New friends and old-time prices in little Italian towns

Lots of travelers love Italy, but sooner or later you may find yourself looking for places that are free of crowds and easier on the budget than Florence, Venice or Rome. That's the time to go south. Follow Carol Pucci's travels in Sicily and Southern Italy.

CALITRI, Italy, April 25 — I happened upon a book called "The Food and Wine Guide to Naples and Campania" a few years ago, and found vivid descriptions and beautiful photos of towns and villages I'd never seen in any travel guide.

With the exception of Naples, Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast, guidebooks either ignore this Italian region south of Rome, or cover it with a sentence mentioning the massive earthquake in 1980 that killed thousands and left many homeless.

Author Carla Capalbo shows her readers what a difference 28 years makes, not only in the cities themselves, where medieval town centers are being restored, but in the food and wine of a rich agricultural region surrounded by some of Italy's most spectacular mountain scenery.

After traveling in Sicily with family members, my husband, Tom, and I are exploring a few of the towns Capalbo mentions in her book. We're concentrating on towns no more than an hour or two from Naples in the Benevento province, sometimes called Il Sannio, and the neighboring area of Avellino or Irpinia as it's known.

Many left this area in the early 1900s to make a new life in the United States and South America, the reason so many Italian-Americans have roots in the south. More left after the earthquake. Now, as Capalbo points out, sons and daughters are returning, opening wineries and country restaurants specializing in what she calls an "educated cucina povera," a modern twist on the traditional peasant food of a region known for its bounty of air-cured meats, cow's milk cheeses, olive oil, chestnuts, mushrooms and wines.

Consider the 2 ½ -hour lunch we had at a country restaurant we found outside the town of Taurasi. We drove there to tour the wine cellars of Antonio Caggiano, 71, an architect who took up winemaking in 1990. While helping clear debris after the earthquake, he gathered up stone carvings and agricultural tools, and now he's decorated his cantina like a museum with antique fountains, archways and vaults.

It was 2:30 p.m. before we sat down to eat with a group of people from Ireland whom we met at the winery. It took us until nearly 5 p.m. to plow through platters of home-cured salami and ham, dishes of marinated peppers, zucchini, potatoes, beans, two kinds of pasta, lamb chops, salads, and a nougat dessert made topped with crushed hazelnuts.

It sounds like a cliché to call this the "real Italy," but it's true if that defines a part of the country so far untouched by mass tourism.

Sant' Agata dei Goti

In Sant' Agata dei Goti, an ancient town built on a rock cliff above a river, we met Loredana Fusaro, a cook at a local restaurant and Shiatsu massage therapist, and her husband, Enrico Pofi, a photographer.

They were our hosts at Sentieri Luminosi, the B&B they opened recently in the 19th-century stone building they bought a few years ago after moving to Sant' Agata from Naples.

Loredana and Enrico and their daughter, Osmana, 11, live on the top floor, and rent out a newly-redone bottom floor apartment to guests for about $70. From their garden planted with fig, orange and olive trees, we looked down on the new town — built after the earthquake — and the restored medieval old town, surrounded by mountains and green hills. Enrico, 50, sported a bushy, silver pony tail. Loredana, 44, was a ball of energy. She arrived home from her restaurant job some days at midnight, then got up the next morning to prepare a gourmet breakfast of homemade turnovers filled with apples and dates; scrambled eggs, olives, cheese and fresh fennel from the garden.

We had many of what I call "Italian moments" driving around exploring the little towns around Sant' Agata. In San Lorenzello, a town known for its ceramics workshops, sheep surrounded our car on both sides as we turned into a parking lot. We drove into another little town, and smelled tomato sauce cooking. The village men were preparing for a community dinner later that evening, Of course, we were invited.

Calitri

The biggest surprise was the town of Calitri, a hilltop hamlet bordering the regions of Apulia and Basilicata. Here we rented an apartment in a restored 15th-century house in the "Borgo Antico," the medieval old town that was all but abandoned after the earthquake.

Ten thousand people lived in the Borgo in the 1950s, some in caverns within the castle that overlooks a valley; others in houses with thick stone walls. The old town survived the earthquake, but city officials relocated most of the people into a modern new town next door.

With only about 500 people still living in the Borgo, most of the buildings are vacant, with weeds growing around weathered doorways. But that's changing, due mainly to the efforts of Emma Basile, 29.

