Life in Licata

We’ve been in Licata for about three weeks now, and I think we’ve definitely settled in. We chose to winter here namely for the climate (it should be a mild winter), the language (Italian would be easier for us to learn than say, Croatian), the community (it was supposed to have a good winter group of liveaboards), and the food (how can you not like Italian food?). On all accounts, it does not disappoint.

Barring our first couple of days here with storms, the weather has been fantastic. We’ve had a general temperature range of 60-75 degrees F (or 15-24 degrees C) with sunny days every day. We’ve heard this is warm for October, but we are not complaining. 🙂 We’ll see how the winter months go.

Conor and I are both working on our Italian via Babbel or Duolingo. I have a hard time learning to speak other languages (reading is much better), but Conor is a quick study. Conor has a fair bit of French, and I have some Spanish, so learning Italian is definitely easier. I tend to want to come out with Spanish words, but Conor is impressively communicating with the locals on our dock when the situation arises. Locals are very kind and appreciate you wanting to learn. They also enjoy teaching us words / phrases – everyone from the butcher at the grocery store, to waiters at restaurants, a docent at the castle, my biking instructor (we’ll get to that), etc.

So speaking of people, the locals are generally very kind and helpful and the boating community has proven to be quite sociable. I have always impressed upon our kids that the people make the place – whether it’s at school, university, at your place of work, your neighbors, etc. The people you are surrounded by can totally make your experience. Our marina community is largely made up of Germans, Dutch and French. Apparently, there used to be a lot of English folks, but since Brexit they are now wintering in non-EU places like Turkey and Montenegro. The Germans and Dutch speak English with us and are very friendly. There’s also another American couple and Australian couple that we’ve met so far. Every Tuesday and Friday evening the group gathers for a happy hour at one of the local bars, and every Sunday afternoon there is a BBQ in the marina, so there are plenty of opportunities to be sociable. Conor felt I should explain the “happy hours” here a bit – in Italy, they are actually called “aperitivo.” The daily ritual of aperitivo is anywhere from 6-9pm and is meant to allow for winding down from the work day and whetting the appetite for dinner. You drink a glass of wine or light cocktail, nibble on finger foods (which are generally included in the price of your drink), relax, and chat away. I’m still partial to Aperol spritzes and my favorite Sicilian street food is called panelle – fried fritters made from chickpea flour. Yum. Then at the BBQs, we’ve learned a new game – Mölkky. It’s a Finnish throwing game that makes you think of bowling, but it’s with wooden pegs. It’s just a bit of fun and a good way to hear everyone’s names repeated when it’s their turn for a throw. 

And of course, the food in Italy is amazing. As an agricultural island, Sicily has wonderful fresh produce, meats, dairy, etc. I’ve already mentioned how the supermarket is great and it’s right on our doorstep. Nice produce, a full butcher, deli, etc. Such a treat compared to our experiences earlier this year. And this is important, because we mostly cook on the boat. We’ve only tried a couple of restaurants in town so far. There aren’t too many, but we’ve found a couple of good ones. One being a nice local pizzeria – Sardasalata. We like it because it has a really nice ambience and the staff are great and speak English with us (and teach us Italian). We know the manager, Francesco, now and love to visit weekly. 🙂 (We even ran into him out shopping one day, and he made a point to come up and say hello!)  

We are hugely enjoying the relaxing pace of simplified life. It’s a very peaceful marina with beautiful sunrises and sunsets, a large harbor area where the water often looks like glass, nice and clean landscaped areas, bright moon views and starry nights, and our neighboring lighthouse is actually quite comforting at night. Most days, but Sundays especially, we see lots of families (all generations) coming for a stroll or bike ride or a soccer game in the marina area. This is not to say we are being slackers. This is life currently, and we always have a long list of things to do. The days pass quickly, and we never have periods of time where we are wondering how to fill it. Conor keeps busy with boat maintenance (winterizing it by changing oils, removing the rigging, re-organizing things, etc), boat research (things we need to improve / upgrade), doing workouts, and attending work meetings every evening. Conor rented a mountain bike one day and enjoyed exploring the area via two wheels, and he finally found a kayak. (He’s only been looking for one all year.) So, now he enjoys hopping into his cool Oru kayak from the dock and going for long paddles out into the sea and neighboring beach areas. I spend my days on daily chores (grocery shopping, laundry, cooking, cleaning), studying (I’m currently in the midst of my fall quarter class), working with my students, administrative tasks (paying bills, booking travel arrangements, managing things back home), researching, blogging and going for morning walks on the pier. I’ve had one bike lesson so far. (I did learn how to ride when I was a kid, but I never used it as a mode of transport and am, thus, not comfortable at all biking around city streets. It’s a key way to get around, and Conor thinks lessons can increase my comfort level. So, we’ll see.) 😉 In the evenings after Conor’s meetings, we’re either being sociable at a happy hour or just staying in. The occasional night we’ll watch a movie on Conor’s laptop. And, each weekend we love getting to catch up with our kids over Zoom.

Are we exploring more of Sicily yet? Not too much as we have a lot to do before we head to the US for a visit later this week. We did go back to Agrigento to see its Old Town, which was definitely a worthwhile visit. We saw the beautiful cathedral with interesting sarcophagi on view, a really unique church built atop a Doric Greek temple (Church of St Mary of the Greeks), and an interesting Diocesan Museum with neat art and artifacts. The Main Street and parks were really nice too. Another day we drove up to Bosco Galluzzo which is an ecological park and green oasis upon a hilltop about 25 minutes northwest of Licata. We wanted to go for a hike and enjoyed exploring the pine groves next to the cactus. It seems a great place for mountain biking and offered beautiful views. Our car couldn’t manage the road all the way up, so we reached it on foot. 

Other random tidbits…

• Licata seems like such a small town with everyone likely connected in some way. So far, we’ve learned one of our marina staff members has a twin brother who runs the bike shop. And, our pizzeria manager friend has a cousin who runs the wineshop in town (where we can get winery bottles).
• We’ve discovered that the two indoor “malls” don’t close during riposa – yay. And, the second one we discovered has great shops for hardware, housewares, and electronics. Very handy for the boat. 
• I visited my first Italian hairdresser. No English, but we seemed to communicate well enough. Amazing watching one hairdresser/owner and five assistants provide service to at least seven women at a time. Wow.
• Fireworks are a thing here. Like very often. I finally learned they are usually fired for people’s birthdays. Just interesting how they are done so locally on the ground!
• Halloween is not really a thing here in Italy. However, one of the marina staff (with kids) organized for a group of kids to come to the marina to go trick-or-treating. We managed to get some chocolates to offer and treated the cute kids.

Pei-San took some great photos of Licata while they were here. Just wanted to share a few:

As I mentioned, we are off to the US in a couple of days. We will be traversing the country and can’t wait to visit with all the family and friends! We’ll be back to Sicily in December and hope to do more exploring. Until then…maybe we’ll have some land travel adventures to report!