It was a bit exciting to leave mainland Italy and catch the ferry to Sicily. Just getting on and off the ferry was interesting as we had to drive up and down a very narrow ramp. Picture the scene - John's trying to negotiate the ramp and, instead of helping him, I'm taking photos! I did manage to tell him he was doing a great job just before I took the photo though, hehe.
Much to our surprise, within a space of about half an hour, we drove past signs to numerous towns that we recognised - because they are dairy companies in Australia! We saw Floridia, Siracusa and Pantalica, and also saw names that we know though the industry such as Montalto.
We arrived at our first destination which was a lovely farm-stay type of B&B. The room was huge and the people were lovely. We saw a gorgeous sunset over the flowery fields on our first evening.
The place was hundreds of years old. Our rooms used to be the workers' accommodation for a large property.
I wish we could grow pomegranates at home!
It was olive picking time while we were there. A guy came out with an implement that was like a huge fork. He wired it to his car battery and the fork end shook. You stick the shaking fork into the branches and it shakes the olives off. Netting is laid under the trees to catch them. I had a go at it - I reckon you'd get tired shoulders and arms pretty quickly.
All the stalks and leaves were hand-picked off the olives. The olives were then taken to a mill to be pressed into oil. Most rural places in Italy would go through a similar process to this.
Francesco, the owner, invited us to his son's two-year-old birthday party. We realised later that he really had to invite us because the party happened all around us! They had a party planner who ran the event. They even had a puppet show! We couldn't understand a word of it but it didn't take long to work out the story was Little Red Riding Hood! A Welsh guy, Peter, was also there and we all enjoyed the experience of being included in a family celebration.
We used the B&B as a base and explored local towns from there. The hilltop towns are famous for their amazing baroque architecture. The towns were quite similar to each other in many ways.
Ragusa was the first one we explored.
Elaborate facades fronted many of the 18th century buildings but the baroque style was most evident on the churches.
Troy, John thought you would appreciate this interesting carving!
But of course, the important stuff was the gelati! This town had a shop that sold wine-flavoured ice-cream, like Moscato and a local red wine flavour. They were ummm, interesting! Better flavours we have had were fig, baccio (chocolate, hazelnut and other bits) and connoli, which is a local desert of sweet ricotta, a crunchy biscuit base and pistachios. Yum!
The next town, Modica, was famous for its chocolate. I did a sampling (of course) but it wasn't really all that nice. They don't add milk and don't melt the sugar so it's kind of crunchy and a bit bitter. They had heaps of varieties like chilli, pineapple and rum.
On a far less appetising note, we also saw these snails for sale outside a grocery store. We haven't seen snails on any menu (except for one French restaurant) so it was surprising to see. Some of them seemed to be making a getaway!
The cathedral here was quite famous and very impressive. It sits on top of a 250-step staircase.
There was a wedding about to happen here. We later found out it's a very popular place to get married, unsurprisingly.
As we wandered past we saw a lady pushing a pram - with her three dogs on board! Coincidentally, we were walking down a street in another town a week later and saw the same lady! She was from northern Italy and was travelling around like we were. We didn't want to ask why the dogs had to be pushed in a pram!
Another feature of the baroque style is all the carved supports under the balconies. There was an amazing variety of them.
We left our farm-stay and, en route to our next destination, we went for a hike in a gorge. Once again, we learned about the Italians' disregard for rules. We got to the start of the hike only to find the track was closed. There were many people walking it though so we asked why and were told that we could walk it at our own risk. We joined everyone else of course.
It was a long, hot walk down to the bottom!
We saw old cave dwellings on the way.
We made it to the bottom where beautiful swimming holes greeted us - but they were freezing! We had taken our swimming gear but couldn't get in! These northern Europeans in the photo did though - they can cope with the cold much better than we can!
Back in the car, we wound our way down a really steep hill full of hairpin bends. It's interesting for me to see that the radio station is showing on this pic. We listened to Virgin FM the whole time we were in Italy. It played great old rock classics. Strangely, it played the same bands again and again and, even stranger, the most common band they played was AC/DC! They also played a lot of Aerosmith and Radiohead. We kept losing the reception but would rather listen to nothing than the other stations which just babbled on in Italian or occasionally played soppy Italian music. I know we should get into the local culture but AC/DC is much better to drive to! (And seriously, is that really dust all over the dashboard?)
Speaking of driving, this has certainly been an experience in Italy. The first day or so was the hardest, then we kind of settled into it, although it always takes two pairs of eyes in tricky places. Speed signs are rare so our most common pastime is "guess the speed limit". Somehow we are just supposed to know these things. Yes, our GPS shows the limit but it's rarely right. Even when we do know what the limit is, you can guarantee that someone will hurtle past us.
On our first day out with the car, we got pulled over by the police. John had passed a car on a single white line. The policeman spoke some English and went to great lengths to say that what we had done was 'very dangerous' and we had to pay a fine immediately. We had no idea what the police are supposed to be like here. Was he looking for a bribe? After he took licence details etc he suddenly told us that he would close not one eye, but both eyes. He was letting us go! We still have no idea what was actually going on but we weren't arguing. We got out of there asap! We later saw people pass on single white lines all the time so I don't know what the drama was about.