Born in Calitri, she earned degrees in Naples and Milan, then returned to open a business called Porta D'Oriente (www.portadoriente.org). She sells and manages rentals like ours for the foreign investors who have begun buying and restoring some of the houses and underground grottos.

We couldn't believe our luck when she met us in the town square, and walked us to the house we rented from a British couple. With Emma's help, they restored the house a year ago, exposing 500-year-old stone walls under plaster and keeping a stone hearth with slots for big cooper pots used for making tomato sauce. Waiting for us on the kitchen table was a bowl of fruit, a bottle of local wine, a round loaf of fresh bread and biscotti from one of the local pastry shops. Our bedroom window overlooked miles of rolling green pasture land and wheat fields. All for $85 a night.

The best part, however, was meeting Emma. Her office is the town's unofficial tourist bureau (the government office opens only for a few hours on Sunday). She drove us around, showed us where to eat, took us through caves where local producers age their cheese and cure their salami, and most of all, shared her passion for the future of tourism in a town others gave up on.

Her mother cried when Emma decided to move back to Calitri. She hoped her daughter would work abroad, or start a life in a bigger city such as Naples or Milan. But Emma is convinced she made the right decision.

Her heart is here where her father and grandfather were born, and like many of the new generation Carla Capalbo introduces us to her in her book, she's helping breathe new life into this hidden corner of Italy.

Returning to Sorrento with a Seattle restauranter

SORRENTO, Italy, April 22 — Anyone who loves southern Italian food knows about Vince's Italian restaurants in Seattle. I caught up with the man behind the name here as we began a drive along the Amalfi Coast to a house we've rented for a few days in the mountain village of Calitri.

Vince Mottola, 48, runs the chain of restaurants his father started in 1957, three years after the family moved to Seattle from Naples. Vince's father, Vincenzo Mottola, died 10 years ago, and now it's his son's responsibility to keep up the family's Italian connections. He loves Italy, especially southern Italy, and each year he organizes a 10-day tour of some of his favorite spots.

My husband, Tom, and I spent a whirlwind three hours with Vince and his wife, Carla, in Sorrento where his group of 19 Washingtonians spent six days visiting the sights, sampling olive oil, shopping, taking side trips to Capri and Naples, but mostly doing what Vince loves to do most when he comes to Italy — hanging out and absorbing the life.

In leather loafers, jeans, a fashionably-untucked pin-striped shirt and blue blazer, Vince fit right into the local scene.

"What I like about Sorrento is that it has all the energy of Naples but without all the madness," he told us as we walked from his hotel overlooking the Bay of Naples into a tangle of pedestrian passageways in the historic center lined with shops selling everything from lemons the size of small footballs to leather bags and lace tablecloths.

The last time I was in Sorrento was 20 years ago. We arrived tired and seasick after a rocking and rolling bus ride along the cliff-hugging roads that skirt what many consider Italy's most beautiful coastline. We immediately got on a boat for Capri, and I always regretted not spending more time here. It's a touristy town, but in a fun way. Shopkeepers sell, but don't gouge, and prices seem lower than in many parts of Sicily.

Vince's friend Anthony Esposito is one of his favorite local characters. We ran into him as he was singing behind the cash register in his candy shop, Confetti e Agrumetti. There he sells what he calls "Italian bonbons," little candies shaped like yellow and green marbles and made with lemons, cream and roasted almonds. "Better than Viagra," he promised.

Lemons are a huge industry here. Sorrento's streets are lined with shops selling limoncello, a sweet liquor made by soaking lemon rinds in alcohol and adding sugar. We sampled some at Limonoro, a third-generation shop run by a family that used to fish and farm for a living. If there's a product that can be made with lemons, Sorrento's entrepreneurs will invent it. There's lemon soap, perfume and a version of limoncello made with cream.

Lunch was at La Lanterna, a white-table-cloth restaurant tucked into an alley off Sorrento's main square. Our meal started with a platter of salmon, anchovies, sword fish and squid marinated in olive oil, and ended with a bowl of steamed mussels and clams.

Vince's family moved back to Naples for a few years when he was in the 7th and 8th grade. He has many relatives in Italy, and visits often, mostly in the south. He has never been to Florence.

