Normal service will be resumed shortly
I am spending the next few days in Palermo, Pantelleria and Marsala – yes, producing a food and wine magazine IS work – and so comments will not be uploaded as frequently until Monday as they usually are. The reason they weren’t uploaded between this morning and tonight was because I spent almost all day in airports and on planes, and arrived at my hotel with my wireless-only laptop to discover that, in the words of the hotel receptionist, there is no WiFi anywhere in Palermo, still less in my hotel room. If there is no WiFi in Palermo, I can’t see there being any in Pantelleria.
I LOVE YOU, MALTA! MALTA, YOU ARE FABULOUS! Whenever I come to Sicily, I thank God for sending the British to save us from a fate like this. The food and wine are magnificent, the terrain is spectacular, but as for the rest, good grief. I’m telling you now, there is no way on earth that I am ever going to live here. I have become too spoilt by my fantastic country.Sicily is here to remind us how far we have come. God save the queen, because she sure as hell saved us, even if she didn’t know it. All the fabulous food on this island can’t make up for the lack of the rest.
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Wouldn’t be surprised if you change your mind by the time you return!! After all food wine and terrain form a significant part of what makes a place desireable to live in.
(Daphne – rest assured, I won’t. I want to hit people who can’t cope with the simplest ‘problem’ and who muddle through everything. I don’t hit them, of course, but one does get the urge. Time means nothing, organisation means zilch, getting things done? What’s that? I feel sorry for those who don’t want to live like that. It must be like fighting through mud every day.)
There are of course many hotels which offer wi-fi in Palermo, as I, with the benefit of an internet connection, can see :-))
eg (Hotel Del Centro)and that’s a 3 *
Quote:
The hotel has very confortable and elegant rooms. It offers air-conditioned rooms with all the main conforts: hair-dryer, tv color, wardrobe, direct telephone and wake-up service…. On request, it is available the internet sevice (wi-fi system) directly from your room.
(Daphne – I don’t stay in 3-star hotels. And did you notice that little bit that says ‘on request it is available’? Exactly. I found it hard to wrench an adaptor from reception at one of the grandest hotels here – not that grand means much in Palermo. Imagine trying to get wi-fi ‘on request’. What are they going to do – send a boy round to install it? It’s either there or it isn’t. They don’t even know what it is.)
Hey Daph… we haven’t arrived in Palermo yet… but i’ll keep you posted :)
(Daphne – Where are you when I need you?)
Daph – You’ll soon have Marie and Norman making Mount Etna comments again.
(Daphne – I consider that a public service. They have so little else to think about.)
I suppose that is why we have been getting boatload after boatload of sicilians to malta….all rooting for WiFi.
Now, seriously, try to put yourself in the shooes of a visitor to Malta and make a list of WiFi spots on the island…including hotels..and see how short it is…
Better put our own house in order before we begin rubbishing others’.
(Daphne – It’s not at all short, my dear.)
Daphne, I agree with you that the Sicilians are technologically challenged, much more than us over here. Their internet speed is also hopeless, by the way. BUT you cant touch them for the quality and value of their food, it far surpasses ours. As for Marsala, make sure you write about their fantastic REAL Marsala, the stuff of legends. And in Pantelleria, make sure you sample that other truly unique wine of theirs, the passitto. And their rabbot. Whilst you are there, remember Pantelleria was once owned wholly by a Maltese family called Ciantar. You see, no one wanted it, no the truly well off go there incognio. Fantastic island.
(Daphne – The food and wine are why I’m here – read all about it in the October issue of Taste magazine. In Pantelleria and Marsala, I’m hosted by Donnafugata. Did you know that Marsala was invented by an Englishman, who tried to do something like port? He ended up mad, wandering through his orchards stark naked. This was around 200 years ago. Tell me more about the Ciantars. It would be a crucial part of the story. Do you know whether any descendants are still alive?)
And Amanda, what were these comments about Mount Etna and your sister about? Enlighten me please. Is this the same Normalman who usually inhabits a sofa at Super Wan? And Marie is the Benwa woman?
(Daphne – I think they were spreading some rumour about some massive investment I’m suppose to have around Mount Etna. When you’re desperate, you’re desperate.)
I think that wifi “on request” might mean that they give you an access code (against payment) to be able to log in for a specified period of time. Some hotels in Malta have that system.
(Daphne – No, it just means a lot of aggravation. This place is unbelievable in that respect. Wifi won’t get here unless the Mafia takes a cut. It’s a hotbed, remember. They’re probably negotiating right now.)
I really feel the same when I travel, and I see that the things we take most for granted here are not as easily to come by in other countries. I can tell you, for me Italy is a magnificent country but still, we’ve really come a long way and some things which we really take for granted here in Malta are not so common in some European countries such as Italy and Spain.
Indeed, hats off to the British! They really have saved us from ourselves. As I always say, had it not been for them, we would still be living en-masse off agriculture and farming. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but of course, a modern economy cannot survive on agriculture alone.
Let’s not also forget that we’ve made a huge leap forward in the last twenty years (since 1987, that is). The 1987 turn of events was always fundamental to our success and I think, no matter what the Li’l Elves and harbingers of doom foretell, we’re making a pretty good show of ourselves.
(Daphne – Viva r-regina u Eddie! U Austin Gatt….)
