Visiting the Papyrus Museum in Syracuse, Sicily (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Papyrus Museum in Syracuse, Italy with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I wanted to be an archaeologist as a child, so I zeroed in on the Papyrus Museum in Syracuse when I saw it in our touring guide for Sicily.  I thought the museum would be full of Egyptian manuscripts.

Much to my surprise, papyrus grows along the Ciane River just outside Syracuse.  We watched an English-language film, which showed how papyrus is made along with its many other uses.  The other uses of papyrus are what truly fascinated me in the museum.

Papyrus can be used to make baskets, sandals, ropes, mats, and boats.  The film said you could even eat papyrus if you wanted, but did not detail how to cook it.  I thought papyrus baskets could be used for cooking in the same way that Native Americans have used baskets for cooking.  You can place porridge or water in a basket along with rocks that have been heat in a fire to cook food or boil water.

The Museum houses papyrus boats that look like kayaks from Lakes Tana and Zwai (Ethiopia) and Lake Chad (Chad).  The Museum displayed the boats with paddles, but they looked sturdy enough for an outboard motor I thought.

In Syracuse, papyrus paper began to be produced in the 18^th century.  The film showed how strips of wet papyrus were laid down vertically on a cotton cloth in overlapping layers.   Once the first layer was placed over the cotton another layer of strips was laid on it horizontally.  The papyrus paper was then pressed down with a weight to flatten it as it dried.

The Papyrus Museum displays the equipment for making paper in addition to Egyptian papyrus paper fragments.  There are also reproductions of Egyptian paintings depicting the manufacture of papyrus paper that are beautifully illuminated by the tall windows on the Bay of Syracuse outside.

Parking for the Museum is limited.  Tourists should park in one of the city’s huge garages and take a taxi or bus to the museum.  Along with the Papyrus Museum, there is also a Pupi Museum about Sicilian puppets located nearby.

Photos of a papyrus paper press and plant with wet papyrus strips are below.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Using Sicilian Etiquette and Culinary Knowledge in Sicily by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Using Sicilian Etiquette and Culinary Knowledge in Sicily by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

One of the most enjoyable parts of my visit to Sicily was going to the i Ruderi Restaurant for Seafood in Acireale.

I used Alba Alotta’s La Cucina Siciliana di Mare seafood cookbook to learn about regional specialties.  (There are 400 recipes in this cookbook!)  I felt confident about ordering in restaurants, because I had also read Mary Tyler Simeti’s Pomp and Sustenance: Twenty-Five Centuries of Sicilian Food and Giuliano Bugialli’s Foods of Sicily and Sardinia and the Smaller Islands prior to my Sicilian trip.

Researching Italian food before visiting is a good idea, because Italian restaurants tend to offer what is fresh that day even if they have a printed menu.  The day’s offerings are either presented orally or the restaurant guest says what they would like and the waiter tells you what they have.

My reading of Italian cookbooks, particularly those of Marcella Hazan and Claudia Roden, has taught me that the order of an Italian meal follows this pattern typically:

-Aperitivo – hors d’oeuvre

-Primi – first course that is typically a pasta dish

-Secondi – meat, fish, or chicken

-Contorni – a vegetable dish that is served alongside the secondi

The waiters spoke English, but they let me order in Italian.  The menu for our first meal included:

-Aperitivi – Fried shrimp, arancini (deep fried cheese balls with a ground rice crust), and caponata made from chopped vegetables like eggplant and tomatoes served on toast with olive oil drizzled on it.

-Primi – Spaghetti with clams in white wine sauce, another Sicilian specialty.  This dish was served on a large, deep serving platter with enough food for my husband and I to have two helpings.  I liked the Baroque serving utensil, which was a pair of tongs with a flat, bottom size and a top side that looked like a lyre.

Being able to swirl spaghetti on a flat plate with your fork to eat it without the aid of a spoon is a skill like eating with chopsticks.  I am glad I have both skills.

-Secondi – Next came a grilled fishplate made up of swordfish fillet, shrimp, fish sausage, and a whole grilled fish that was the catch of the day.  (Swordfish is caught off the shores of eastern Sicily, particularly at Syracuse.  Tuna is the specialty of western Sicily.)  The waiter presented the seafood and fish to us before filleting the whole fish for us.  I squirted the fish with soft-skinned lemons and thought I was queen for the day.

