Unfamiliar Familiarity

Familiar unfamiliarity is often a feature of travel.

A trip to New York turns a lifetime of television and film into reality. Manhattan becomes a walking set of “wasn’t this in…” and “isn’t that where…”. Paris and Rome carry a different kind of recognition, the inherited romanticism of the Seine or the Trevi Fountain, places we feel we already know long before we arrive.

Sydney offers those picture-postcard moments of familiarity upon first visit too. The Harbour Bridge, so often a backdrop to New Year’s Eve news stories, watched from afar while the Australians celebrate and you wait for the clock to crawl round to that mate’s house party back home. The Opera House, a view seen a thousand times and in-person, as is often the case, appearing smaller than you first imagined.

Sydney Opera House and a camera friendly seagull

But Sydney offers something else, something deeper and more disarming, particularly for a British visitor.

Not only do you hear British accents everywhere and Aussies drive on the left, but there are quieter clues too. Street names and statues regularly nod to Britain’s past. Queen Victoria in particular is everywhere, watching over parks, squares and civic buildings.

Then there are the streets themselves. Much of the architecture can feel uncannily close to home, especially on a wet day, when the light dims and the air turns heavy.

Elevated Aussie take on a terraced house

A walk along Liverpool Street (there we go again…) brings to mind Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester, a comparison that will no doubt upset several corners of the North West at once. The area around Kings Cross (oh, one more) echoes the seedier edges of Leicester Square. An evening walk after dinner in Paddington (ok, this is getting daft now…) provides an Australian take on the quaint terraces of Notting Hill.

The familiarity can become confusing, almost disorientating. Enough so that you find yourself seeking reassurance in small rituals. A pub. A pint. Australians, it turns out, do pubs exceptionally well, serving proper pints in proper glasses, often with the option of a pie, or a roast dinner alongside.

A Sydney boozer whose exterior reminded me of one you’d find at some UK seaside town.

Of course, this is not what visiting Australia is really about. But there is comfort in being on the other side of the world, in a subtropical climate and still being able to find a bacon sandwich. Familiarity, it seems, has travelled a very long way.

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Byron Bay

The sun rises above the horizon, spilling gold across the sea and over the hundreds of pilgrims gathered at the Byron lighthouse. A middle-aged Italian man begins singing the opening lines of My Girl by The Temptations. Not an obvious soundtrack for a warm, cloud-free January morning, but a welcome one nonetheless.

Long before the sun appears around 6am, the streets of this small but famous New South Wales beach town are already alive. People of all ages run, walk and cycle through the quiet roads. Being outdoors and connected to nature feels like a default setting here, something that comes up again and again, and one of the reasons Australia, and Byron Bay in particular, feels so appealing.

Byron Bay lighthouse

Early morning sunlight has well-documented health benefits. It helps switch off melatonin, boosts serotonin activity, and supports mood, emotional resilience, and metabolism. I have always been more of a morning person, but time in Byron Bay deepened that connection to rising with the sun and getting outside as soon as possible.

Back home, mornings were often something to get through rather than enjoy. Coffee drank quickly, social media checked too early, the day already half spent before it had really begun. Here, mornings feel like an invitation rather than an obligation. Nothing is waiting for me except the light.

Good weather and beautiful surroundings help, of course, but a week of this routine left me feeling noticeably more energised, more positive, and sleeping better too. I notice it most in the afternoons. The familiar slump never quite arrives.

Sunrise at Byron Bay

Beyond the beach, Byron’s neighbourhoods unfold in quiet, tree-lined streets. Weatherboard houses sit lightly on their plots, all timber and verandas. Cafés and bakeries appear almost incidentally, corners rather than destinations, serving excellent coffee and improbably good pastries to people still in flip-flops or running gear. Nothing feels overdesigned. It is interesting in the way places become beautiful when they are lived in properly.

Health and wellbeing are a constant presence here. The stereotypical Australian instinct to be active is hard to ignore, especially around the beach, where it is striking how few overweight people there seem to be. Surfing, another well-worn cliché, is everywhere, but with a far broader cast than expected. Small children, older men, young women, and the archetypal surfer bro all share the same waves with little fuss or hierarchy.

Surfers at Tallow Beach

Australia also appears to have a refreshingly relaxed relationship with class. Byron Bay is sometimes described as “posh” or “stuck up”, which likely says more about the observer than the place. Anyone familiar with the UK’s deeply ingrained class consciousness would struggle to see much of that here. Even amid the wealth of Byron, there is an air of egalitarianism that is hard to miss.

