at around 2pm, knowing that our mothers would murder us if they knew we were bending time this way. But we needed time to languor in the movie that was becoming our lives.

After a few random turns we took from memory, we stumbled onto the local market, which was very different from the tourist-friendly ones we saw on the bus ride here. Lemons and oranges tumbled together into towers and I grabbed one of each to taste the real, authentic fruits of Sicily – unprocessed and unbred, they filled our grumbling stomachs at brunch the next day.

“Take, take,” the vendors urged us with their hands to grab one each free of charge while yelling things that would have made us redder than the ‘Pachino’ tomatoes they sold if we could translate their meaning. As we walked down the markets, lifting our long skirts to avoid the fish bones, crustaceans and pools of water, our steps were followed by stares and yells of heavily accented “OH MY GOD”, “mama mia”, “beautiful” and more. Comical yet uncomfortable, even though I realised we had gotten lost, I refused to turn back and face the same the ruddy men, some of who had asked to take a picture with us in that half paternal, half lecherous tone typical of a creepy uncle.

The only way to describe being a woman in the streets of Palermo is through the heavily iconic Tornatore film Malèna and that cigarette scene. We became her, she became us, and we mirrored the long lineage of iconic women who got both their power and their lapsarian ruin from their beauty.

We traipsed around empty palazzos, making jokes about The White Lotus and feeling like aristocrats. Nourished by culture, art and Limoncello Spritz, Palazzo Butera was our first official outing. In the ancient corner of Kalsa, at the heart of Palermo, this Palazzo was an 18th century noble palace overlooking the docks and showcasing a collection curated by Francesca and Massimo Valsecchi. It included contemporary works of art, stunning ancient paintings, monochrome porcelain, faerie like iridescent glass, furniture and English objects from the era of the Industrial Revolution.

In contrast, Palazzo Mirto of day two was somewhat like the Palazzo in The White Lotus – more obviously aristocratic and draped with red velvet wallpaper and original silk, with a few carriages parked in the stable outside. The art inside included some masterpieces made by Velázquez, a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age.

Everything was so grand that, just like the dizziness I felt when I visited The Louvre, I was overwhelmed by art, almost numb. For those few hours, beauty was the standard rather than the silver lining of life. It was one of those moments that immediately feels like a memory, even while you’re still living it. Sometimes it’s better to think of things as already in the past, but this wasn’t one of those times. I tried to stay as present as I could. 

After getting an iced rose cocktail at an art deco inspired lounge, we went to Seven rooftop bar to celebrate Jill’s 25th birthday. It was like we stumbled onto the set of Elite or Gossip Girl, but with much more stillness and zero drama. A chic female DJ in slacks and a pixie cut mixed lofi, dream pop beats and forgettable electronica that were the perfect backing tracks to our swaying hips. “Mr Gorgeous (and Miss Curvaceous)” became the unofficial soundtrack of the trip. The evening felt lucent and we hadn’t even started it yet.

Perfumed by the Sicilian summer, we left the waiters salivating on the wake of our heels as we stepped out into the velvet streets to resume our night. 

The first stop was not very glamorous, but we managed to avoid it. We almost went into a ‘gentlemen’s club’ called ‘Vanity’, but the chauvinistic Google reviews warned us to stay far far away. So we wandered, half aimlessly, towards the sounds of guitars and laughter, ending up at a piazza filled with bars in the crux of a church, the ‘Chiesa di Sant Anna la Misericordia’. In front of the popolo della notte, a group of twenty somethings had gathered around a musician, sharing small bar stools, kissing, spilling drinks and staring, as usual. A young guy with glasses said something to me in Italian. “My friend think you are very pretty,” his friend said, answering my quizzical look. 

We kept walking towards an abandoned alley way simply because we heard music and saw fairy lights in the distance. The bar at the end of the street disappointed, thus we turned the corner and stumbled onto an illegal ‘rave’ where house music blared and the Mexican bartender who kindly gave us free birthday shots blue a whistle like we were at Carnival.