John does most of the driving, especially in the cities. I tend to drive on the highways when we're doing long days. One day we were on a 130kph highway. A car was doing less than this on the inside lane so I went to pass it on the outside lane, doing about 130kph. When I was about two car lengths from it, another car suddenly belted up on the inside lane and passed between me and the first car doing about 160kph with a metre or so to spare between us and the other car. Blimey Teddy!
Parking is another challenging issue although we haven't had too many problems. What continually amazes us the tiny spaces Italians seem to be able to get their cars into. There is often only a foot or so between them and the car in front as well as the car behind! How did they get in there? And how are they going to get out?????
One day we came out of our hotel to find another car parked this close to us. Luckily we had about 1/2 of a metre behind us we were able to shuffle back and forth til we got out.
We kept seeing this sign and it became a bit of a joke. It means Control Your Speed.
We moved on to the lovely old town of Siracusa. The old part of town is a traffic-free zone so we had to quickly stop in the middle of the old road outside our hotel, unload our bags, then drive out again and find a park outside the old town. Those narrow roads were interesting!
We loved it here. The town had a real, lived in feel, despite it being quite touristy, and the people were friendly. Once again it had gorgeous baroque buildings. There was a twist to this church though. It looks like a typical baroque church from the front.....
......... but its history becomes evident when you look down the side walls. Yes, they are ancient Greek columns. This was originally a Greek temple to Athena, built in the 5th century BC. It was later altered to become the church we see today.
The old stone columns also show from the inside. Strangely, this made it feel like a much more welcoming place than most churches to me. Maybe it's just the stony strength of those 2,500 year old columns.
Right next to our hotel was another church and we had heard that it's interesting to explore the tunnels underneath it. We donned our required hardhats and followed our volunteer guide down through a trap door. The first level was an older church. We're a bit unclear on the details but somehow this part is all about welcoming dead people to the afterlife. You can see the skulls and crossbones on the walls.
A large skeleton on either side of the passageway is supposed to help lead the way to the afterlife.
We then went down to the next level underground and this was the most interesting. Tunnels disappeared into the distance in a few directions. They ran along under the town and came up under other buildings. During the 2nd World War, up to 6,000 people at a time hid here when the air raids were on. It was astonishing. It must have been so frightening.
There was even one wall where someone with an artistic flair had filled in the time by drawing the bombers that roared overhead. There was also some writing on the wall describing the bombing.
We went down to the lowest level where there was an ancient Jewish ritual bath. This area had been the Jewish quarter for a long time.
In case we hadn't had enough underground adventure, we also went to the catacombs. These started as ancient Greek underground cisterns then the Romans converted them to a place to store their dead. Amazingly, they cut 10,000 hollows into the rocks walls and floors and 10,000 bodies filled them.
We weren't allowed to take photos so all I can show you is one of the posters outside. All the hollows you can here are tombs. Sadly, there were many child-sized tombs. They originally all had stone covers with inscriptions on them saying whose body lay inside. During WW2, all the skeletons were removed and put into a mass grave in a cemetery. I feel this is such a loss. Geneticists and archaeologists would have learned so much from 10,000 ancient bodies all labelled with their family names. I can only assume that the need for underground space during war time was a more pressing issue.
Speaking of the dead, I love the way they publicise death notices in Italy. They put up these posters in public places. Sure beats having to buy a newspaper!
We had a great time in Siracusa. We hung out at the family-run bar/restaurant across the road from our hotel and felt there was a genuine vibe about the town.
We finally left and had to dog-leg across south-east Sicily as our accommodation bookings were a bit all over the place due to lack of availability at one of the places we wanted to stay. We got great views of the active volcano of Mt Etna. We had originally planned to climb Mt Etna - you can walk through the volcanic wasteland - but the timing didn't work for us. It hasn't erupted for a very long time and good equipment is in place to ensure evacuations can be made with plenty of time. It's amazing thought that entire towns still exist near it.
We drove to Villa Romana del Casale, a 3rd century Roman villa. The mosaic floors here are simply stunning. The whole place was buried under mud in a 12th century flood and this preserved the mosaics for 700 years until they were discovered in the 1950's. Every floor in the huge villa is covered in incredible mosaics but my favourites were the two famous ones.
The first one is the Corridor of the Great Hunt. This mosaics cover every square inch of a huge corridor. The pictures don't depict a normal hunt like you would imagine, rather they show how Romans used to travel to Africa and India to capture animals to bring back to Rome for gladiator fights. There is so much detail - it shows them capturing animals and loading them onto ships or being transported by oxen and cart. It even shows how they tricked a tiger mother with a mirror so they could steal her cub.
My other favourite was the so-called Room of the Ten Girls in Bikinis. This shows ten girls competing in sports.
Incredibly, they found another entire mosaic floor underneath this one!
We moved on to Agrigento, a town famous for its Greek temples. One the way we passed through some pretty dry and bleak country.