Yeah I hate Sicily, I feel like it’s got the same bad points as Malta – just ten times worse.
(Daphne – It’s got many, many charms, but as I said…only if you don’t have to try and work, then nothing works.)
Work in Sicily? Are you serious?? Sicily was made for relaxation, incredible wine, wonderful food…affordable food that is….I mean being able to get a full 4 course meal with perfectly cooked Pasta (not the type that sticks together and the whole plate full comes up in one attempt to twirl the spaghatti around your fork) Where people eat spaghetti without the use of a spoon!!, main course of a 18inch platter with a whole array of differnet types of fish including cray fish, giant prawns (That melt in your mouth and you do not have to chew) and fresh clams that slide out of the shell rather than having to battle to detach them, then of course there is the cassata Siciliana…mmmmmm and last but not least…the coffee…I mean for crying out loud, why the hell can’t anybody make a decent sicilian coffee?? Can somebody please enlighten me? I am yet to find a palce that serves a coffee like the Sicilians do…anyway back to my point…I had all the above only a few weeks ago and all for €25 each (Including 2 bottles of Planeta’s La Segreta Bianco)….not €80 or €90. So if you go to Sicily for work…good luck….but for great wine, affordable food, good coffee and relaxing…absolutely!!
(Daphne – Millions of people live here, and they have to work. They don’t just sit around eating pasta and drinking wine all day. They become extremely frustrated with their lives; it is after, all, part of the European Union and when even the Malta they looked down on once is striding ahead, it’s understandably upsetting. Yesterday evening, somebody asked me whether young people can work in Malta, or whether they have to leave, like in Sicily. Thinking of a place only in terms of servicing your purposes on holidays is a form of contemporary colonialism, don’t you think?)
I was in Sicily for the first time forty two years ago to the day. I have since been back over two hundred times. I know the island inside and out. It is a fascinating place with so much to offer, scenically, culturally and gastronomically. Economically it has achieved much since the post WW2 era. I remember scenes of abject poverty which have thankfully all but disappeared. However Sicily does not bear comparison to Malta. We are far more advanced in most respects over here. The main reason for this can be no other than the one and a half centuries of British occupation. Apart from this period our two histories run a very similar course. In the seventies and eighties we closed up very much on the Sicilians in terms of standard of living, corruption, poor organisation, rule of law and public administration etc. Once again in the last twenty years we have made gigantic strides forwards. Our standards are now way ahead of theirs practically across the board. In spite of all this I yearn for their beaches, mountains, valleys, islands and a lot else. I regularly dream of Segesta, the Madonie and the Zingaro nature reserve. Also Mozia, the temple of Concord in the full moon and the cathedral at Monreale. Call me obsessed but I cannot help going back time and time again.
(Daphne – I agree. But would you live and work here? I couldn’t. It’s not just the way things don’t work, but the North African outlook on time and efficiency.)
daphne you sound just like those maltese women who in the 80’s went to catania for cheap clothes at the monti and then come back and say italy is ugly and dirty. its just like a briton books a guest house in bormla and then goes back home and say malta is not nice and very dirty.i just spent a very pleasant 3 weeks in siracusa and ragusa which are totally different to palermo.you can’t say sicily is not nice just because you are staying at palermo. by the way nice blogg
(Daphne – I have been to most of Sicily, David, and the problems are the same everywhere. It’s one island. I’m not discussing the visual or culinary features, but the way that things which we take for granted, normal comforts, just don’t exist here. I am pointing out that Malta is now far more advanced. Nowhere do you see Sicilians working on laptops as you do in hotels, bars and coffee-shops all over the rest of Europe, because they can’t. There’s no wireless anywhere. Even our homes are wireless in Malta, now, let alone our offices and our coffee-houses. And that’s just one small, small thing. There are noticeably few young people out and about because they’re all leaving to find work in the north…..still, after all these years. There’s a palpable air of poverty wherever you go, except in obvious tourist hot-spots like Taormina. When I was staying in Leonforte a couple of years ago, it really was like going back in time, and not in a good way. The son of the household where we were staying summed it all up in saying ‘Sicily is beautiful, but we have the Mafia.’))
Re Ciantar/Pantelleria – most likely, as with much of what is often refered to a ‘Maltese’ the Ciantar family in this case would have been Sicilian/Neapolitan and would have migrated to Malta from Pantelleria in the early 1800’s when Malta under the British would have offered far better prospects and way of life than Pantelleria.
A possible local link could lie in the large building above Pwales, right above the Hal-Mann factory, and now long abandoned, that was evidently constructed and inhabited by a well-off family. The building is known as tal-Baruni Ciantar. His legitimate children are said to have settled in and around the Pwales valley, while those born of his ‘bit on the side’ settled in the little valley on the Mgarr side of the ridge, presumably in the little hamlet that still exists down said valley from the remains of the roman baths.
Would I live or work in Sicily ? Certainly not. Sicily is all about unwinding and that is about it.
Trevor Zahra – Glad to “see” you on this site. Maybe you’d like to go through previous comments and do something about those awfully tedious and horrendously spelt “Maltese” story books which are, unfortunately, part of my primary school children’s curriculum.
Thank you.
@ Amanda….Hi Amanda..there are apparently 2 Trevor Zahra’s in Malta…the acomplished writer and myself…and I am not a writer…:-)
Trevor Zahra – OK, thanks