The Local Way to Mondello Bay

Audrey Vinkenes, this one’s for you:

If you ask Google Maps how to get to Mondello Beach from Cafe Latino, it will tell you to walk down Via Vittorio Emanuele to Via Roma, cross past the corner that always smells of horse urine (which is not a detail Google seems to care about or track). Then, cross the street, turn either left or right, and take the 101 or 102 bus north to the stop just outside Giannettino, the little food stall on Liberta' Notarbartolo. From there, get on any 806 bus to Mondello. This will absolutely get you to the beach, but if you follow these directions, especially just after the high schools get out for the summer, you will arrive at Notarbartolo and see at least 37 other tourists standing around, waiting for the 806 in shorts, flip-flops, sunglasses, and overstuffed backpacks. When the 806 arrives, every seat will already be taken by locals, and your children will need to stand or be held for the 45-minute ride - and the bus will get more and more crowded with people and things, more and more uncomfortable with proximity, and hotter and hotter with bodies at every stop. Italians love children, but they will not give up their seats for a mother holding a two-year-old, and people standing in the space marked for buggies will not move out of the way for an actual buggy. Any parents in this situation, particularly Germans and Australians, will get visibly and vocally frustrated, and the Sicilians will not care. At some point during the trip, at least two teenagers in the back will start playing tinny dance music through their phones or bluetooth speakers; a few of their friends will start vaping, knowing that the conductor will never come back to stop them because he - and all the conductors we saw were men - can't get through the mass of bodies crowding on the bus hurtling towards the cool beach breeze.

The better thing to do is to have an adorable five-year-old who wants to learn Italian. Make some flash cards of words that the five-year-old is interested in - ambulanza, macchina della polizia, impalcatura - and, while standing with him on the 102, go through the cards to distract him from the fact that he is standing on a bus, which he hates. Do it quietly, and, if anyone else looks at you, smile at them. An Indian guy next to you may ask if you are going to the spiaggia; say si, and he will suggest that you get off with him, this is the stop. Google Maps says he is wrong, but he is insistent.

And it is actually not your stop. You will get suspicious, and keep your wits about you as you follow him across two blocks, past a vacant lot, in generally the right direction but just...a bit off. He will say very little until you turn onto Via Alfonso Borelli, which spits you out onto a large square, all pavement and plants, and you see the statue of Francesco Crispi that you passed before, on the way to the Giardino Inglese, and his reticence may be that he doesn't speak much English, or it could be more sinister. You look at the back of his neck, thinking of the violence you could inflict upon him if your family is threatened. But then he will walk with you to what is actually a bus stop, and explain that it is the inizio de the bus. The 806 will arrive, completely and totally empty, ready to start its journey, and you will line up with him and a handful of others, all speaking Italian or Hindi, and join them on the extraordinarily empty seats in the back. You will ask, and he will confirm, that he works on the beach, with a hundred other Indians, selling food, trinkets, blankets, bluetooth speakers - a low-paying job that must, somehow, be worth it to him, must allow him to send something back home to a family who are worse off than he is here, but now better-off because of his labors than their neighbors. When the seats are full, the bus starts up, drives ten meters, makes a right, drives another ten meters, and you recognize that you are at the same exact stop in front of Giannettino with all of the Germans and Australians, who will grumble as they stand. When your savior gets off near Mondello, you grazie him a mille, and promise, in your mind, to buy whatever he is selling if you ever see him again, but you never see him again, which makes you sad.

You use his route to the beach for the rest of your stay - and, luckily, you have almost a month left. Twice, you see other families waiting with small children, and you try to tell them to come around the corner to the beginning of the line, but both times they demur, they look at their Google, they say "it’s fine, we will wait here," suspicious, not trusting a stranger, and then a few minutes later, when you are sitting with your beautiful family, with leg room to spare, even with your four bags and butterfly nets and arrancini in greasy paper bags, and they are standing, you will make eye contact with the fathers and they will look quickly away, perhaps ashamed at the discomfort that their distrust has caused their children.