"My heart is here," he said, and after spending a few hours strolling around Sorrento with him, I could see why.

Chilly visit to red-hot Etna volcano

MOUNT ETNA, Sicily, April 21 — It's sunny and warm in the town of Nicolosi where we've settled into a cozy B&B here in the foothills of Mount Etna. Not so at the 11,000-foot summit where it's just above freezing, and the wind was strong enough to blow me sideways.

It's as close as I've ever been to an active volcano, and it was a thrill.

Considered one of the most active volcanoes in the world, Etna has sculpted Sicily's landscape A major eruption in 1669 sent lava flowing into towns and villages, causing earthquakes and destroying farmland and cities.

We knew we had to get to the top when we arrived in Nicolosi for few days of sightseeing around Siracusa and Taormina, and saw the chunks of lava rock scattered around the sides of the road like giant lumps of coal.

Etna continues to rumble, with intermittent lava flows from a big eruption that began in 2001. But the people who live in the surrounding towns are used to rebuilding. La Giara, the B&B where we're staying on a wide, tree-lined street in Nicolosi, considered the gateway to Etna's south face, was built in the 1970s when the neighborhood was nothing more than a pile of rocks.

Mountain guides will lead hikers safely to certain areas, but it's a long, steep climb over the rocks, and this time of year, patches of snow. We opted instead for a half-hour ride on the cable way that leaves from parking area called Etna Sud, about 15 miles from Nicolosi. Along the side of a road surrounded on both sides with lava rock is a house, half-buried, with only the roof and second floor above the surface.

The cable way brought us about halfway to the summit. There we rented ski parkas for $5, and boarded a big-wheeled vehicle for a 20-minute ride over a moon-like landscape of smooth, crushed rock and heavy boulders.

No one was really prepared for the high winds that brought the temperatures into the teens at the top. A guide lead us to the crater area over a snow-covered patch of rock. We walked along the rim of a small crater venting steam. We didn't see molten lava, but it was as close to an active volcano as I've ever been, and it was thrilling and a little scary at the same time.

It would have been possible to stay longer during a warmer time of the year, even hike to the main crater about 1,000 feet up from where we parked. . But the wind and cold were intense, and within 20 minutes everyone piled back into the bus again for the trip back down and a steaming cappuccino at the snack bar.

A private company (see www.funiviaetna.com) runs the cable way and tours. It's an expensive outing- — about $75 — but most hotels and B&Bs can arrange for 20-percent discounts.

You'll see Mount Etna from many vantage points if you come to Sicily; taking the tour is worth the price.

A hesitant phone call leads to new friendships

ENNA, Sicily, April 17, 2008 — This is for anyone who ever hesitated about contacting a distant relative or friend of a friend in another country. Don't worry about not speaking the language well. Above all, don't worry that you might be imposing. Pick up the phone and call. It will likely be one of the most rewarding moments of your trip.

That's how we felt after spending a day here in the mountain town of Enna with people the Italians call "paisan," people not related by blood, but friends by association because they or their relatives came from the same village.

My husband's grandmother was born here, and although we know of no family members still living in Enna, Ciccina Taravella, his mother's Sicilian friend in Ohio, has a niece and nephew here whom she visits almost every summer. That makes us all paisan.

That information and a phone call in my fractured Italian won us a daylong invitation from my mother-in-law's friend's niece, Maria Grazia Puglisi; her brother, Enzo; Maria's husband, Pippo; and Enzo's wife, Liliana, that began with coffee and pastries at the Delizia Bar across from Enna's cathedral, and ended 10 hours later with hugs and kisses among newfound friends.

Maria and Pippo own the Bar di Amici (Friends Bar) in a nearby town. They open at 5 a.m. and close at 10 p.m. six days a week. It's a schedule that leaves them little free time, but somehow, with a day's notice, Maria managed to plan and cook a lunch for 13 — the six of us, Enzo and Liliana; their son, Ernesto; daughter, Eliana; and Ernesto's girlfriend, Valeria.

No one in the family speaks English, but with some help from Valeria, who's been studying English at the university for two months, we kept the conversation going, talking about everything from politics — Enzo is a retired official of the local miners' union and a socialist — to updates on the relatives in Ohio.