A guy who I originally thought was camp clung onto us and tried to introduce his friend, a drummer who played at the Afrobeats club a couple streets down. As a non-single, I let my friend be wooed by her ‘future Italian husband’, who kept running down the softly lit street to the sound of the Mario Kart theme tune, stopping at obstacles and walking in place. At one point, he stopped by a black and white photograph of a beautiful woman, framed on a corner of some random wall, in typical Sicilian fashion. She was smiling widely with a twinkle in her teeth and shiny blond hair. “Take a picture of me… my wife… she is dead now.” I know she must be some famous Italian actress but I have no idea who.

It felt like a fever dream made even weirder by the police car who leered at our bodycon dresses like we were harlots in the Mussolini era. At least the poster we saw that rhymed ‘Giorgia Meloni’ with ‘Depresioni’ assured us that somewhere around here there was some kind of counter culture to ‘the old world’. It was near some pictures of a circus IT clown half-covered by paintings of The Virgin Mary, but still.

I danced on a table next to some German girls who complimented the butterfly clips in my hair. A random man who looked like James McAvoy in Split poured a drink on the back of my dress because I accidentally touched the top of his bald head with the edge of my wrist. He told the guy standing nearby, thinking he was with me, to ‘control his woman’, or something of that sort, in Sicilian. Everyone around us reassured me he was a crazy man. I had more than enough male egos to deal with for the day so we eventually headed home.

Cefalù

The morning after, we went to Cefalù. It was only an hour away by train but the train times were so unreliable that we got there at 6pm and had to soak up the very last rays of sun. I had watched Eat, Pray, Love before the trip (for obvious reasons, I’m not apologising) and learned the Italian phrase dolce far niente, the sweetness of doing nothing. The West, apparently, knew how to have fun and be entertained, but they didn’t know real pleasure. In Sicily, time slows down and we finally used half a day to press pause on the travelling and indulge in the pleasure of doing much of nothing at all. We could genuinely enjoy the glassy water, skimming our hips for a hundred metres, lazily read books on the beach under the bone white sandcastle homes ornamented with lines of white linen, play mermaids in our minds as the sun set over the horizon. Whatever that feeling was, that lacuna coil of time that made us forget plans, worries, phones, I want more of it.

Interrupted by the chimes of the cathedral signalling 7pm, we ran up the snaking path to the small, pastel coloured train station, only stopping to peer into a panetteria (bakery). A sweet old couple sold us what looked like a piece of bread with tomato sauce on it, but tasted like a cloud.

Italians really do put love into their food, a theme that was omnipresent in From Scratch, a book I was reading about a mother and daughter’s 4 Sicilian summers after the death of the girl’s father. The author, Tembi Locke, recounts how her mother in law’s food “spoke of malleability and resourcefulness in loss, in love, in life. She had learned how to turn subsistence living into abundance.”

“[It was] the repetition of small domestic things that made the big outside world seem somehow petty with endless ambition. A world that held little interest for her, except in the ways that affected her family, the price of bread, or a tax increase on television services.”

From Scratch, Tembi Locke

This reminded me of the women in my mother country, Bulgaria, and their talent for turning a few pieces of cloth and spare ingredients into a table set for royalty. Scrappiness runs in the blood of those who need it. It’s something you can only fully appreciate when you’re not stuck in the rat race of a big city like London.

Back at the hotel, we celebrated our last night on the rooftop, breaking our nails and using our limited practical skills to get the hot tub to work. We texted our host for help and he replied, “if you are taking a bath, I want to be there too.” When he came up, he fixed it with a shy smile and downturned eyes, as we drank from huge wine glasses and tried not to giggle. When we had popped open the sparkling Merlot, fireworks lit the sky and a huge wine puddle pooled at our feet like ruby red blood. We tried to mop it up, then made our way back to the hot tub, shivering.

Catania

The day after, we made our way to Catania. A three and a half hour journey of staring out at those same swells of grass, rock, sea and sand, interrupted only by flocks of sheep and toy tractors. If you ever decide to go to Sicily, make sure you have Lana Del Rey (and especially Norman Fucking Rockwell) downloaded. It’ll make you feel like you’re in a movie, leaving your husband like in While We Were Here, a must watch.

