Southern Italy & Sicily
Day 11 - Taormina & Siracusa
Monday, 12 April 2004
My whole life I have heard about Siracusa — from Greek myths to my Sicilian barber to watching all those WWII films to going to school in upstate New York near Syracuse — I had to go. Its all the way in the south-east corner of Sicily and so lovely and rundown. The streets were nearly empty, but still, real people lived there.
It took a little work to find out how to park legally, I finally had to go into a massage parlor to ask a lovely bartender to explain how the system works. It happens to be identical to the CPZ system in London, where you have to buy scratch off tickets from a tobacco shop, scratch off the start time and then put them on your dashboard. By the end of it, I had the parking attendant, the bartender and a tobacconist all helping us.
From the new town, it was a short walk to the bridges into the old town. We were created with a lovely fish and vegetable market. Too bad we had a whole day and no cooler. Then we came across a man with a horse and cart offering a tour of the city. Another man with two small children was discussing with this wife whether to take it. I grabbed him and suggested we share and negotiate together. Worked perfectly, we all piled on and got a great two hour trip around to see the city walls, the old port and the duomo.
The church was fairly small, with massive columns, but really lovely and cool inside. The piazza was so sun-baked it was difficult to see. The effect was amazing. The tour ended here. We walked along and got some sandwiches and walked to the sea front.
On the way out of the old town we found another market closing down, more like a car boot sale really. The kids loved all the junked radios and electronic stuff.
Then we found a nice park in the new city with a cafe selling gelato and drinks. It was the first playground in a week and the boys had a ball. On the drive home, the both fell asleep the whole trip.
At home we went down to the Isola Bella beach, which is fairly rocky, and climbed over the Isola Bella island. There was a couple rolling around together in an inappropriate manner. Ryan thought they were wrestling and jumped on them. Scared the man half to death, very funny.
For dinner we went up into the city and had a lovely pizza, pasta norma and more cannoli.