We drank a white wine called Inzolia with our meal.  It was dry and fruity.  It made me think of a wine that might grow in volcanic soil made from centuries of lava and ash.

We ate lemon sorbet for dessert and ate homemade rolls to go with the dressing on the arugula salad that came with the grilled fish.  The bill for this meal was 60 Euros and included a bottle of water.  The meal was memorable and encouraged us to come back.

I went through La Cucina Siciliana di Mare looking for a different pasta dish to try at i Ruderi.  I thought spaghetti al sugo di gamberi looked good.  This is shrimp with a sauce enriched by cooking it with shrimp shells to give it punch.

When I asked for it, the waiter said they did not have it.  He suggested spaghetti with frutti di mare (seafood pasta), and I readily accepted.  This dish turned out to be a ritzy seafood dish of scampi, crab, clams and small shrimp with an enriched sauce as well.   The only other place where I have eaten such succulent seafood is coastal South Carolina where I spent my summers as a child.

We had the same grilled fish platter with Inzolia wine.  The fish was excellent again.  I Ruderi serves beautiful food in a beautiful décor.   The restaurant is large and has room for small parties and groups.   It is a spot that is worth the visit, as my touring guide of Sicily would say.

i Ruderi

Via Madonna della Grazie 104

95024, Acireale, Sicily, Italy

A photo of the grilled seafood and fish dish is below.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Sicilian Car Stories (Italy) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Sicilian Car Stories (Italy) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


We were lucky to have a car in Sicily.  The rental agency in Catania had a problem with our reservation and would not give us a car.

This left us stranded at the airport and forty miles away from our hotel.   The lesson here is that you should always have cab fare no matter what your age.  It took us about two days to straighten out the car situation, but we finally obtained a rental car.

Once we had the car, we immediately set out along the coast towards Messina.  The road was bumpy, because it was paved with volcanic rock from Mount Etna, which towered over us with permanent clouds over its central crater.

We learned Sicilian car etiquette and navigating nuances along the way:

-1 honk = get moving faster…right now

-2 honks = a car will appear turning right or left out of nowhere…right now

-Headlights being turned on in oncoming traffic = I’m turning across you lane right now

-Tiny cars = two cars in a lane built for one car, especially leading into traffic circles

-GPS includes directions for dead ends and former donkey paths in medina mazes in towns located on top of rock outcroppings

-GPS does not include road closures due to fallen boulders

-Parking is reserved for residents in downtown areas – tourist parking is downhill and far away unless you are a tourist bus

Even after we had learned these principles of Sicilian car etiquette, we still had mishaps.  We drove to Taormina to see the Teatro Greco and the GPS sent us through the narrow streets of the pedestrian-only downtown and up to the gate of the Teatro Greco.  We got a tour of Taormina that taxis and tour buses cannot replicate.  We found “the big road” as soon as the police began following us.

The second mishap occurred in Syracuse at the Papyrus Museum on Ortygia Island.  (Papyrus grows outside of Syracuse in addition to locations in Africa.)  We found a parking spot and did not see the very small, obscurely located sign that said the parking spots were reserved for residents.  The sign was written in Italian.

We discovered all of this after visiting the Papyrus Museum when we returned to the empty spot where our car had been.  I also discovered that I could read and speak Italian in emergency situations.  We managed to get a call into the police to find out where the car was, get a taxi, and pay a fine to liberate our car.

Our third car mishap introduced us to the maze-like urban planning of the Arabs, who had once ruled Sicily.  Maze-like medinas were built for house-to-house defense and fighting.  This third car adventure led us to the interior town of Enna, which is located on top of a rock outcropping.  GPS directions here send you up and down steep streets and hairpin turns.

Once we had made it up to the town, we found a parking spot by Enna’s Castello Lombardia and were happy to exit town via a wide road that was built for tour buses.  Halfway down the road, we discovered that the road was closed due to fallen boulders and work on the retaining walls.  The GPS did not reroute us when we turned around, but gave us directions for the same road.

We returned back up the road we had taken and were finally rerouted.  We could not return the way we came into town, because the streets were narrow, one-way lanes.

The GPS led us into a funnel-shaped, former donkey path that was a dead end.  I knew the people who had garages there drove Smart cars and Vespas.  We had trouble turning around and the side mirrors struck house walls when we tried to squeeze back out.

