A TRADERS' MONTH IN SICILY🇮🇹

Cosa Nostra, Volcano's, and Grilled Intestines. Sicily has something for everyone.

Over the next 12 months I’ll be slow-travelling around the world with my family while working and trading. I’m very grateful that our ‘job’ gives many of us the opportunity to do this, so I thought it would be interesting to note down some thoughts along the way, which may hold some nuggets for other traders, or people considering to do something similar. As always, reach out if you’ve got any questions, or you can unsubscribe here.

Sicily. The largest Island in the Mediterranean, it has been occupied by various powers, including the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, and Spaniards over the centuries. This mix has left a cultural and architectural legacy that makes the island unique, from Greek temples and Roman amphitheatres to Norman cathedrals and Arabic architecture. It really is a ‘melting pot’. But it is neither Italian nor Greek. It is unapologetically, and proudly, Sicily.

LOCAL EXCHANGE:

No (Legal) exchanges in Sicily.

TIMEZONE:

GMT + 1 – CENTRAL EUROPEAN TIME

10 hours behind AEST.

Got to be honest, this timezone really sucks for trading the Aussie / Asian session.

Difficult to get into any kind of groove. I’m an early to bed/early to rise kind of guy, so the midnight / 1am Australian market open was really tough. Couple of hours of sleep, interrupted by screens, then a few more hours. Able to see the entirety of the UK / US sessions, however felt like a zombie through the day much of the time.

CONNECTIVITY:

I was warned by a globetrotting friend of mine about Italian internet, and Sicily didn’t disappoint. I demanded a new modem on day 2 of our stay. The telecommunications company came out and replaced it, then excitedly showed me how the new modem was performing at 10Mbps downloads and 2Mbps uploads. Couldn’t even video call on those speeds, and ended up using my 5g network for most internet related tasks.

BROKER AVAILABILITY:

No issues with any brokers.

SAFETY:

The land of the Mafia, where it’s estimated ~80% of businesses still pay protection money, surprisingly felt very safe. Like any major city, in Palermo I wouldn’t be leaving my phone lying around, but the tourist beach town where we stayed for the majority of our stay (Marina Di Ragusa) felt incredibly safe to the point that we just let the kids roam free on their bikes most days.

FOOD:

The way we’ve decided to ingratiate/immerse ourselves in the culture of each country we live in is through Food & Drink. We cook local recipes every day, and try to eat and drink like the locals do. It’s a tough job.

So our staples at home were antipasto, and homemade pizza, and pasta. The great thing about these foods is that are no limits to what you can do with them…and we tried virtually everything. But the Sicilians keep it simple.

Sicily has historically been quite a poor region, so the core ingredients of most of their dishes are things like eggplant (eg Parmigiana, Caponata), Olive Oil, or anything from the sea, particularly Anchovies, Sardines, and Mussels.

Every variety of Panini’s (including plenty of Cavallo (Horse)) were commonplace, along with every variation of Pizza (Schiacciata, Involtino, Calzone, Empanate, Focaccia, Pizze, Pizzette). Supermarkets and Deli’s are next level, with walls of every type of cheese and cured meat possible. I felt like I was a kid in a candy store.

Modica is renowned worldwide for its’ Chocolate and certainly didn’t disappoint (although I’m convinced the ‘secret’ is simply not mixing in the sugar properly. Gleaming crystals of sugar fill every block). Gelato and Cannoli are also everywhere.

Palermo offered more acquired tastes, with a strong showing of grilled offal (Intestines, Spleen, Stomach etc), topped with salt and a wedge of lemon, which I absolutely loved. Pane con la Milza, Stigghiola, and Panelle were standouts.

Oh yeah, and Arrancini is life.

DRINK:

Beers: Peroni, and Birra Messina (my favourite).

Sicily has 2 wine regions; Sicily, and Etna (referring to the vineyards around the volcano Mount Etna, which has incredibly rich soil for growing wine). The main varieties we drank were Nero d’Avola, Grillo, and Inzolia, which all seemed pretty good quality to us.

Coffee was excellent as you would expect. Could never stomach expresso’s / macchiato’s when in Australia…it’s now my morning drug of choice (complemented with a Chocolate ‘Cornetto’ or Brioche, of course).