And now the 806 crawls along Via della Libertà until Piazza Vittorio Veneto, with its Statua della Libertà in the huge empty circle, and then up Via dell'Artigliere to the most complicated intersection in Palermo. A teenage girl gets on with her friends; she sees Nick and gasps and says, "ciao, bello," and spends the rest of the trip sneaking glances at him, trying to touch his hand to get him to smile, which he does, readily, because he likes girls. Once you get through the intersection, it is as if the bus has released its brake; it shoots up Viale Diana and then suddenly there is a campground and scrub and you are in the dry Sicilian countryside. The brush is dense, and tinder-dry, and, on the right, Monte Pellegrino rises so steeply that you can't see the top from the bus windows, even if you press your face to the glass. You continue on, cruising now, until the road opens up again into residential neighborhoods, and the first stop in the vicinity of Mondello comes. Two or three beach-bound tourists will get off, thinking it is the beach, not knowing that they will now have to walk five more blocks to see the sand. You'll go around Piazza Valdesi, then up Viale Principe di Scalea, one block from the beach, a stop every block or two, until the very last stop on Via Teti. You'll be the only one to call back into the bus and thank the driver, who will look up, smile, and wave, not used to appreciation from his passengers. Marcello will meet you on his scooter, walk you to your umbrella, give your kids a treat, and then shake your hand; as he turns, he will see someone he needs to talk to, and you'll see him shaking hands up and down the beach like a politician. The people he knows, having seen him with you, will look over and nod and smile, and you think that you might now have people here, a community. For the rest of the day, if you make eye contact with someone, your default will be a familiar smile and a nod, which will always serve you well.

After a few trips, the beach routine will be established. The stuff is dropped between the two chairs, the backpacks are opened, and the tote bags - one each for bathing suits, sunscreen and beach toys, water bottles and snacks - will be hung up on the very convenient hooks under the umbrella. A quick trip to the changing room, which is pitch black compared to the million suns of the sand, and then the slathering of sunscreen, with a 15-minute timer set; the boys will play in the sand, and then, when the timer goes off, there's a race to the water, a quick splash, and then the unrestricted play of youth.

Once settled, there would be one or two hours before lunch, and then we would go to Le Lunette Mondello, getting a Caprese sandwich for Alice, a sausage and chips sandwich for Daniel and Nick to share, and a couple arancini for me. Because the beach chair rental place had a "no outside food" policy, we would take the food to the edge of the water and eat it there, throwing any crumbs to the fish or the birds. There would be an hour to digest, and then we might rent a paddle boat for the kids from the family that ran the first stand south on the beach. They would remember that Daniel was insistent on having a life jacket, and Nick would give them high-fives, and they would tell us we had an hour, but would pat me on the shoulder to let me know that they were flexible. We would paddle out, me and Daniel on the paddles, or Daniel and Alice, and look at everything we could see that was fascinating. We’d go to the pier, and then the docks, and circle around the teenagers who had stopped their boats to dive. When we returned, the men would make a big production about Daniel and Nick getting back from a voyage, and there would be the shaking of hands until the prossima, and we would walk back to our umbrella.

Then I would go for a long swim. The water at Mondello is the clearest water I have ever seen, perhaps matched only by Pereybere in Mauritius. I would wade out to my waist, then turn around to wave to Daniel, who would be watching me from just past the waterline, amazed that I could do something so brave. I would flip my goggles down, start my watch, wave again, and then fall forward, feeling the sea suck me in. I'd crawl out 20 meters, around the most adventurous paddlers, then turn right, down toward the giant restaurant on the pier, and then start really swimming.

Because it was so clear, I could see four or five meters to the bottom, which was mostly white sand, with occasional dark spots of seaweed bubbling over with fish. Because it was so clear, and the sand was not rocky, not dirty, I saw everything. Once, from the paddle-boat we rented, I saw a flash of light that was not quite natural; later, I swam back to the spot fifty meters from shore and dove down and found a pearl earring, fallen from an empty ear. I found friendship bracelets dropped by the sellers who plied the waterfront, one of which I have on my right wrist right now, its rainbow coloring a reminder of the Sicilian sunsets. Once, swimming past the restaurant, I saw something almost human floating in the water, swaying with each passing wave. Getting closer, I saw that it was a pair of Levi's, the cuffs bobbing at the top of the water, the waist weighed down by a leather belt, the pockets empty. I pulled the belt off and let the jeans float away. On that southern side of the bay, there is a giant sandbar rising up fifty meters from shore that is so shallow that you could stand up and the water would only go to mid-calf; I took the belt to the sandbar to examine it, then wrapped it around my waist. North-west of Mondello, there is a ridge of high, steep mountains, so steep that only a few roads switchback up their feet a bit and then end, as if defeated by the brutality of the Sicilian stone. While I was standing on that sandbar, a belt incongruously wrapped around my waist above my Speedos, I looked up to see the beach and the mountains. Clouds were pouring over the tops in a rapid stream, floating like a waterfall down the rock face, and then disappearing into the air. I took my goggles off, not fully understanding, and even without the goggles I saw that yes, the clouds were appearing over the mountains, then disappearing into nothingness. I could only reason that they were coming off of the cool Mediterranean or Atlantic, then, as soon as they got over the mountains, the Sicilian heat caused them to instantaneously dissipate. I watched for probably ten minutes, stunned by nature, and then swam back, past the jetty with the restaurant, listening to children playing among the pylons. When I got back to our AirBNB, I cut the buckle off the belt with a chef knife and attached it to my own Amish belt from Eli Miller, which is where it is now, reminding me every day of the way the clouds evaporated in the heat.