Maria and Liliana filled a long table in their kitchen with plates of pasta and tomato sauce; platters of grilled eggplant, veal, cheese and salad. Enzo went to his basement wine cellar for pitchers of his homemade white wine. Everyone posed for pictures. Then we downed cups of espresso and sampled five flavors of the gelato Maria makes and sells at their bar.

When Enzo asked what we wanted to do next, someone suggested a trip to the cemetery to find the graves of people who shared Tom's grandmother's last name. We found just one. No one knew for sure if there might be any connection, but everyone agreed that the photo of the man on the tombstone looked a little like Tom's grandmother.

The afternoon wound down with a stop at the miners' union office where Enzo worked, a walk around Lake Pergusa, and finally a visit to the summer house that Enzo and Liliana are building above the lake. Enzo's retirement hobby is raising canaries, and he has about 40 that he keeps here, each in its own cage with a nest.

How a former sulfur-mining socialist ends up with a collection of canaries, I can't tell you. My Italian just wasn't good enough for me to get all the details. I started to scold myself for that, then stopped, and gave myself a pat on the back. This day wouldn't have happened if I hadn't worked up the courage to make that phone call. My Italian, as imperfect as it is, worked well enough to make a connection all of us will remember.

As we were leaving, Enzo gave us a bag of walnuts from one of his trees as a parting gift. We exchanged hugs and kisses, and extended invitations for them to visit the United States. We're paisan, after all. Surely we will meet again.

Life on the farm — it's appealing these days

ENNA, Sicily, April 15, 2008 — Anyone who comes to Sicily should try out an agriturismo (farmhouse inn) at least once. Hundreds have sprung up on the last 10 years in rural areas in Italy as farm families look for new ways to earn extra income.

We're staying at Rocca D'Aquila, a half-hour's drive from Enna, a medieval hill town in the middle of Sicily's southwestern interior where my husband, Tom's, grandmother was born. Facing snow-covered Mt. Etna and surrounded by rolling, green hills, Rocca D'Aquila is a working farm with pigs, cows, sheep, goats and chickens, and as of November, 10 new guest rooms with tile floors, modern bathrooms, refrigerators and TVs.

The price — $150 a night for two — comes with breakfast and dinner prepared by the chief cook, Mario Algozzino, with ingredients made or raised on the farm. The owner, Ugo Spatola, calls my vegetarian brother-in-law, Vince Auciello, "Vegetariano Auciello," as in "Vegetariano Auciello, for you it's OK " to eat whatever non-meat dishes Mario comes up with.

Dinner is an event that begins around 7:30 p.m. and ends around 10 p.m. It starts with of the family's own red wine and a half-dozen or more platters of antipasti. Except for homemade sheep and goat's milk cheese and plates of salami and prosciutto, it's mostly vegetables — zucchini with tomatoes, fried eggplant, frittatas made with eggs laid that morning, roasted peppers and fava beans from the garden. Next comes fresh pasta, then platters of grilled lamb with mint, pork or veal; a salad; and for dessert, blood oranges sold on the roadsides by the truckload this time of year.

Rocca D'Aquila seems to be one of those farms run more like a business than a family operation, but Mario's warm personality and hospitality has more than made up for the fact that we haven't seen much of the owners. When my husband felt sick and stayed back one day while the rest of us went out sightseeing, Mario fed him juice and biscuits and offered to make him a plate of spaghetti for lunch.

So much of interior Sicily is mountainous, rock-strewn countryside, it's hard to look at a town or a house from afar and figure out how you're going to get there in a car. We recognized Rocca D'Aquila's flat, pink buildings from pictures, but to get there from the highway, we had to travel along a one-lane dirt road that was more cow path than road meant for cars.

We're spending a couple of days puttering around little medieval hill towns topped with castles, many built by the Normans one thousand years ago. Some of these towns attract busloads of tourists on weekends or in summer, but this time of year, they have an eerie feel of being almost shut down except for groups of retired men who pass the time chatting on the squares.

The most important site in this area is the Villa del Casale, a 3rd-4th century villa discovered in the late 19th century in the town of Piazza Armerina. In the 1950s-'60s, excavators discovered a series of mosaics in the owners' apartments that had been preserved buried in mud in a 12th-century flood. Sadly, for anyone who visits here now, a popular set of mosaics depicting 10 Roman female gymnasts wearing bikinis is covered over for repairs.