Catania is darker than Palermo, both in weather and in stone. The architecture is bigger and definitely just as beautiful, but the cobblestones are blackened, as if from the ashes of Mount Etna.

To our chagrin, the ‘rustic’ little ‘bed and breakfast’ we had booked was actually a revolting little hostel with no windows anywhere except our room (which had an extra one on the inside wall looking out to the corridor’s fluorescent light, as if to compensate). Both the furniture and bedsheets looked like they had been in our lovely host’s great grandmother’s teenage bedroom. And everything smelled like damp. The towels were torn and may have once been a pale, greyish light blue. The ‘breakfast’ in question had been described as “an abundant selection of brioche buns and fresh fruit served daily”. It was actually a stack of plastic wrapped croissants placed on the only surface in the room, a rusty bedside table (note: rusty, not rustic). There was a sad smell that I couldn’t get out of my clothes for a week after and may have taken years from my life.

The owner seemed to realise this as he hurried (basically commanded) us out of the room and into a nearby coffee shop called ‘Mocha’, because we said we wanted “a mocha”. My limited knowledge of Spanish helped translate some words into Italian and he seemed nice enough, only after he got over the fact we wanted milk in our tea. We barely remembered what our room looked like so were very excited to get back and explore after a leisurely peak into the Basilica Cattedrale di Sant’Agata.

Holding nothing except our phones, we walked past a young skinhead dressed like a ‘roadman’ and looking a bit like a neo-nazi.

“Beautiful girls,” he purred, sounding like every other sleazy Sicilian, so we initially thought nothing of it. I turned to open the door and could see out of the corner of my eye that he was still behind us. There were two sets of doors to get through and an open courtyard in between. He was still tailing our footsteps, repeating his catchphrase a couple of times as I tried to remain calm. “Mmm beautiful girls.” Only one set of stairs to go. Christ, he was walking up behind us, taking them two at a time. I was holding the keys and therefore the responsibility to get us inside safely. My hands were shaking and the rickety door was barely moving.

“Don’t be scared, I live here too,” he said in a nasally German accent. I didn’t know if that was better or worse. Yes, he might not be following us to maim, murder or rape us, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t just maim, murder or rape us in the comfort of the hotel.

Hahaha. We played along. He was here with his mother apparently (we never saw even a glimpse of her). He had a teardrop tattoo under his right eye and a 2010s snapback. He wanted to get drinks soon and asked us what room we were in. I gestured towards a random one, praying it was the wrong number because I genuinely didn’t remember (it was, thank Jesus).

Once inside, we squealed in the ickiest way ever. We were stuck with him for three days! Then we noticed the room. What had originally given cottage core was now giving dungeon, made worse by the fresh memory of this sordid experience. Needless to say, we spent the remainder of our trip avoiding the room and the terrifying shared toilet. Things kept getting worse when we were woken up by someone hacking in the kitchen sink, the owner and his wife screaming “Davide!” repeatedly, heavy snoring which lasted from one am to one pm, and loud Italian arguing at dawn.

We made up for the lack of glamour by seeing what Catania nightlife had to offer. Teen boys on motorcycles filled the bar that offered the cheapest cocktails. We played ‘never have I ever’ with a group of Tunisian girls we met on a park bench, half using Google translate and half practicing my French. We danced to latin songs, jumping around in circles because we felt so high but also to easily escape the grabbing hands of local Catanians, some of who asked me if I’d care for a dance like we were in the fifties. I was also asked to wish ‘happy birthday’ to a shy twenty something with glasses who stared down at the floor. Jill was twerking and waving like a royal in the street as we walked home. A guy then ‘proposed’ to me, getting down on one knee and taking off his bendy gold ring to give to me while his friends cheered and wolf whistled. He pointed at his Palm Angels shirt and took out his phone, proudly showing me the $200 price. “Palm Angels – me, riche.” We ran into the night, almost crying of laughter.

What happened next I will never get over. It was 4am and we arrived in our strange little courtyard, drunkenly making our way upstairs. Then I realised. I was no longer holding that dusty blue blazer with the 90s shoulder pads, the one my mother had given to me, which she had had since we lived in America in the 2000s. I had no choice, I had to go find it.

