Making do while shaking up in the myth-soaked Sicilian city of Enna
Enna is a city one can see in just 95 minutes—at least, that's how long it took Jay and I to do the major sights (not that most were major...).
Admittedly, we did skip the medieval Norman Torre di Frederico II and it's surrounding park, but the thing was way out on the other end of Enna in the new town (the city is kind of V-shaped, splayed out along two ridges) and is completely swathed in scaffolding (Ionic, from what we could tell) and closed anyway.
Although our train pulled in around 2:20pm, there wasn't a bus up to the town proper until 3:10pm. And, as it turns out, Enna's bus station is way the heck over in the new town, not the old town where all of the sights (and the only hotel) cluster.
A pause for lunch
So we were estatic that when we finally arrived, sweating and huffing with our packs, at the Ristorante La Fontana in the old town, and found that it was still open for lunch at 3:45 in the afternoon. Actually, the group of locals at the table near us finished up and left within 15 minutes of our arrival, and we sat there feeling guilty and wolfing down food while the family and staff sat down to eat.
It turned out OK, though. La mamma wasn't upset that we stayed well past official closing time; in fact, as we got up to leave, she went over to the freezer cabinet and took out an unmarked bottle of local sweet dessert wine and poured us each a glass to help us on our way (although climbing the town's main drag to our hotel with that wine working on our knees certainly did little to actually help us...)
No room at the inn...
So we finally arrive at the Hotel Siclia—the only hotel in town, remember—only to find that our reservation had been cancelled... and that the hotel was completly booked with a convention group.
I decided that it would be a good time to panic.
The lady at the desk, who obviously wasn't near the top of this hotel's hierarchy and hence not in the know about such matters, looked a little worried for a while too, and kept checking different lists and books as if expecting to find the answer to this particular predicament (the predicament known as the customer explaining: "I did indeed confirm the reservation, so I don't know what to say," relayed in as nice a tone of voice as someone facing a night sleeping on a park bench—with a nasty cold and a fever no less—could muster "And what's more, I'm a travel writer who's getting an extremely bad first impression of your establishment," an addendum which I didn't say but did think awfully hard.)
Eventually, she seemed to find a solution, giving us a key marked "Direzione" and saying "It's a double bed, and you're two men..." I immediately assured her that myself and my companion were "quasi cognati" (nearly in-laws, which is what Italians keep insisting we are so I've adopted it as an accepted local description of Jay and my relationship) as he is the fratello della fidanzata (the "brother of my betrothed," a phrase which always sounds vaguely Shakespearian to me)
This put her greatly at ease, "Ah, so you're family" she said with relief, then apologized that the room had only a toilet and sink, no shower or TV, as the room is apparently a little nook in which the staff stays when they find themselves spending the night (what on NYPD Blue they call the "crib").
Later, when we left for dinner, one of the hotel's bigger-wigs was hanging about and saw us turn in the key.
"Ah, so you're the direzione," he said jokingly. "It's nice to finally meet you sirs!" he continued joking, shaking our hands.
Turns out the reason the reservation was cancelled was that I had only reconfirmed by phone, not by fax. This, as Jay so succinctly pointed out, was pretty stupid. I mean whom, among your average tourist crowd, bothers confirming their hotel rooms for vacation by fax?
So now I sit here, in the Direzione's crib. Thankfully, it has a phone Oddly, even though it does, indeed, not have a shower, it does provide both a hairdryer and a tiny bottle of hotel shampoo. it also features an in-room amenity that can only be described as a "Worlds Largest In-Room Safe."
It squats there like some cartoon caricature of a safe—complete with the oversized ship's-wheel of a dial on the front—looming over the narrow bed and taking up the lion's share of space in the tiny room. I assume it is for keeping guests' valuables.
The center of the world
We spent the afternoon exploring Enna, the navel of Sicily. You see, this town is prehistoric (no one can wager how old it is, since even the "native" Sikels conquered the site from some other peoples ceturies before the Greeks arrived), and it is in the precise center of the island—and 3,000 feet up in the mountains, I might add.
We are in the city where Demeter/Ceres once lived (she's buried under a local church), scant kilometers from the Lago di Pergusa, the spot where Demeter's daughter, Persepone/Kore, was picking flowers one day when Hades/Pluto came roaring from the ground in his chariot, grabbed the young goddess, and swept her back down into his Underworld to snack on pomegranates.
Well, I've got to get some sleep, seeing as how I'm violently ill and yet must be up early to catch a bus to the town of Piazza Armerina tomorrow (to view some of the most extensive remains of Roman mosaics in the world, included the oft-reproduced "Ancient Roman Babes in Bikinis").
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