As with most great places, however, it is the natural world that truly steals the show.

Tropical birds make sounds you usually only hear in David Attenborough documentaries. Koalas sleep lazily in eucalyptus trees while tourists peer hopefully into the canopy above. The koalas barely acknowledge the attention. Curled into themselves, they sleep through the excitement, entirely uninterested in being seen.

Dolphins are visible from the coastal path, just offshore in turquoise water. Lunch at Beach is accompanied by an unexpected sighting of a pod of whales a few hundred metres out to sea, as we tuck into the ubiquitous Moreton Bay bug. No sharks during our stay, thankfully, though a tree snake, luckily non-venomous, pops out to say hello as we check in to our Airbnb.

By the time we leave Byron Bay, waking early no longer feels virtuous or productive. It simply feels normal. As though this is how days are meant to begin and life is meant to be lived.

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Rain…I don’t mind

Usually, a rainy day would put me in a bad mood. Perhaps surprising, given I come from the north of England, but it’s never something one really looks forward to, especially when travelling in the hope of sunny climes.

And yet, on this latest trip, I’ve noticed a shift in mindset. Rainy days no longer bring the same sense of mardiness they once did. Of course, they can be a welcome relief from the heat, but more importantly they feel like nature’s way of saying, have a day off.

A wet day means fewer possibilities. No long sightseeing loops, no afternoon spent lying on a beach, comatose under the sun. Instead, it gently forces your hand towards the quieter things. The life admin. The laundry. Sorting through the ridiculous number of photographs you’ve taken. Or finally sitting down and finding your rhythm with writing again.

Like life itself, even the most idyllic stretches have a gloomy day now and again. And while it’s never wise to ignore how we feel, rain has become a small reminder that time still passes, plans still shift, and there are often quiet positives to be found in moments that initially feel like a disappointment.

Sometimes, all you need is permission to slow down.

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Unfamiliar Kitchens

Eating out is one of the great joys of travel. I love food and I love trying as broad a range of things as possible, while away - ideally local and ideally seasonal. We spend a lot of time planning what and where to eat on our trips to make sure we experience the best and most authentic food a place has to offer.

Sometimes, though, it is nice to make use of the kitchen where you are staying and have a night in. A visit to the local market is always a must. It is one of the quickest ways to understand a place, its rhythms, its people, its priorities.

Then comes the kitchen itself.

A country kitchen at an Air BnB near Ragusa, Sicily.

Unfamiliar kitchens come with inevitable compromises. The blunt knife. The awful plastic chopping board, or worse, a glass one (which explains the blunt knife). An induction hob paired with a collection of pans that do not work on induction. Leftover salt and olive oil from previous guests. And, lurking at the back of the cupboard, the true heathen: balsamic glaze.

Cooking at home is an intuitive dance. Fridge to chopping board, to bin, to stove, back to the chopping board, then oven, sink, fridge again. A solid nine on Strictly. In an unfamiliar kitchen, this becomes the uncoordinated movement of a drunk uncle at a wedding. Where are the pans? Where did I put the garlic? Is this really the only knife they own?

Impatiently attempting to cook Swordfish an old outdoor grill

The fumbling intensifies if you decide to cook outside, or attempt to use an ancient wood oven. Spoilt by modern conveniences but instinctively drawn, like most men, to the primal appeal of cooking over open flames, you cannot resist. Hours are spent coaxing heat from wood and embers, trying to judge timings so that dinner does not quietly drift into midnight.

Serving presents its own challenges. No kitchen tongs. No proper serving spoon. Plates in questionable colour pallettes. Wine poured into a glass clearly designed for fizzy pop. It all pulls you out of your comfort zone, and somehow that is part of the appeal.

Once the frustration fades, you realise none of it really matters. A first-world problem, as they say. But it is a small and welcome reminder that travel is not all glamour and carefully curated feeds. Sometimes it is blunt knives, bad pans, and wine in the wrong glass. And somehow, that makes the experience richer, not poorer.

From an unfamiliar kitchen - nice ceramics and even some wine glasses, but a challenging cooking set-up

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Pandas and Poly Tunnels

Departing town and dodging Fiat Pandas making illegal, yet excruciatingly slow, turns. A BMW fails to stop at a stop sign and I am grateful to be on high alert. Cars sit double parked along the pavement, blocking a lane of traffic. However, it is apparently fine, because the hazard lights are on.

The road opens and follows the coast, with Sicily’s industrial edges, present. Bland apartment blocks rise beside littered streets. You will not find this on TikTok.