We stayed at another agroturismo - a farm-stay. The house here was huge and was about 200 years old. It had seen better days but it was still lovely. My favourite part was walking through their olive grove. Many of the olive trees were 500-600 years old!
I was completely blown away by them. The older olive trees get, the more weird and wonderful their trunks become. Some split and form weird shapes. Others develop holes and some get all lumpy. They are continually pruned to produce more fruit so they sometimes have strange cut-off outlines. There were a few getting towards the end of their lives so they had massive trucks with just a few comparatively spindly branches still bearing olives.
I looked around me and could easily see many of the changes that tree would have witnessed. Two hilltop towns are nearby. When the tree was planted, those towns would have consisted of a cluster of medieval houses around a castle or perhaps a church. The towns are now large and ugly. Multi-story apartments dominate the skyline and buildings sprawl down the hills.
Only 500 metres from the trees, trucks, cars and buses race along a sealed road. It's not hard to imagine a dirt track with horses wandering along it pulling carts. The dominant noise would have been birdsong, farm animal sounds or chatter from people instead of the traffic noise that exists now.
The changes that have occurred in the lifetime of that tree are mind-blowing. Life-saving medicines and pain-killers have been invented. Many diseases can be cured and children can expect to live beyond their fifth birthdays! Motor vehicles have replaced the horses and carts and tractors now work the paddocks. Guns were invented and two world wars have come and gone. And still the olive tree keeps producing olives, year after year.
We explored the old town of Agrigento. First on my itinerary was the old theatre. It was amazing! The walls were lined with deep red boxes, each one furnished with matching red velvet chairs. How awesome would it be to watch a show from these? Unfortunately, there were no shows on while we were there.
We stood in front of the amazing painted screen.
We did get to see some very old and eroded baroque features on buildings though.
The next day we visited the Valley of the Temples. This is a 2km strip of land studded with stunning old Greek temples. First we visited the museum where we saw this statue. This guy was one of dozens that used to hold up the Temple of Zeus. He was huge!
We saw more of these guys out near the temple.
There were thousands of pieces of temples and buildings still just lying around.
The most famous temple, due to it being almost complete, is the Temple of Concord. If you think you recognise this you probably do - it's the logo for UNESCO.
We loved this huge copper statue randomly lying on the ground but we could find no info about him. John did not feel threatened by this guy at all!
Over the centuries, structures often change uses. This started out as a defensive wall and later became a place to bury people in tombs.
Strangely, there was some sort of a goat reserve in the middle of the temple area. Their horns were like corkscrews!
Another thing we have seen a lot of is these sweets that look like fruit. We haven't actually tried them - we're not game! - but they look incredible.
We drove onto Cefalu, our last stop in Sicily. We thought we would try to get some last beach weather in and it worked. The weather was perfect and the view from our balcony was amazing!
I spent two very happy days snorkelling, kayaking and paddle-boating here while John rode his bike. I absolutely loved it. Snorkelling is never much chop in the Mediterranean but there were plenty of fish and interesting rock formations here. The best part was when John and I took out the kayak. We glided past a ruined tower on a rocky outcrop and watched fish swim beneath us in the crystal clear water. At one stage I could clearly see 10 metres down.
On the downside, I had my only slightly dangerous experience for the whole trip here. I should explain first that the men in Italy are famous for being womanisers. I get looked at all the time by men, even when I'm with John. My blond hair makes me stand out like a sore thumb. Men just seem to think its their right to look at women, however I've had no trouble with them and haven't met anyone else who has either.
Anyway, John was riding his bike one day and I went to walk from our hotel into town. It's a nice walk of about 20 minutes along lanes and past the port. Not long after I turned down one lane a man aged about 60 pulled up beside me in his car and asked if I wanted a lift (he only spoke Italian but it wasn't hard to work out what he meant). Of course I declined and kept walking. He then drove past me, pulled up, got out of the car and tried to get me to go down a little alley to see the "panorama". Does he think I'm stupid? When I started to leave he made kissing motions at me then started following me. By now I was a tad unsettled but I knew the area and there were people around, just not at that moment! I ducked into a shop and stayed there with the girl who worked there until we decided he had gone. I headed out again but when I got to the port I found he had gone back to his car and followed me up there. I headed into another cafe and used their phone to call our hotel to come and get me but, coincidentally, John arrived there just as I phoned so he came racing down ready to kill the guy. Of course, the guy then disappeared. I was never in serious danger but I was surprised that someone would try that in broad daylight.
Anyway, that one incident didn't detract from our enjoyment of the place. We had a fun night on the waterfront in town one night with an English couple. We ate dinner, talked for a while and suddenly it was midnight. Where did that time go?
We climbed up to the top of the nearby rocky hill to see the castle and the old Greek temple on the top. It was a tough climb but well worth it.
The views were amazing.
We were sad to leave our little patch of beach paradise but our timing was good 'cos a cool change came in as we left. We saw a gorgeous sunrise on our last morning.
Hooroo!
Heather and John
