Sicilian cuisine

In my opinion Sicilian Cuisine is a masterpiece of Italy.

The many recipes are simple and its ingredients very flavourful thanks to the climate.

Olive oil is largely used for cooking and dressing, butter is rarely used.
Fish is very popular especially served fresh with oil and garlic or olives, tomatoes and
capers.

Sea salt is also used a lot and various dishes are enriched with herbs that grow locally in
 abundance such as basil, parsley, mint, sage, rosemary etc.

At lunchtime pasta is the most popular dish.
If you travel around the Trapani province cous cous is very popular especially with fish.

Bread is largely used with almost any dish.
Different types of cheese are produced on the island like ricotta and caciocavallo which are personally two of my
favourites.

Sicily is also a proud producer of wine, boasting 28 vineyards and 21 DOC wines.
A red wine I definately reccomend is Nero D' Avola and a nice White is Corvo Glicine.

Sicilian puddings are often fruit based and quite rich, a pudding that I think anyone
who visits sicily must try is the cannolo siciliano and of course the delicious ice cream.

Feel free to leave a comment.

Flight to Sicily

The only flight to Sicily available trough Ryanair from london Stansted airport is
to Trapani as the route to Palermo will be discontinued by the end of March 2010.

I have tried  investigate the matter over the Web and i learnt of a dispute between
Ryanair and the Italian Authorities regarding some type of ID (fishing license) used on
domestic flights.

As i could not find any other news regarding the Stansted/Palermo route, i decided to call
Ryanair. Unfortunately the operator didn't know or wasn't allowed to tell me why
Ryanair will stop flying to Palermo but he confirmed that from 30th March 2010 Trapani
will be the only route to Sicily.

 Trapani is situated on the west coast of Sicily and has traditionally made its money from
tuna, salt and carved corall (canned tuna was invented there). Today the salt is the only
industry remaining, although its port is still busy with ferries connecting to the Egadu islands
and Tunisia.

The distance between Trapani and Palermo is about 110 Km.
The easyest and cheapest way toget to Palermo city centre from Trapani is with a coach
company called Terravision.

A single ticket costs around 12 Euros and the total journey is approximately 3hrs . But if  you
hire a car it will only take you about 1h 22 min!

As always feel free to leave a comment

Sicily Climate

Sicily has got one of the best climates on earth in my opinion.
Winter can be mild by the coast where in the daytime low
temperatures float between 13 and 15 Celsius.

If you travel inland it can be quite cold and stormy
due to the presence of mountains as they can reach up to
3000 feet. You can actually go skiing on Mount Etna.

On the other hand July and August can be very hot
with temperatures reaching on average 40 to 42 celsius especially if the dusty
Scirocco wind is blowing from the african Sahara desert.

From my personal experience the best time to visit Sicily is either
in May or late September as temperatures average around 27 to 31 Celsius.
You will still get plenty of sunny days and it will be a cheaper holiday because
it is out of season and the beaches are generally not as crowded as the majority of
sicilians tend to go on holiday in July and August.

Hope I have given you a clearer idea on when to travel to Sicily so you can make the most
of  your holiday. If you have any questions  just leave a comment in the comment box.

As always comments are welcome!

History of Sicily in 100 seconds