White Almond Sicily

As you travel around Sicily whether it is via the stunning coastline or its interior mountain regions you will notice top quality fresh ingredients and dishes made from delicious recipes. I love food, especially Mediterranean food, which makes Sicily the perfect place for me to live, Sicily is a foodie’s paradise. One of my favourite things to eat and something I am addicted to is salsiccia , Sicilian sausage.  If I had my way I would eat it every day and would probably end up looking like one. When my “adopted” Sicilian big brother came to stay with us in London I worried about what I was going to cook a Sicilian every day, especially one that is a fantastic cook. One evening I decided on an English style sausage casserole. After serving the sausages on his plate he started to scrape the entire dish back into my casserole pot.  “These are not sausages they are disgusting”.  I agree with him in some way, but you cannot compare English sausages with ...

As Summer comes to an end are you feeling "That Summertime Sadness"? Then why not book an out of season trip to sunny Sicily? With temperature in mind the best time of year to visit Sicily is May, June, September, October and November. Every season is beautiful even winter when you can ski on Mount Etna. Summer is wonderful but it can get very hot in July and August and the beaches are very crowded. Autumn is a magical time to visit Sicily. Here are my Top 14 Reasons to visit Sicily out of season; 1 The Weather September, October and November is a very pleasant time to visit Sicily. The weather is still fantastic but the island is not as crowded as it is in the summer months. During your autumn stay you can expect plenty of clear blue skies with loads of sunshine and temperatures of up to 26°C making it possible to visit the beach and swim in the sea right into November. 2 Cheap Flights and Hotels Flights are considerably cheaper out of season an...

When visiting Sicily a trip to the South East corner is a must do, the landscape is very much different from the rest of the island yet this small corner is rich in sights. The towns of Syracuse, Caltagirone, Modica, Ragusa, Palazzolo Acreide, Scicli and Noto have all been declared as UNESCO World Heritage sites on the merits of their Baroque architecture and town planning, the result of the rebuilding after the destruction of the 1693 earthquake. Noto is a most beautiful Baroque city and has been a UNESCO site since 2005, its nickname is “The Stone Garden of Europe”. It was lovingly reconstructed after the earthquake by a Sicilian-Spanish aristocrat, Giuseppe Lanza the Duke of Camastra. The town fascinates visitors with its noble palaces and churches. Before you explore Noto it is worth a trip first to Noto Antica. Here lays the ruins of the pre-earthquake town. Built on an arid limestone ridge the site has views of the Province of Ragusa and Mount Etna. When Giusep...

Casa Cuseni is an enchanting villa in Taormina built in golden stone and was designed for the English painter Robert Hawthorn Kitson in 1905. In his Taorminese house and its beautiful gardens, art nouveau mixes with Sicilian style. The dining room was both conceived and designed by a friend of Robert Kitson, Sir Frank Brangwyn,a pupil of William Morris, the famous member of the artistic movement  “Arts and Crafts” and by Sir Alfred East,who was at that time, President of the Royal Society of British Artists. The decoration of the dining room boasts a series of murals inspired by the famous photographic models of Von Gloeden. Robert Kitson integrated perfectly with the Taormina community and Casa Cuseni with its gardens became one of the favourite places of D H Lawrence and his wife to have afternoon tea. After his death, Robert Kitson’s niece Daphne Phelps inherited the villa in 1947. At the age of 34, war-weary from working as a psychiatric social worker, with b...