Spending a while in Sicily with weeks in Rome and Florence, through December and January was...a very nice dose of wonderful Italy. 

This is my first blog for 2023. Rome and Florence will feature in later blogs (impossible to leave them out!). And Sicily... there is lots to share. This blog gives a quick look at weeks on this fabulous island.

A beautiful place “One of the most beautiful of the Greek temples in Sicily is that of Segesta”, said travel writer, Will S. Monroe decades ago. Segesta is beautiful. And the thought of returning sometime this December, in the colder months, is very nice.

A late 5th century B.C Doric temple, the temple of Segesta was never completed. Its beauty and position don't fail to move. It's about an hour and a half from Palermo on the road to Trapani.

A divine wild flower Last month, in the Sicilian spring, I was coming along the idyllic SS120 from Petralia Soprana to Polizzi Generosa and was on the lookout for what has to be one of the most beautiful spring flowers in the world - the Sicilian wild sweet pea.

I spotted a lot tumbling down an embankment close to the road. The colours, pinkish reds and cardinal purples and the soft powdery perfume were heavenly.

Palermo’s Ballaro market, found in the tight and tangled streets of the Albergheria quarter (not far from the city’s cathedral), is intriguing, lively, messy, and colourful with heaps of stalls stocked with lots of fresh produce and useful household things.

An Arab legacy Ballaro is likely a legacy from Sicily’s indelible Arab interlude. Writer Raleigh Trevallyn says it is of medieval origin, but it is thought, he adds, that a market existed there in Muslim times. It’s centuries old with a certain souk like feel (it has to be Muslim). Well worth a slow wander when in Palermo. A city to spend a lifetime in.