Bella Sicilia

Sicily is a mess, a filthy, chaotic, mess. The Swiss-cheese streets are riddled with potholes and lined by razor-thin sidewalks that are all but impassable. Packs of stray dogs roam the squalid streets, hoping to catch a cast-off from many of the city's malodorous fish merchants. Hundreds of car horns sound from all corners of the city, the city itself is screaming. Merchants sing and and yell "Eh Bella!" loud enough to be heard over the cacophony of car horns, sirens, their fellow vendors. Sicily is over all, a mess.
And I love it.
The Arabs specifically designed the streets to be chaotic and quasi unnavigable, winding and twisting and ending unexpectedly. Even their temples are a miss-match of different architectural styles, an impressive combination of Byzantine, Gothic, and Arab styles that somehow manage to cohere and create a magnificently exotic image.Their astonishingly detailed mosaics twist and twirl into confounding knots that spiral across the ceilings and floors of every archaic temple.
Even their food is messy. Ever eaten a spleen and ricotta sandwich?  The experience is one part eating the sandwich and two parts trying to keep the spleen and shredded cheese contained within the confines of their bread..as if desperate for escape. There's not much to be said for the neatness of fried rice-balls either; I usually ended up with a hand full of rice with the actual breading now coating the front of my shirt. And no, you don't get a napkin with that. Then there are the fried potato fritters (Sicilians like their fried food). A greasy, crumbly, delicious mess that's more than worth the eminent grease stains on your jeans. Finally, the cannoli. It really requires a certain amount of skill to eat the delicate (and of course, fried) shell filled with sweetened ricotta cheese and topped with a candied orange peel. The idea is to get as little of the ricotta on your shoes as possible, a feat at which I was ill-adept. Like its food, Sicily is kind of a mess.
There's still the mafia. No existing waste-removal service. Very minimally regulated traffic (crossing the street is completely terrifying). And upon asking for a bus schedule, I recieved the response (Eh, bella, this is Sicily, okay? We dont have schedules...if you're lucky we'll be there at all!"
So thats Sicily for you. Dirty, chaotic, un-scheduled Sicily. And I love it. Cannolis and all.