Although I set an alarm for 7:30, I don’t think it ever went off, but I woke up with out it at 7:40 anyway. There was some construction going on outside and the pounding woke me up. We got ready and packed our stuff and was out the door by 9:30ish.
We walked to the fish market in Ortygia and strolled down the street marveling at all of the fresh fish, fruits, and vegetables. We walked by a shop where they asked if we liked cheese. We do, but passed to enter as we were still getting a feel for the market. It was not an overly large market. It essentially was only comprised of 5 blocks or so and we soon found ourselves back at the cheese shop. This time I made the decision to step forward and see what it was all about. Boy are we glad I did!
Caseficio Borderi is a family business that specializes in cheese they make fresh each morning. As I got a closer look to see what was going on I found a man making quite the colossal sandwich for another customer. It was a show just to watch him build it. Subway/Jersey Mikes this was not! This was 100% better. As we were watching the other customer’s sandwich being made we were offered several samples of the different cheeses. They were all very good. They told us they could vacuum seal a package so we could bring it home. Yes please! Next it was our turn for the sandwich. There were so many different ingredients on this sandwich! Some I can remember are variety of greens, tomatos, a couple of different cheeses like mozzarella, parmesan, ricotta, ham, sun dried tomatos, olives, potato (kind of like mashed), and I don’t know what else. They offered to bring us a small table and two chairs so that we could eat right by their shop.
We enjoyed the sandwich and the new customers coming by. We decided to buy some smoke mozzarella to bring home with us in addition to the other cheese (which I’m not sure exactly what kind it is, other then delicious). Our salesman was so kind that he even brought us a free cannoli to share for dessert. Tom enjoyed showing them a live feed to our cameras at home to show them all the snow piled on the back deck. We asked if they would make a video for us and it was quite the production as they got ready and set the scene. We then took a group photo, paid for our cheese and some olive oil (after they let us sample 3 different olive oils with bread so we knew what we were buying). I was getting so full!! One last final gift they gave us was a shot of lemoncello. What a great people person experience with great food! It is an experience that we surely will never forget.
www.caseificioborderi.eu
As we walked back to the car Tom kept commenting on how great that was and how thankful that I stopped. These are the kind of unexpected adventures that we love on our vacations.
Soon we were back in the car and headed to Taormina. It was an easy hour and a half drive . . .well it was easy until we got into Taormina itself anyway. Taormina has very small, hilly, maze like streets. Tom’s GPS was bouncing and it took two tries of looping the maze before we found a place I could pull over and park and that Tom could get out and see if he could find our AirBnB on foot. He came back to the car and reported he found where we needed to go. I drove to the location and found a place I could temporarily park while Tom unloaded the luggage. Lucky for me that when Tom had gone back inside to connect to the Wi-Fi to download that map our host had sent, two parking spots actually opened up right in front of the apartment. I carefully maneuvered and almost hit (but didn’t) a post. Tom had come back outside just to witness that and helped direct me into the tight spot. We went into the apartment to check it out and when we came back out to start exploring the city we found a better spot had opened, so I moved the car again almost hitting (but didn’t) the side wall. Did I mention the streets are very tight here? Did I mention that I’m happy that we paid a little bit more money for an automatic car?
We began our walk to the city center and I saw there was geocache not far away so I went to attempt it. I think I found the spot where it was supposed to be, but I didn’t see the container. I didn’t stay looking entirely too long and decided to just move along.
We made our way to the Greek Theater and paid our 10 Euro/person for entrance into another archaeological spectacle. This time we paid for the audio guide and shared the headset I still had in my pocket from the hop-on-hop-off bus tour yesterday. It was nice to get the little bit of extra info of what we were looking at. The sun was really bright and hard to get good pictures, but we knew it would be dropping soon, but we also knew that it closed at 5:15. Since we had completed the audio guide we turned it back in so Tom could get his ID back and then went back into the theater to wait for the sun to set. At almost exactly 5:15 it was down far enough for pictures. Ourselves and one other couple were the last remaining people in the theater when we walked out. I’m not sure if they would have sent anybody in checking to see if anybody was left before they locked the gate, but I’m glad we didn’t have to find out.
We left the theater and continued our walk of the city. I saw there was another geocache, but it was more then .35 miles away. I asked Tom if he cared that we go check it out and he said it was ok. It was a downhill walk the whole way and I thought he wasn’t going to be too pleased with my little geocache adventure on the way back. We found the area to search and once again came up empty handed. I will give Tom props though, he really was trying to look for it. We searched for at least 10 minutes, then I called it as it was time for the journey back up the hill. Surprisingly going up hill wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.
We made our way back down the main drag and looked for a restaurant for dinner. We found a nice place and of course we were the only ones in there because it was only 6:30p.m. I had spaghetti carbonnara and Tom and a pasta dish of a noodle stuffed with cheese in a red sauce. Both meals were excellent.
We walked up some more hills and got back to our AirBnB. Unfortunately the Wi-Fi connection is quite weak so it made my planning for a Mt. Etna trip difficult. Our host recommended a tour company, but I think I may have procrastinated too long on this one as the tours start at 8:30. I don’t think I’ll be able to coordinate in time. There are some afternoon tours to consider however, or driving it on our own. I guess you will all have to wait until the next blog post to see how it turns out!
Stats of the Day
Geocaches – 0 for 2 (errr)
Steps Walked – 15,471
Temperature – Not sure – can’t get connected to the internet, but I can tell you that it was sunny with a bit more clouds then we have seen all week and it felt a lot cooler. We had to turn on the heat in the AirBnB.
