Our tiny car came to a screeching halt on the one-lane road clinging to the side of a mountain.  Dozens of cows and bulls, their horns and hooves glinting in the late morning sun, were being herded to pasture by a grizzled old man and a mangy dog, yapping commands to keep the bovine in line.  There was little we could do but crawl along behind the parade, admiring rumps and gracefulness of stride. 

For weeks, we’d been admiring the ancient town of Erice long distance, as it’s solidly perched at more than 2,500 feet on the tip of a mountain, towering over western Sicily.  Its location, however, did little to repel invaders throughout history:  Elymians, Greeks, Arabs, and Normans all came and went, leaving cultural and architectural marks on this stunning peak. Hercules was a fan of Erice, as were Venus and Aeneas.  The road to Erice is quite steep and very narrow, full of hairpin twists and turns, making me re-think my planned wine intake with lunch.

We parked our little rental car at the base of town, grateful she was manual drive, although only providing enough juice to scale the side of the mountain when the AC was off.  The Sicilian sun, as always, was relentless as we walked to the top of Erice in search of its heart and soul.  Views of the Tyrrhenian Sea, a beckoning periwinkle blue, were visible round every corner, the tangy air tasting of salt and stone.

Incredibly well preserved, the miniscule town is a highly sophisticated work of art.  The entire maze of Medieval streets are cobbled in matching stones carved in highly intricate detail and polished to a sheen by hundreds and hundreds of years of sun, salt and foot and hoof traffic.  In proper Roman Catholic fashion, Erice boasts more than 60 churches, many of them significant. 

But on this Sunday, my hunger was more in the realm of the physical.

We made a quick stop into famed Pasticerria Maria Grammatica.  Its namesake was orphaned during WWII, entering Erice’s convent at the age of 11.  She trained as a baker’s apprentice, learning the ancient art of conventual pastry making. Fifteen years later, she left her habit behind and started her own small workshop.  A specialty, St. Agatha cakes, are shaped like breasts and filled with cream; honoring the Christian girl who was tortured by pagans, her breasts torn off with pincers.  Twisted and wrong, the cakes were nonetheless delicious.

We slid into high backed chairs for an elegant late lunch on a porch overlooking the sea.  Waiters in black coats floated from table to table, attending to multi-generational families taking Sunday lunch together.  Busiate, thick, twisted ribbons of Durum wheat pasta, were tossed with eggplant, basil, mint, garlic and ground almonds, a special Sicilian pesto from the town of Trapani, and served family style on bright red ceramic platters.  Grilled tuna and swordfish hauled onto the docks below were lavished with local, green oil and fresh herbs and washed down with special edition Moretti beer that drank like fine Belgian ale.  A well-fed cat sat at my feet, greedily accepting hunks of fish skin from my fingers, slick with the fine oil.  Upon departing, we stopped into the kitchen to offer the chef our hearty thanks.  He smiled, preening for a photo while thinly slicing fish crudo for the dinner service.