At last the autostrada arrives and we enter big sky country. The low December sun lights up the endless viaducts, each one giving a steady drumbeat under the tyres as we pass over the joins. The elevated view reveals mountains with the occasional farmhouse and its modern neighbours: wind farms, scattered across the hillsides.

The rolling hills of Southern Sicily, near Gela

The road narrows back to a single carriageway as we exit into bright light from a tunnel, carved beneath a hulking rock. Traffic slows behind a lorry loaded with oranges that cannot keep pace with Sicilian impatience. Drivers ignore the no overtaking signs and take their chances to continue at speed.

The landscape shifts again and we return to the coast. The sea is almost close enough to touch and the golden beaches look inviting to an Englishman, still in awe of twenty degrees in winter.

Another town arrives. Another cavalcade of Fiat Pandas. Another test of hazard perception.

The ubiquitous Fiat Panda

The pace of travel quickens and so does the scenery. Rolling hills appear that would not look out of place in the Peak District, if it were not for the expanses of vines now wrapped in plastic after the harvest. A tight bend later and it becomes a sea of poly tunnels protecting tomatoes, aubergines and peppers. Over the next crest it is orange groves, bright and ready for their moment on the market stalls.

Then, almost without warning, you glide through another coastal town and repeat the rhythm of the journey until Modica reveals itself with its steep ravine and beautiful hillside, basking in the golden December sun - a picture postcard scene that does make its way onto social media. The journey to reach it is something that should not be overlooked, because this is the real Sicily: a land of sudden change, of harsh contrasts and of pure life.

Modica, basking in the December sun

Eerie Erice

We’re driving through the outskirts of Trapani. A rain shower passes over as quickly as it came, a common theme for this part of the north western Sicilian coastline in late November. The windscreen wipers begin to slow and the sun shines bright, glistening off the road. 

Monte Erice ahead of us, still shrouded in a heavy, thick cloud; brooding above. 

We begin the never-ending climbs of twists and turns up the mountain and I’m thankful for having hired a car with an automatic gearbox. We pass incredibly brave (or daft) cyclists making their way up 2,461 ft climb. The sun is glistening down on the city of Trapani, below and we have a clear view across to the Egadi Islands.

We begin to reach the summit and within a turn of a hairpin bend, the infamous cape of fog and mist that envelopes Erice in morning hits us. I make a bad quip about Erice being eerie as I pull into a car parking space by Porta Trapani that seems to have been marked out using a Smart Car as the optimal size of vehicle for its use.

We head up the steep hill from the car park in search of a sweet breakfast at the infamous Pasticceria Maria Grammatico. The slippery footpath like glass from the earlier downpour and horizon barely visible, we finally reach our target and some sugary, caffeine fuelled solitude. 

It’s quiet when we enter and the feeling of being part of a noir tv drama series is only intensified by the wonderfully old fashioned decor of the pasticceria - wood panelled walls and a large collection of foreign currency and Catholic saints a backdrop to the large, sweeping counter that’s full of Sicilian treats.

We have our cappuccino and share a few bits from the counter - a still warm crema Genonvesi, a slice of Torta alle Amarene and piece of Crostata al Pistachio. Our eyes being bigger than our bellies, we wrap some away for ‘later’ and head out into the street, past the group of cyclists we’d passed earlier on the road up and into a now slightly clearer Erice. 

The fog and mist lift to add even further sense of cinematography to an already picturesque town. We tread delicately on the slippery stone streets and reach the north-eastern edge of the town to be blown away by the dramatic landscape towards San Vito Lo Capo. Clouds suspended mid air and running quickly along the vista of the hills below and the sea beyond. 

An incredible vista towards San Vito Lo Capo, from Erice

The eeriness of the climate and landscape only continuing as we walked around to Castello del Bálio where we stood above a blanket of swirling cloud, obscuring the view to the south and Marsala with just the odd glimpse of a field a couple of thousand feet beneath. 

We continue walking back through the main heart of the town. Past a church with its doors open - a Virgin Mary statue illuminated in the doorway to welcome in visitors and along more winding street with dark semi derelict houses only adding to the mystique as the clouds and mist envelop the town once more. A cold dampness setting into the air.

The mist and noir sets in once more as we head back to our car

Erice was a truly remarkable place that surpassed all my expectations and if it hadn’t been for tiredness and a slight anxiety about the car being parked in a space that’d have been small for Noddy’s car, whilst being fully aware of many Italian’s inability to drive carefully, we would have stayed for longer. Alas, we left feeling grateful for the experience as we snaked our way back down Monte Erice.