Doors in Trapani

Glossy paint is not needed when you have a door made by an artist. I’d marked down Cattedrale di San Lorenzo as a place to visit in Trapani. Unfortunately, when we went there, the doors were firmly shut. Although we missed what, by all accounts, is a marvellous baroque church, there was bit of good in that. There were no tourists, and we could take photos of the stunning gates. There are four of them; three in the gallery below, and one in the featured photo.

I had to search a bit to figure out the history of these gates. Bear with me as I bring you up to date. The church dates from the 14th century CE, and was made a parish in the 15th century, and a cathedral in the middle of the 19th century. What you see today was a restoration by Giovanni Biaggio Amico in the mid-18th century. The bronze and wrought iron gates were made by Ennio Tesei in 1990 and inaugurated the same year.

“What a bother,” said The Family, and set off to find something to eat. I followed, but stopped at another grand door on the same street. I could not figure out what the purpose of the building was. But it was grand, sporting lots of ornate balconies, wall decorations like the clock you see above, and many plaster medallions. Probably baroque period was my guess.

Elsewhere doors were more modern and suited for Meta’s ancient photo app (of course, no one posts there any longer, since it is clearly nicer to make a 90 second video of a door and post it at a rival). These two doors stood paces from each other on a path which led one storey higher up and facing the sea. It was a lovely walk, and not only because there were so many doors.

What I liked about Messina

We spent only a night in Messina. We walked about in the day, saw a couple of major sights, missed one, and in the evening we decided to find a wine bar and relax. The town carries heavy port traffic, and you might expect it to be full of tourists. Maybe we just happened to be in a part of town where they did not venture, or maybe they just drive away after coming over in a ferry. We found a nice looking bar, full of people, and got a place. As we sat on the street, we looked around and found children playing one of the common games played across the world. People met their friends and lovers, chatted, got up to go for a smoke. The Family said “I’m glad we came to Messina.” I agreed. It is good to be in a place which is completely normal and everyday.

Little egret + Birds of the Week Invitation CXLV

One of the commonest and most widespread of old world birds, sightings of Little egrets (Egretta garzetta) have been reported well over 2 million times to eBird. It is most commonly recognized by its snow-white plumage, black beak and legs, and yellowish feet. Both photos that you see here are of adults in breeding plumage. You can tell that by the two head plumes.

These photos were taken in the middle of the monsoon season in Mumbai. That’s right in the middle of the breeding season. Seasonal changes in birds are due to hormone secretion. The Family found that the bright red colour of the legs of these birds are due to an over-abundance of sex hormones in its body. It was interesting new insight into the annual cycles of change in the bodies of birds. This colour change is not something I’d noticed before. Only when you get to see a few hundred of these birds together do you begin to notice all the individual differences.

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This is an invitation to share your post about birds, their photos, or their behaviour. If you post about birds this week (starting today and up to next Monday), you could leave a link in the comments, or a pingback, for others to follow. You don’t have to have a recent photo, nor do you have to post a photo of the same bird as mine. Do use the tag “Bird of the Week” to help others find your post, and remember to visit other people’s posts. For more information see the main landing page for this invitation.

Birds of the Week CXLIV

Saint Catald: Monday Mosaic

Saint Catald was clearly a different building converted into a church. The floor plan was neither a Greek cross, nor a Latin cross. When you stood outside and looked at the three hemispherical domes sitting atop cylinders it was clear that the building was designed by Arabs. The inside was bare but it held a brilliant mosaic icon of Mary Theotokos, in purple robes holding the infant Jesus. That mosaic and the setting made the small entrance fee worth paying.

I had to step back across the square to get an undistorted view of the exterior of the building. The intricate geometry of the lattice work on the windows was yet another clue to the origin of the structure. It was the least visited place among the three attractions in the square, but it is worth stepping into it.

Exploring the wines of Sicily

After the sensory bombardment of a quick trip through Catania, we spent two days relaxing in the island of Ortigia in Syracuse. Once the home of Archimedes, the father of fluid dynamics, it was the perfect place to begin exploring the wines of Sicily. I began by tasting a Nero d’Avola grown on the slopes of Etna. This is a special region, and I landed up trying several vinyards from this area. For both of us this hearty grape became the default; a dependable taste to fall back on.

Later that evening we tried a different grape, the Nerello Mascalese, again grown in the same region. This had a more complex taste which one could grow to like. A day later, in Messina, I found a blend with a grape called Nerello Cappucio, which I wouldn’t mind tasting more of. On the west coast of Sicily, in the hill fortress of Erice and nearby coastal town of Trapani I found another hearty, rather fruity and complex tasting wine made from a grape called Perricone. This is definitely one of my favourites now. I wish someone tries growing it in India. I also discovered that Shiraz (Syrah) gets a somewhat different feel in Sicily, and is widely used in western Sicily.