The last place I remember holding it was the little park next to the bar, so we intuitively walked in a general direction which we ‘felt’ was right, the alcohol in our veins giving us liquid courage and vanishing Google Maps from our brains. A man on a bike yelled “these streets are dangerous for you girls”. If we were sober we would have felt so naked and exposed, especially since our hotel was basically in the Catanian ‘ghetto’.

Finally, I saw the park in the distance. We had done it the old fashioned way. The bench was lit by a single streetlight overhead. I saw nothing, no sign of any vintage clothes.

Just then, a young guy stumbled down the path towards us, materialising as if from behind the bush. My mother’s blazer hung off his lanky frame.

“Hee-e-y,” he said in what sounded like an Australian twang.

“That’s my mom’s jacket,” I said, holding out my hand and beckoning with my fingers for him to hand it over, in a gesture that was meant to come off as sassy.

He took it off like a kid getting scolded by his mommy, and limply placed it in my hand. “Thanks,” I said, and we turned on our heels, leaving him standing there, staring after us in confusion.

Taormina, Siracusa & Trapani

We visited Taormina the day after, our eyes glued to Etna like a magnet. We basically climbed an entire hill wearing sandals and silk dresses to get to the picturesque part of the town where season 2 of The White Lotus was filmed. This was the most popular of all the towns, evident by the many East Coasters in all-white outfits and even whiter teeth. At the top of the Teatro Antico (the Roman amphitheatre with a striking view of the sea), we witnessed an engagement. “Are you honeymooning in the South of France?” “No, in Guatemala” (roaring laughter), we heard in passing with a sideways glance to each other.

The next day was Siracusa (Syracuse), partly because it was raining and we couldn’t make the volcanic island trip, which was number 101 on our loriginal list of things to do. One of the most interesting parts of Sicily is its history, which I’m still trying to read about and understand. Sicily is a land made up of many cultures, as it was once occupied by North African, Arabian and Norman rulers as well as the ancient Greek and Roman civilisations. This smorgasbord of cultures was reflected in the architecture of Siracusa, which reminded me of Athens but also had an interesting Church with a rounded, mosque-like dome (that was also perhaps a bit like St. Basil’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral, called Svyatoy Vasily Blazhenny, in Moscow).

While we were waiting for the train back to the Northern part of Sicily, Jill spotted two white butterflies dancing together, playfully spinning as they rose higher and higher above the empty track. “I wonder what they symbolise,” she murmured, typing it into the magical globe of Google. It turns out they represented transformation, which she had talked about on the plane ride here (“maybe I’ll realise things on this trip”). In travelling farther and laughing harder than we ever had together, we had come closer and experienced a joint metamorphosis, like those pure little dancing butterflies that reminded us of girlhood. Like the ‘frangipani’ flowers that laced the sides of the roads, we walked in evergreen friendship.

We finished our trip in an airbnb near Trapani, the town where Malena was actually filmed. By the time we got there, we were craving a clean place to lay our heads. The surroundings were desolate and no one was around, except a few kids playing in the street.

The next day, we called Giovanni, our taxi driver from day one. He yelled at us until his face turned a worrying shade of rosé because we were five minutes late, and Jill even had to put her shoes on in the car. So much for being a cutie.

We made it to the airport and celebrated with one final glass of freshly squeezed orange juice (although the people pleaser in me couldn’t get over being yelled at like that). The teal water expanded in front of my eyes as the plane soared upwards, soon to be replaced with the English countryside as we approached home.

…

Sicily is the rain in a drought after being in London for too long. The nature is cinematic, the cities are vibrant, the food is delectable and the people are genuine. As a beautiful woman, I became Malèna Scordia for a week and survived off carbs and lemon water while trying to stave off carnivorous men with a sort of violent ignorance, partly because I had no idea what they were saying 90% of the time. Even though I’ve technically ticked Sicily off my list, nothing can stop me from venturing back to the land of smiling sunshine, Moor’s heads and Limoncello.