While I was directing angle plays to get the car turned around, two Sicilian men arrived and heads began to pop out of doorways and windows.  The men took over the geometric directions and pushed the side mirrors to sides of the car.  My husband proceeded to drive out of the passage with one centimeter of space on either side of the car.

We profusely thanked our rescuers and set out for the town square with the directions the men gave us in Italian.  (I was learning quickly.)  We watched where all the traffic was going and made our way down the hairpin turns of the rock outcropping.  I was ready for a reposo (nap).

Vertiginous views from Taormina follow.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Prague, Czech Republic with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Prague, Czech Republic with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

“We won’t be in the Euro Zone in Prague,” I remarked to my husband as we set out from our Bavarian inn toward the Czech Republic.  I had forgotten how easy it is to exchange money in countries seeking tourism.

On all the back roads we took into Prague, I marveled at GPS technology and the orderly countryside that would make a Midwestern American farmer happy.  Some buildings remain to be repaired, but I felt that the towns and villages adorned with flowers were making things nice for their inhabitants as well as potential tourists.  Czech restaurants with Czech-only signs appeared along the way with families out for a weekend lunch.  Gas stations with gas advertised at 325 Czech Korunas per liter dotted the road

We found parking one block down from the Charles Bridge.  The large avenues with trees reminded me of Boulevard Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris.  The streets were clean, but I felt the buildings would be even more stunning with cleaning.  The towering Baroque architecture in town was built to keep you in line with the Catholic faith and not to be tempted by deviations from it.

What is true of the architecture is also true of the statues on the Charles Bridge over the Vltava River.  The Bridge is named after King Charles (1316 – 1378) with work beginning on it in 1357.  Various guidebooks say that passing the religious statues on the Charles Bridge is akin to making a pilgrimage.  The statues are darkened with wear by the elements and pollution.  If they were cleaned, Pont Alexandre III in Paris would have some competition as the most dramatic bridge in the world.

The base of the statue of Saint John of Nepomuk (1345 – 1393) has a shiny spot on the brass where people touch it.  Legend according to tour guides is that you will one day return to Prague if you do this like throwing a coin in the Trevi Fountain in Rome.  Another online legend says you might have a wish granted for rubbing that statue.  A Czech woman we spoke with said you would not get sick for a year if you rubbed that spot.

After a walk amidst artists, buskers, and tourists, we found a nice restaurant outside the towers on Mostecka Street called Pod Vezi. The restaurant serves lunch specials and dinner throughout the day.  I had bresaola and pork loin while my husband had potato soup and spaghetti.  We both had apple cheesecake for dessert.  The food was excellent and so was the service; we had three waiters taking care of us.

We dodged tour buses, trams, and motorcycles and climbed winding roads on the mountains outside of downtown with a shift-gear car as we left town.  The countryside is amazingly close to the sophistication of downtown Prague.  The music on the radio was good even if we could not understand it.  The music accompanied us back to Bavaria, where we would enjoy a Pils beer from the Czech Republic and watch World Cup Soccer on a Fourth of July Weekend.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Sun Dial House - Laurent Paget Photography

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Visiting Amiens Cathedral in Picardy, France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Amiens Cathedral in Picardy, France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 


On the way back from Arras (France), which we had visited during Memorial Day weekend, my husband and I stopped in Amiens to visit the Cathedral.

Notre Dame d’Amiens is twice as large as Notre Dame de Paris.  The Cathedral was built between 1220 and 1269.  Its architectural symmetry is pleasing to the eye.

You have to walk up to the Cathedral on steps with platforms at fifteen or so steps.  Each platform requires you to turn at a ninety-degree angle to a new set of steps before you reach the Cathedral plaza.

The platforms would be good places for jugglers, clowns, people who do handstands and walk on their hands, and Amiens’ own marionettes featuring Lafleur, who does not like to work.

The Cathedral’s interior nave features a six-sided labyrinth at its center. I have seen labyrinths at the cathedrals at Chartres (floor) and at Poitiers (wall), but the one at Amiens could be displayed while still making room for chairs at services.

Putting chairs around the labyrinth incorporates the labyrinth into the life of the people as a way to do a symbolic pilgrimage after mass.  Picardy is remote.  Expenses would have kept most parishioners from doing a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella, Rome, or Jerusalem.  The day that we visited a family was walking the labyrinth, keeping the tradition alive.