I don’t drink whites usually, but in company I don’t mind trying out a couple of varieties. One was a lovely full-bodied Erice wine made from Grillo. I’d heard that Grillo was used for Marsala, and had expected it to be on the sweeter side, but this turned out to be rather dry. Another wine was made with Cataratto was similar but lighter.

I wouldn’t mind taking another trip around Sicily trying out more of their wines. There’s a surprising diversity of soils and many microclimates, all factors that lead to a highly diverse wine producing region. The wines are rather good, and I have a feeling that many of them would suit the Indian climate.

Business

Where there is sun there is a business opportunity: parasols, hats, sun screen, water. The old fish market of Trapani is a lovely space which has now been given over to small vendors. They did look picturesque on a hot day.

Favignana

While I kept my nose to the grinfstone in the old hilltop town of Erice, The Family went off to explore the islands off the west coast of Sicily. Prehistoric cave paintings were discovered in one of the Egadi islands, but it was not clear whether you can actually enter the caves to look at them. After breakfast The Family decided to go to the port of Trapani and look for a ferry.

She found one which goes to the island of Favignana, a little further off. If you were bent on going to the Egadi islands, then you would have to take a second ferry from Favignana. She decided to walk around this hot and sultry island instead. The photos that she brought back show blocks of architecture around deserted streets, with deep shadows and some bright colours. The atmosphere reminded me of de Chirico’s paintings, but without the massive sculptures.

The crowds, she said were gathered near the center

The real Monreale

Entire days go by when you don’t face reality, especially when you travel. So we are glad to see a sign like this, because it forces us to consider where we are. Monreale is a destination where one square on the top of a hill and the cafes around it are full of tourists. A king built it centuries ago to spite a bishop, and poured the wealth of the island into it. But then a town grew up around it, and, needed food and water, livelihoods and roads.

The Family took this photo when she climbed to the terrace of the Cathedral. The modern town of Monreale straggles down a mountainside. There is still a little gap between it and Palermo. Water first came here via an aqueduct built by a bishop, after the town was settled and people realized that it might be difficult to survive without a constant supply. Life cannot be terribly simple here for its 40,000 residents. I can understand that the daily flux of about half that much could strain resources, and there would be intense disagreement between those who make money directly from tourists and those who don’t.

We had to negotiate steep stairs or a narrow and steep road between the place where the bus from Palermo stops, and the square. This gave us a view of the daily lives of people here, and the lovely balconies, doors and windows which you see in this part of the world. I liked the ceramic sun over the door, and The Family was enchanted by the small plants in tubs on the narrow road.

Just us, only ancient

A stunning piece is the centrepiece of a gallery devoted to neolithic pottery in Gansu Provincial Museum in Lanzhou. This jar with its mouth shaped as a human head was found in the deepest layer of an archaeological dig in Dadiwan in Gansu. The accepted dating is between 4000 and 3500 years BCE. Six thousand years ago people were making pottery as a form of art, just as we do today. When you see something like this you understand that people then were the same as people today, moved by the same impulses.

Two thousand years later, there were settlements of neolithic farmers along the valley of the Yellow River. Many beautiful pieces of pottery have been dug up from there. The pieces that you see here belong to the Majiayao culture. There seems to be a consensus that there were workshops producing decorated pottery in bulk. Commerce had started by then. Even in a world without metals, the organizations that people created were similar to ours. How could their minds have been different? Only by the absence of thousands of years of accumulated knowledge that we use all the time. But the people of that time started us on this path, by domesticating plants.

Eurasian tree sparrow + Birds of the Week CXLIV

The first time when I noticed an Eurasian tree sparrow (Passer montanus) was just over a decade ago. They are not very common in peninsular India, and you have to go to the lower slopes of the Himalayas or walk about in the northeast of India to see them. But they are common over most of Europe and Asia. The black cheek patch against white is the easiest way to tell them. If a bird keeps its head turned away, then I look at the cap: in this species it is uniformly rufous.

Even where they are common, they prefer wooded areas more than built up spaces. You can see them in parks and forests, usually hopping about on the ground, but sometimes on trees, looking for seeds. It’s beak is clearly adapted for feeding on grains, although it feeds nestlings a high-protein diet of insects and spiders. I’ve seen them preening, but I haven’t watched them often enough to catch them dust-bathing, or water-bathing for that matter.

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This is an invitation to share your post about birds, their photos, or their behaviour. If you post about birds this week (starting today and up to next Monday), you could leave a link in the comments, or a pingback, for others to follow. You don’t have to have a recent photo, nor do you have to post a photo of the same bird as mine. Do use the tag “Bird of the Week” to help others find your post, and remember to visit other people’s posts. For more information see the main landing page for this invitation.

Birds of the Week CXLIII