One of the most unusual cities is Sperlinga, 22 miles from Enna, a hill town with a church in a castle built on top of a rock face punctured with cave dwellings. Many of the caves have been converted to storage sheds, but a few people still make their homes inside, albeit these days with electricity, satellite dishes, wooden doors and carports.

At sea with Giuseppe Messina

FAVIGNANA, Sicily, April 13, 2008 — Twenty minutes by hydrofoil from Trapani, Favignana is an island known for its 1000-year-old tuna fishing industry. Fishermen go to sea each spring to hunt the giant fish which they harpoon and hoist on board their boats in a bloody ritual called the "mattanza."

A traveler with a strong stomach can arrange to go along when the season starts in May or June. Me, I'd rather stick with someone like Giuseppe Messina, 72, on whose boat, the Maria, we spent an hour and a half puttering around the island, darting in and out of grottoes chiseled into rocky cliffs.

"Barca, madam?" he asked, as we stepped off the hydrofoil from Trapani. Fishermen sat in their boats along the docks sewing their nets. A man in orange hip waders was doing a brisk business selling glistening silver sardines.

Giuseppe wasn't a tour operator, just a retiree hoping to make a few dollars by showing a group of strangers around the island where he was born. We negotiated a price — about $15 per person — and climbed into his freshly-painted, blue-and-white wooden skiff — two of us on the bow and four on the stern with Giuseppe at the rudder.

Favignana is the largest of the three Egadi islands off the northwest coast of Sicily. Giuseppe was born here, and after a career working on a passenger ship based in Rome, he returned with his wife, Maria, bought an old fishing boat and named it after her.

As we left the harbor, Giuseppe pointed out a 1000-year-old Spanish castle on the top of a hill and an island landmark, a 19th century tuna processing plant, once one of the largest in Europe, where he worked as a boy.

Favignana is mostly rocky, barren farm land with a few roads and surrounded by stone walls. A cluster of flat, stucco buildings with rusted iron balconies line a maze of narrow streets in town where farmers come daily to sell homegrown capers, oranges and lemons. On a clear day, the waters are a blend of turquoise and emerald.

Giuseppe motored out to see, skirting the steep, stone cliffs and darting into calm lagoons where people swim in warmer weather.

"No speak much English," he said. But that was OK. The years I've spent studying Italian off and on were paying off, and when I couldn't find the right words, smiles and gestures worked just fine.

Crouching down over the rudder, he motioned for us to sit on the floor and duck our heads. Then he cut the engine, and using his hands to guide the boat through a narrow opening in the rocks, maneuvered us into a grotto where he explained in Italian that married couples come after their wedding and kiss for good luck.

"Capito?" he asked, Italian for "Do you understand?"

"Si," yes, I smiled. He apologized that the water wasn't as blue as it is when the sun is brighter. And he apologized that the water was too high for him to take us into another grotto.

"Non problema," no problem, I said. We were snug in his boat, chatting in Italian and laughing while dodging the salt spray. Everything was perfect.

On elections, olives and road construction

TRAPANI, Sicily, April 11, 2008 — Some random musings about life in 21st century Sicily:

• It's election time in Italy, and many think former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will win reelection. He's considered a "rich man's" leader expected to favor business interests, including his own, but working-class Sicilians see at least one benefit coming their way if he wins. Most believe he will resurrect a plan to build a bridge over the strait of Messina, connecting Sicily to the mainland. It's a 30-minute crossing by boat right now which involves long waits and wasted time. Trains pull up to the large ferries, put the cars on the boat, and reconnect them on the other side.

Italians take their elections seriously. The streets are littered with fliers. Campaign workers for one party show up on the streets in the afternoons and evenings with buckets of paste to paper over the posters of opposing candidates.

• Most everyone who visits Italy knows that most shops and museums close for several hours midday while everyone goes home or to a restaurant to eat lunch and rest, but the closing times have become shorter and shorter in the north to the point where many places stay open all day in Milan and other northern cities.

Southerners are far more relaxed (or some might say less motivated to work), and the closing times are much longer — usually lasting from 1 to 4:30 p.m. This is a good time to be driving if you want to avoid traffic, assuming you already have a car. It's almost impossible to pick up a rental car during these times, or on a weekend at a location other than the airport. Most city offices close for the day at 1 p.m. on Saturdays, and don't reopen until Monday morning.

