Jabbing his pole like a one-pronged pitchfork into the slow red river of rock, the ashtray salesman pulled out a wad of hot lava. I scrambled back as he swung it by me and plopped it into a mold.

His partner snipped it off with big iron clippers and rammed it into shape. Dropping the now shapely mass into a bucket, the water did a wild jig. Cooling on a crispy black ledge were a dozen more lava ashtrays, each with the words “Mount Etna, Sicily” molded into it.

As the red lava poured out of its horribly hot trap door, I unzipped the ski parka I’d rented for $2 at the lift. At 11,000 feet, even on a sunny day, it’s cold on top of Mount Etna, unless you’re spitting distance from a lava flow.

At the edge of the volcano, I surveyed the island. Old lava flows rumbled like buffalo toward teeming Catania. The island’s sprawling second city butted up against a crescent beach, which stretched all the way to Taormina, Sicily’s romantic cliff-side haunt of aristocrats at play. And to my right was the hazy, high and harsh interior.

Sicily sights are hard to grasp; its historic and artistic big shots just don’t ring a bell. The folkloric traditions such as marionette theaters promoted by tourist brochures seem to play out only for tour groups. And the place must lead Europe in litter.

But there’s a workaday charm here. If you like Italy for its people, tempo and joy of living — rather than for its Botticellis, Guccis and touristic icons — you’ll dig Sicily.

Sicily, standing midway between Africa and Europe, really is a world to itself. On this spirited island, in spite of Italian government and European Union pressure, the siesta persists and motorbikers’ hair continues to fly in the Sicilian wind.

Palermo is the Rome of Sicily, with lavish art, boisterous markets and holy cannoli. In Palermo’s markets, animals hang like anatomy lessons, sliced perfectly in half. For less than a euro, fichi di India, the fist-sized cactus fruit that tastes like a cross between a kiwi and an orange, can be peeled and yours.

Palermo offers a great bone experience — skull and shoulders above anything else you’ll find in Europe. Palermo’s Capuchin Crypt is a subterranean gallery filled with 8,000 “bodies without souls” howling silently at their mortality. For centuries, people would choose their niche in death and even stand there getting to know their macabre neighborhood. Then, when they died, dressed in their Sunday best, they’d be hung up to dry.

Cefalu was my favorite stop. Steeped in history and bustling with color, it’s dramatically set with a fine beach on a craggy coast under a pagan mountain. I dutifully toured Cefalu’s museum and cathedral.

But the real attraction is on the streets. As the sun grew red and heavy, the old women — still in bathrobes it seemed — filled their balconies as the young people clogged the pedestrian (and Vespas)-only main drag. Tsk-tsking at the age-old flirting scene, the women gossiped about the girls below.

My friend, ignoring the girls, tells me of the motorbike he lusts after. “It’s a classic Vespa from the ’70s … with a body that’s round like a woman’s.” Just then a guy gallops up on his very round and very blue classic Vespa. He declares, “It’s the only Vespa I’ve ever owned. I got it when I was 14. That was in 1969. The year man first walked on the moon, that was the year I first rode this Vespa.” My friend and a few other guys gather around, almost worshipfully. The old women in the balconies and the mini-skirted flirts no longer exist as that very round and very blue Vespa dripped in Sicilian testosterone.

Nearby, a cafe overlooks the beach. I sip my latte di mandola (almond milk) with the locals who seem to be posted there on duty, making sure that big red sun goes down. Little wooden boats, painted brightly, sit plump on the beach. Above them, the fisherman’s clubhouse fills what was a medieval entry through the town wall. I wander in.

The senior member, “Il Presidente,” greets me warmly — the men go by nicknames and often don’t even know their friends’ real names. Since the 1950s, Il Presidente has spent his nights fishing, gathering anchovies under the seductive beam of his gas-powered lampara.

As he takes the pre-Coleman stove vintage lamp off its rusty wall hook, I see tales of a lifetime at sea in his face. As he shows me the ropes he wove from local straw and complains that the new ropes just aren’t the same, I lash him to the rack of memories I’ll take home from Sicily.

Rick Steves (www.ricksteves.com) writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. E-mail him at rick@ricksteves.com, or write to him c/o P.O. Box 2009, Edmonds, WA 98020.

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