I found other things at Mondello. Walking back to the bus, I found two clippings of jade plants on the sidewalk; I looked around, and there were no jade plants anywhere else, so someone must have tugged them off of a plant, brought them to that point, and dropped them. It reminded me of my first real girlfriend ever, who worked for a congresswoman in California, canvassing door-to-door. One day, she was having a really tough time, and she got to one home with a friendly family who said they would support her candidate. She noticed a huge jade plant, and asked if she could take a branch to grow to remind her that there were good people in the world; that was the first time I had ever heard of propagating plants from clippings. She kept it alive for years; I wonder if it is still alive now, 27 years later. I hadn’t thought of her in years. I picked the clippings up from the sidewalk, put them in my water bottle, and brought them back to Edinburgh, where they are growing on my windowsill.

And Mondello provided some challenges. Back in 2001, Patagonia was just getting a purchase on the small, private liberal arts college market, and a few people had Patagonia clothes. In the spring, my suite had a party; when I woke up in the morning, and went to the bathroom, I saw that someone had torn apart a small pile of beef jerky and left it on the top of the toilet. I looked behind the closed door and saw a Patagonia jacket on a towel hook, perhaps from the jerky shredder. Nobody ever came back to reclaim either of these items, and I was a vegetarian, so I kept the jacket, and still have it; I don't know what happened to the beef jerky. Later, I somehow came across this video of a man who had bought some Patagonia board shorts and then kept repairing them until they were like the Ship of Theseus.

And in 2012, ahead of a family reunion in Mauritius, I got a pair of Patagonia board shorts to swim in. In 2022, they ripped really badly, so I repaired them; the fabric felt delicate, though, and I knew they would be damaged again. I brought them to Italy, and, on a swim in Mondello, they ripped again - a huge gash down the butt, obscene in virtually every culture. I brought them to a tailor in Palermo, who said that it would take a week to repair - she was absurdly busy. I wanted someone in Palermo to repair them, but that meant that I would not be able to swim...without another swimsuit.

So I went to a sporting goods store just north of Parco Piersanti Mattarella. Growing up, the stereotype was that Europeans and Australians wore Speedos, while Americans wore more conservative shorts; I thought, "I am never going to be able to do this again," and, almost in Rome, I got my first pair of swimming briefs. I never actually wore the shorts again; while Europeans wore far more shorts than Speedos, the briefs were easier to swim in, and that made the difference. The board shorts now have a beautiful blue-and-white piece of Sicilian fabric covering the tear, and, while I want to wear them, the sky-blue briefs really are nicer in the water.

On the last day of our stay, we went to Mondello. I started my swim, and was immediately diverted by something that looked like a robot face on the bottom of the bay. I dove down, and pulled up a combination mask/snorkel that turned out to be just the right size for me; someone must have dropped it off the side of a boat. I looped my own goggles around my wrist and put the snorkel mask on, and decided to just go as fast as I could, able to power through and breathe hard without turning my head. I found another pearl earring on that swim, and, at lunch, bought two litres of white vino sfuso, some of which was consumed and some of which was brought back to Edinburgh and turned into white wine vinegar. I sent the first earring to my sister and the second to Bianca; Bianca's package was stolen, so she didn't get the 1930s Italian school pen with its English nibs, or the Abracadabra bag from Tigota in Milan, or the friendship bracelet I found on the beach and sent to remind her that we have been friends for 25 years.

And those are the souvenirs of Mondello.