COST OF LIVING:

Despite the shock of going from paying MAXIMUM ~$10-$20 for a local restaurant meal with drinks for 4 people in Asia, to $100-$250 for a nice meal in Sicily, we found the overall cost of living reasonable.

We paid ~$1600 for a month in a 3 Bedroom Holiday apartment in Marina Di Ragusa, which is a tourist town on the southern coast of Sicily. As always included Wifi, Electicity, Water, etc.

Groceries were cheap (opposite to Bali), possibly because the island is a massive food bowl, the vast majority of produce in supermarkets is proudly made locally, and catered to locals. Driving around the island, vast farms as far as the eye can see.

For our first large ‘Stock Up’ shop when we arrived, we were expecting a few hundred dollars for a trolley full of food - this came in ~€80, including a few bottles of wine, a bottle of Gin and a few beers!

The price of alcohol really was a shock coming from Australia. 80% of wines in the supermarket less than €3, Large Bottles of Beer ~€1, 700ml Basic Spirits ~€12 Euro. One of the main things I’ll struggle with coming back to Australia will be paying more for a pot of beer / glass of wine, than for an entire bottle of (admittedly) table wine or 750ml tallie of beer, in the local restaurants here.

Coffee was pretty much a standard €1 for expresso, €1.70 for Latte / Cappucino everywhere.

We also rented a car for the final week, which cost ~$200.

VISAS

Italy is part of the Schengen area in the EU, which allows Australians three months of access to all participating countries. If you wish to stay longer, you’ll need to leave the area for three months (Ukraine is nice this time of year) and then return.

Personally, I’m counting on the approval of my Italian spousal Visa application. Otherwise, I’m planning on heading to South America to eat meat with

Jordan 🇦🇺

for 3 months solo, then head back, possibly divorced.

MUST-HAVE APP:

Google Translate, Chat GTP, Google Maps.

QUICK FIRE CLOSING COMMENTS:

• The South of Sicily where we stayed the majority of the trip is nice, but only comes alive with tourists June - August, and nothing different from beach towns you can find all over the world. Weather was also very patchy. If you’re a windsurfer, would be amazing however.

• People are polite, but in my experience, similar to Italian & the French in general. They have no desire to cater to your lack of understanding the Italian language.

• Every home has a Moka pot. Italians know their coffee. Life changing utensil for coffee at home.

• Wish we spent more time in Palermo. Impressive architecture, and loved the energy and buzz of the city (perhaps this was partly because we had spent a month in a largely unoccupied tourist town prior…). Food was a highlight - I’m one of those sicko’s who loves trying new foods so the grilled Intestines, Lung, Spleen etc Street Food that Palermo is famous for was right up my alley.

• Forced to bypass Corleone, as it was a Monday (everything was shut) and had to settle for drinking ‘Corleone’ wine instead, but the ‘No Mafia’ museum in Palermo was excellent, and left me walking away with an entirely new (non-hollywood) insight into the brutality of the organisation. P.S - I asked our AirBNB host why most of the vast windfarms on Sicily appeared not to be working - his answer surprised me. This may have something to do with it - For over a decade, investigators have found links between Sicily’s Mafia and wind parks. The most famous arrest was that of Sicilian businessman Vito Nicastri, known as the “King of the Wind,”. Just another reason to question the renewables cult.

• Hike the North (the South is closer to Catania and so filled with tour buses) side of Mt Etna, one of the oldest and most active volcanos in the world. This was an absolute highlight. Also said to be the place where Zeus trapped the deadly monster Typhon.

• Something I learnt last time the Iti family visted in Australia; the pasta we import / produce is rubbish. We were forced to drive to 4 Supermarkets / Deli’s before we found the ‘right’ type of pasta in Brisbane. Plenty of videos around on this, but essentially you need to look for the pasta with the longest cooking time. Could definitely taste the difference cooking pasta dishes 4-5x per week in Sicily.

• Beautiful baroque mountain villages dot the countryside all over South-Eastern Sicily in particular, given they were all rebuilt following a catastrophic earthquake in 1693. These are seriously impressive to visit, and not only for the historic churches (Noto, Scicli, Ragusa to name a few). But for me, the seaside villages of Ortigia, and Cefalu in particular take the cake and would be top of my recommendations for anyone with Sicily on thier bucket list.

Onto Greece🇬🇷. Ciao.

Marto