There are symmetrical geometric designs that run the length of the nave.  Geometry as is illustrated in the Carnet de Villard de Honnecourt XIII Siecle edited by Alain Erlande-Bendenburg et al formed the design foundation of the Gothic architecture and sculpture as it did in the Renaissance.  The difference between the Gothic and the Renaissance lies in the fact that the Renaissance artists knew about musculature and the skeleton and could render life-life images using perspective.  This knowledge especially affected the treatment of clothing in the two periods.

As we left the Cathedral, rain set in.  Everything became dark and dank.  It was easy to understand how a beautiful Cathedral could become the focal point of a agricultural-turned-industrial community.  Notre Dame d’Amiens will always be a draw for locals and tourists alike.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting the Chateau du Haut-Koenigsbourg in Alsace (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Chateau du Haut-Koenigsbourg in Alsace (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg in Alsace, France is a fort and not a palace, which requires much steep climbing to visit: be forewarned.

German rulers beginning with Frederick von Hohenstaufen in the 12^th  century have used this mountaintop location to survey the wheat and wine road (running north to south) and the salt and silver road (running west to east) on the plain outside the modern town of Kintzheim.

The masonry of the holding walls along the way up to the Château reflects German construction methods rather than English and French ones.  The stones on the holding wall did not have mortar between them to hold them up like the massive stonework masonry that you find in Incan construction.  Moss and plants have grown between the cracks to form a sort of mortar.

Germanic masonry here differs from English masonry in the way that stones are laid down upon one another.  The base row of stones is covered by stones that are placed at regular intervals that fall in what appears to be at 1/5 intervals of the stone below.

The effect of this mathematical scheme on the entire wall is to see diagonal, parallel lines in the wall of German masonry.  This type of construction is very solid and could hold one side of a tunnel wall in a mountainside.

The effect of English and French masonry when you can see it under stucco is to have a series of parallel lines perpendicular to the base row of stones or bricks.  The base row is covered by stones or bricks that fall upon the base at ½ intervals.  The pressure point on the bricks is on the center and may be easier to break down for this reason.

German masonry is found on all three levels of the Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg fort.  The view from this solid perch has been in peacetime as well as in war.  Jean Renoir filmed La Grande Illusion here and used the interior as well as the exterior for shots.

The day my husband and I visited, there were two busloads of Italian schoolchildren from the Veneto region of northern Italy doing a tour.  German rulers have been very influential in the politics of Italy, which probably explained the children’s educational tour before a visit to Kintzheim’s monkey zoo and the preserve for storks, the symbolic bird of Alsace.

I somewhat envied the children’s field trip.


By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Laurent Paget Photography

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Visiting Nuremberg, Germany's National Museum with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Nuremberg, Germany's National Museum with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

You could spend a week or two just visiting each gallery once in Nuremberg’s German National Gallery.  With just a morning to devote to it, my husband and I decided to visit the Renaissance galleries.

What struck me the most was the presentation of tools such as sextants, protractors, pantographs, compasses, and globes before you could enter the painting collection. I thought this was a subtle way of explaining that technological advances set the foundation for the Renaissance style, particularly in the development of perspective painting.

Perspective painting is based on what is called the vanishing point, a point from which angles emanate to determine size in a painting.  Images are larger the further away they are from the vanishing point and smaller as they approach it.  The difference in size gives the illusion of depth or perspective in painting.  This approach differs from that of the Middle Ages where the most important person in paintings or sculpture is usually much larger than surrounding people and landscape elements like trees.

Mathematical precison was the element sought after in the Museum’s Behaim terrestrial globe (c. 1493), the oldest surviving globe in the world.  Hispaniola, where Columbus and crew landed, is very large with no North American and South America depicted.  

You could predict sea voyage lengths with an accurate globe.  Knowing this helped control lucrative trade routes that made nations rich and able to control other countries.  Globes were almost proprietary knowledge for this reason: information sharing was not an asset during this period in history.

The German Renaissance paintings in the galleries displayed a sobriety that you do not find in Italian Renaissance art.  Flemish painting was more of an influence on German Renaissance art with brown backgrounds and interiors and emphasis on detailed lacework.  Nudes by Lucas Cranach the Elder (c. 1472 – 1553) and portraits by Albrecht Dürer (1471 -1528) reflect the influence of Flanders.

This short visit whetted my desire for return visits to the German National Museum to see suits of armor, tea sets, doll houses, and German furniture, which are all in the collection.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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