• Leave it to the Sicilians, master bakers and pastry chefs, to come up with the perfect hot-weather treat: a twist on an ice cream sandwich that calls for stuffing several scopes of gelato into a bun, then eating it like a hamburger, often in the morning for breakfast.

• Here's a dollar-stretching tip: Stop by the bars at aperitif time and fill up on the free snacks. We paid $4.50 each for beers at a seaside cafe on the island of Favignana. The drinks came with a view of fishermen repairing their nets and big bowls of olives, peanuts and chips.

An indoor smoking ban has taken effect in bars, cafes and restaurants in Italy and people don't seem to be fighting it. I haven't smelled a cigarette since I've been here. Smoking's allowed outdoors, of course, but from here on out, you can count on a smoke-free meal or coffee indoors.

• If you're a single person traveling alone here, you're in luck. Most hotels, B&Bs and farmhouse inns charge per person. The going rate seems to be about 30 euros per person, about $47 at current exchange rates.

• We've rented a Fiat van to drive around the island. There are six of us, so we needed something that would hold six people plus six carry-on size suitcases. It's expensive — about $1,500 for 10 days — but less than the cost of renting three cars. We also have a GPS system programmed with European maps and data, and so far it's only let us down once. It recognizes one-way streets, but not streets closed for construction. We wound up wedged into an alley here in Trapani's old town center with no way to get out after the GPS told us to proceed down a dead-end street and turn left onto a street where workers were putting in new sewers.

A lesson learned from the foods of Sicily

SCOPELLO, Sicily, April 9, 2008 — They say you can learn more about a culture by eating the food and walking the streets than by staring into a thousand glass museum cases. That's certainly true here in Sicily, a melting pot of Mediterranean cultures, where the sunny climate and long growing season means lemons grow to the size of oranges, and fish, as we learned, can go from boat to table within an hour.

Salvatore and Marisin Tranchina, the owners of Pensione Tranchina, a 10-room inn in the fishing hamlet of Scopello, 40 minutes from Palermo, need go no further than their own neighborhood to gather all the ingredients for the nightly five-course dinners they serve their guests.

They make their own olive oil from olives grown on 200-year-old trees on property once owned by Salvatore's grandfather. Their marmalade is made from lemons and oranges they grow in their backyard.

My husband, Tom, and I and got to know Marisin, 51, and Salvatore, 59, ten years ago on our first trip to Sicily. The couple met in Panama where she was born and he was working. After they married, they moved to Scopello to take over the inn Salvatore's father opened in their family home more than 30 years ago.

The high point of a stay at Pension Tranchina is the evening meal which always includes fresh fish. I remembered asking Salvatore what we'd be having for dinner, and he replied that it depended on what he might find that afternoon when the fishermen arrived back in port.

Here in Scopello again, this time with four family members on their first trip to Sicily, I asked Salvatore if we could go with him to buy the fish.

Dinner is served at 8 p.m. each night. Around 6 p.m., Salvatore got a call on his cellphone. The boat he was awaiting — a shrimp boat named the "Timpano" — was due to arrive around 6:30 p.m. in nearby Castellmmare del Golfo, a one-time Greek port and Arab fortress, now a local fishing center a few miles from Scopello.

We piled into the Tranchina's van, and with Marisin at the wheel, drove 15 minutes through the narrow streets that wind down to the sea and rocky coastline that defines this part of northwestern Sicily.

There we met Pino Randazzo, a friend who helps the Tranchinas obtain the best fish at the best prices. Many fishermen go out overnight to catch sardines or anchovies, but shrimpers fish in daylight, and early evening is the time to buy.

More cellphone calls. The boat was late. It was 7 p.m., and Marisin and Salvatore were planning on feeding 16 guests in an hour.

"No worries," she said. "There's pasta first, and it only takes 15 minutes to cook shrimp."

Finally the boatmen arrived, and Marisin and Salvatore stepped back while Pino approached the dock. He was able to negotiate a better price if the fishermen thought he was buying instead of the innkeepers.

A deal was struck for a large box of two- to- three-inch-long prawns. One of the fishermen's helpers put the box into Pino's truck, then when the helper looked away, Pino quickly transferred the box to the Tranchina's van. As the sun set, we drove back to Scopello, our catch safe next to my brother-in-law Vince who was wedged in the back seat.

