The Domain of Aeolus

Wednesday August 29, 2012 – LIPARI, ITALY

What’s that?  You were itching for more mythology?  Fantastic!  Because I have more stories to tell and very little actual travelogue content for this post.

Lipari is one of the Aeolian Islands and, quite frankly, there’s not much to do.  The island is small enough to drive around in about an hour and a half and the main town of Lipari features a somewhat difficult to find archeological museum (which was closed when I was there) and a fortress.  The fortress is really quite nice.  It’s free to get in and it offers some lovely views of picturesque towns near by.  If you’re feeling especially cool, go to a deli and pick up some bread and sandwich fixings and take a small picnic to the amphitheater in the fortress.  

However, I would recommend that you find Le Macine.  

They do pizza and they do pizza so right. I had the Arrabiatta and it was pretty damn amazing.  They also serve some pretty amazing post-meal liquors.  There’s one that’s made from cactus fruit, there’s another that’s some kind of melon, and a third that is a terrifying green something.  Don’t drink the green one.

One of the cool things about the itinerary of this particular trip is that it kind of follows The Odyssey.  Last night, we passed through the Straights of Messina, which, in myth, is known as the passage between Scylla and Charybdis.  That’s a story that everyone knows pretty well.  It’s the origin of the phrase “between a rock and a hard place”.  Of course Odysseus didn’t get to chart a course between the two monsters.  Even after choosing Scylla, Poseidon pushed Odysseus’s ship into Charybdis because he’s a dick.  Also because Odysseus poked the eye out of one of his sons Polyphemus and bragged about it, but mostly because he and most of the Greek gods can be real dicks sometimes.

Early on in his trip Odysseus found himself on the island of Aeolus.  With after a little sweet talkin’ Aeolus, god of the winds, decided to help Odysseus get home.  He bundled all of the difficult winds into a bag and gave it to Odysseus with strict instructions not to open the bag.  Naturally, just when Ithaca is in sight, Odysseus’s crew opens the bag while he’s taking a nap and get themselves blown all the way back to the Tyrrhenian Sea.  Moral: don’t nap near untrustworthy people.

Tomorrow I head off for Sorrento, which means the Sirens, Circe, and the Cyclops!  Also the Neapolitan Archeological Museum, but that’s neither here nor there.