Once we got there, however, there was no time for such physically idle nonsense, what with all of the pretty sights and great amounts of pizza awaiting to be eaten.
Siracusa is a beautiful city, at least the old city is, where there are still a number of unimproved or dilapidated building. It's been declared a UNESCO world heritage site, and so massive renovations are underway. Fortunately, they are not going to restore everything to Disney-like cuteness, and we hope they'll leave this former church as a open-air reception area.
One of the most glorious flowering trees of the Mediterranean is the bougainvillea. In this photo, you see one that has grown in the middle of a cypress-like tree.
We spent a significant amount of time walking through the narrow, and somewhat cool, streets of the Ortygia (old city).
And Lucie thought it was a blast.
Once in a while, we'd arrive on a piazza, such as the piazza del Duomo.
We took pictures in front of important churches, such as the Church of St Lucie (patron saint of Siracusa).
Inside the Duomo, we found the recycled columns of a temple to Apollo (on the left), included inside a romanesque/barroque church. It was a marvelous example of architectural syncretism.
Lucie wanted to see if the dirt in a church tastes the same as elsewhere, so we let her crawl a bit.
On our last day in Siracusa, we delved into its more distant past, visiting the Greek quarries known as the Ear of Dyonisus. They are located in the same sector as some other Greek and Roman antiquities.
All the while, Lucie had my back.
Then we hit to road towards Sciacca Terme, our next destination. Confident in the map's affirmation of the existence of a divided highway, we lingered in Noto for lunch. It was very pretty, but ended up backfiring badly.There was no highway. It's about 3 years behind schedule, but we nonetheless spent about 1 hour looking for it, and then had to drive about 250km on small twisty roads mostly traveled by psychotic suicidal self-centered maniacs (those would be Sicilians behind the wheel, quite a different breed than in person). All in all it took about 7 hours. Anyway, here are a couple of pictures from Noto.