Marisin and Salvatore got busy in the kitchen while we joined the other guests for a glass of wine by the fireplace. Bowls of pasta tossed with fresh tomatoes, basil, olive oil and crushed almonds appeared when we sat down at 8 p.m. There was fresh bread from the village bakery and salad from the garden. Then came the dinner plates, each filled with ten bright red prawns, whole in their shells and dressed with olive oil, fresh basil and lemon. We took several minutes to extract the meat from each one, and we treasured every bite.

With just 45 residents, Scopello makes an excellent base for exploring this part of Sicily. Earlier in the day, we visited the 12th century cathedral in nearby Monreale with an interior filled with gold mosaics. We ate pizza cooked in a wood-fired oven. We hiked along a path covered with wildflowers to reach the 2,500-year-old Temple of Segesta sitting by itself on a green mountaintop.

There are many reasons to come to Sicily, but what we'll remember most about our first day here will be those prawns, simply prepared and literally fresh off the boat.

Tropea offers a sunny, southern respite in Italy

TROPEA, Italy, April 6, 2008 — Rick Steves' followers have the Cinque Terre, the five cliff-hugging villages along the Northern Italian coast. European jet-setters have the resort island of Capri.

The Calabrian seaside town of Tropea, six hours by train south of Rome, isn't undiscovered. Sun-seeking British and German vacationers will be arriving soon for their annual beach holidays. But April is still offseason, and being here feels like having a private invitation to a party waiting to happen.

Perched on a cliff over a sandy beach on the Tyrrhenian Sea, Tropea is a warren of ivy-covered medieval stone buildings and little alleyways lined with wine bars, restaurants and cafes that draw crowds in summer, but mostly sit empty this time of year. Weather's the big reason. You can swim here May through December, but in April, it's still chilly enough for jackets and sweaters.

My husband, Tom, and I and his brother, Al, and wife, Nancy, decided to make this our first stop on our way to Sicily where we're meeting another brother, Vince, and his friend, Debbie, for a family trip.

Tropea's a tourist town, so things are more expensive, but it still feels like good value, considering the dollar is worth about 5 percent less than when we began planning the trip last February.

Our $100 room in the Casa del Sole, a four-room B&B run by energetic Eugenia Castellaneta, a 40-year-old woman whom I guessed to be in her 20s, has a TV, two beds, and a new bathroom with a good, hot shower. Breakfast this morning — brought to our room by Eugenia — was a steaming pot of milk with coffee, juice, cream-filled pastries, cornflakes and yogurt.

We celebrated our first night in Italy with dinner at Osteria Volpi e L'Uova, a wine bar with a closet-sized kitchen and a half-dozen tables where we paid about $17 each for bowls of spaghetti with clams, salads, platters of grilled eggplant and peppers and a label-free bottle of the house red.

Nearly every street here dead-ends at the cliff overlooking the water. Flights of stairs lead to the beach. It's been clear so we were able to see the island of Stromboli, an active volcano with a visible steam plume. The most interesting monument is the church and monastery of Santa Maria della Isola that sits on a rock across from the town. Along a path leading to the top are doorways leading to cave homes that fishermen once occupied.

Everything from lemons to strawberries and chili peppers grow in Calabria's sunny, hot climate. Lining Corso Vittoria Emanuele, Tropea's main street, are shops stocked with bags of sun-dried tomatoes, chilies and oregano for $2-$3, but the town treat is almost anything made from the "cipolla di Tropea," a sweet, red onion shaped like a miniature football. Shops sell onion jam and pasta, and as we found out when we stopped into Gelati Tonino, even onion ice cream.

The inventor is Antonio La Tore (Tonino) who makes 60 flavors of gelato in the shop he's had on the Corso for 38 years. The most popular is onion, which he makes once a week and serves on Sundays, but he's also come up with flavors that mimic other Calabrian specialties such as pesto, figs and pine nuts. My favorite was his orange-colored hot salami with a hint of smoke and spice.

Chances are that if you're Italian-American, your ancestors came from somewhere like this or another area south of Rome, yet this is a part of Italy that many tourists never see.

Nothing wrong with Venice, Florence or Rome, but sooner or later it's nice to sample a part of Italy that free of the crowds and a little easier on the wallet. That's when it's time to head south.