As a matter of fact, I'm back

I have a friend who comes from Turin (which as any Torino will tell you, is the rightful and true capital of Italy, a city of unsurpassed grace and culture whose title and status have been cruelly usurped by the 'putana' that is Rome.). Of all the former city states which were rammed together to make Italy, just one comes lower down the evolutionary scale than Rome, and that, according to my friend, is Sicily. So when I told him I was returning there for the second time a fortnight ago, he was predictably aghast. "Why do you go there?" he interrogated me, "They are animals." He is of course hopelessly biased and chauvinistic, but his reaction is a perfect illustration of how little Northern and Southern Italy actually have in common. I've had a good time in both, but for me Sicily is the one I would return to again and again (and I will), despite the supposed bestiality of its populace.

 Palermo is a force to be reckoned with, a rough, chapped brute of a city packed with ancient labyrinthine streets where life is lived in full public view and where the crumbling, pitching buildings appear to be holding one another up like amiable drunks. Drama is everywhere. Even on the train from the airport, a minor Italian opera was enacted before my eyes as the patient, quietly-spoken guard remonstrated gently but firmly with a wild-haired old man who had boarded without a ticket and was outraged at having been asked to pay. When politely escorted back on to the platform and directed to the ticket machine he had chosen to ignore on his way in, his indignation knew no bounds, and with great, expansive, handwringing gestures he enacted his disgust at the evil guard with his blatant disrespect for his elders and betters. For the whole of the remainder of the journey - some 40 minutes - the man maintained his tirade from his seat and demanded the support and attention of his fellow passengers, while his body odour, which was not unlike that of a fox, penetrated the carriage ripely in the strong midday heat.

 Driving in Palermo (or or that matter anywhere in Sicily, or for that matter anywhere in Italy) is like being inside a Gameboy; all cars try to overtake, cut up or tailgate one another constantly. It's almost compulsory. I have never been so glad to be inside a Volvo with all its thoughtful Scandinavian safety features and surplus airbags. But walking the streets feels safe, though the levels of poverty in some neighbourhoods are shocking in a European city, and the groups of aimless, unemployed men making a single coffee last a morning while they talk urgently outside the cafes look haunted and hollow-eyed. They watch us walk by with disinterest but no visible resentment.

 We seek out the Focacceria San Francesco, one of the oldest bakeries in the city and one which has acquired more recent fame for its public stance against Mafia 'protection', feeling it would be a small gesture of support to give them some custom, but the stress must be taking its toll on the staff as they are uniquely bad-tempered and hostile, and the food so bad that we have to consign it to the first bin that seems a discreet distance away. It turns out to be the only bad eating experience of the entire trip; every single mouthful beyond this point is a delight. Simple pasta dishes cost no more than eight or ten euros, and all burst with flavours imparted by the fantastic, picked-or-caught-that-morning fresh ingredients. As in most Italian cities, the least flash and showy restaurants deliver the highest quality food, and reconfirm my long-held view that you cannot, or do not need to "do posh Italian" ( and I've tried it at Locanda Locatelli - a colossal waste of money.). Our time in Palermo is spent wandering, watching, and learning to dodge the traffic as we sprint to cross the racetrack roads. Oddest sight (possibly of my life so far) goes hands-down to the 8,000 mummified corpses in the Capuchin Catacombs, which hang fully-dressed from the wall in their Sunday best, parchment faces frozen in silent screams or decayed beyond features into crazy masks. It's a macabre but oddly touching sight, though definitely not one to take the kids along to unless yours are at least 25. The Sicilians have always had a close relationship with death, which goes on to this day as you'll see if you wander through any cemetery with its grand mausoleums (and disproportionate numbers of 26 and 28-year old men whose Cosa Nostra killings are gaudily commemorated in black marble and gold.).

From Palermo it's off through the interior - giving scary Corleone a swerve - and down to the coast where we've rented a perfect house in the middle of nowhere for a week. If you don't mind a rough drive down a long pot-holed track  to get there, and if you like seclusion, outrageous views, and being awoken by the sound of cow bells and birdsong, this is the place for you. It's certainly the place for me. Owned by a local couple whose kindness and hospitality would be hard to beat, this is the get-away-from-it sanctuary of my dreams, though within easy striking distance of dreamy Sciacca down the coast, and graceful Agrigento in the other direction, with its access to the simply outrageous Valley of the Temples. I'd done a bit of reading up on this incredible archaeological site with its abundance of Graeco-Roman remains, but nothing had prepared me for the scale and magnificence of what I was seeing. We spend a slack-jawed day in the almost laughably photogenic structures, marvelling at the ancient technology that enabled them to still be standing so proudly after thousands of years. It's briskly busy but far from crowded, and with a little patience and planning it is easily possible to enjoy some of these buildings in almost perfect peace and silence. Wonderful.

Our laptop wheezes and dies on day 3 of the trip so we are cut off from Internet access, which I'm afraid I mind terribly. How I'd love to be cool, and say I didn't miss it. Though I do use the time to get plenty of reading done - 5 books are devoured in ten days - I have to confess that I am sadly dependent on being able to log on and check in, and being without Radio 4 and BBC 6 Music is a torment. But I survive.

We leave the lovely house after a week, with a huge bowl of freshly picked apricots from the owners, and head down the coast for a brief detour at the dazzling Scala Dei Turchi, where the Sicilians are at gleeful play, with packs of boys coaxing one another to leap from the bright white ledges into the turquoise sea below. The cliffs are breathtaking, smooth and rounded in places like sugarcraft sculptures, and sunbathers arrange themselves into the hollows so they can benefit from the extra tanning effects of the reflected sunlight. We spend an hour taking far too many photos before we head off across the South of the island to ravishing, irresistible Siracusa.

It can be a risk returning to somewhere you visited and loved - what if it's changed, been spoiled, commercialised, with a Starbucks and McDonalds on every corner? Luckily Siracusa is just as I left it seven years ago; simply one of the most beautiful cities in Southern Europe. Easy-paced and gentle as opposed to rapid-fire Palermo, this is the perfect place to wind up a holiday with a meander round its intertwining alleyways that all seem to lead to the fabulously-restored Cathedrale, where the Saturday evening passagiata gets going once all the weddings of the day are done and everyone has eaten. The atmosphere is fantastic; a babble of voices as four-generation families ramble contentedly along, eating ice cream and playing with their kids. There is not a single raucous drunken voice to be heard, much less weeping hen parties weeing in the gutters, such as feature in any UK town on a Saturday night. Not for the first time, I resent my home country. We join in the passagiata before a well-fed night's sleep back at our B&B. The following day we seek out the wonderful restaurant where we ate seven years ago, and find it just as good as we left it. I have the best sea bream I have ever eaten, drink red Martini with freshly squeezed orange juice, and as am happy a middle-class ponce as you could find in the world.

We round off with a lunchtime visit to classy little baroque Noto, and a quick salute to Mount Etna, which grumbles and smoulders in its shawl of ragged clouds. One day, Etna will blow its top, and it's impossible to imagine what will happen to the clusters of villages and vineyards that cling to its sides. It seems a strange decision to build your village on the slopes of an active volcano, but as my friend from Turin would confirm, Sicilians are not like other Italians.