Syracusa

It was nice not to set an alarm and take our time this morning. Without the alarm we woke about 7:45. This was the first night’s sleep that I had since we’ve been here where I didn’t wake up coughing in the middle of the night. I think I may have finally kicked this thing.

We really took our time and was is no rush to get moving this morning. We enjoyed one of the gigantic oranges from our previous AirBnB host while sitting on our balcony soaking in the sunshine. Tom processed the pictures from yesterday and I made the blog post. We got out the door by 11:45 with not really having a plan for the day.

We walked back to Ortigya and stopped in a tourist/excursion center (so it looked) but the worker didn’t speak much English so we just moved along. As we were walking down the street we saw a hop on hop off bus and got the idea that maybe we should do that. We walked a little further into Ortigya to see if we could find a tourist information booth, and when we found it was closed we decided to figure out the hop on hop off bus tour. Once again we were thankful that Tom had the international plan and we looked the tour up online and found that it was only 5 Euro per person. Tom called the phone number to find out where and when we could catch the bus. The person who answered did not speak very good English. We were standing on the sidewalk trying to figure out what to do when the person Tom had tried talking to sent him a message. What in the world did we do before cellular service and Google translate? Tom texted him back and we soon found where to go pick up the bus. We had a half hour to walk the ten minutes to the bus stop. That was great news to us because that gave us time to pick up a quick lunch. Tom had spinach and cheese pastry thing and I had a ham and cheese thing. They were both really good and we thought super cheap. It was only $5 Euro for both with a can of a coke.

We got on the bus and began the tour. The whole route would only take an hour but it was nice to hear about what we were looking at and give an overview and feel to the city of Syracusa. We got off the bus at the Archaeological Park. Here we spent a couple of hours walking around the different sites such as the Greek Theater, Roman Theater, and a cave call the Ear of Dionysis. Lucky for me there was a geocache at the Greek Theater. It was easily attainable today as there were only a couple of people in the theater. I can just imagine how packed this place would be during peak tourist season. Once again I’m so pleased with the time of year we chose to come and that we had a great weather day. It was sunny but felt a tad cooler.

We got back on the bus 2 hours after we were dropped off and finished the rest of the tour. We laughed as the bus went right past our AirBnB and our car. We had no idea when we got on the bus that it would go right past where we were staying. After the tour we wandered to the tip of the island and passed the Cathedral of Syracusa and the castle. Unfortunately the castle was already closed so we could not see the inside. We wandered around town for a bit more and stopped at a dessert shop where Tom ate a cannola.

It was only about 6:00pm so we headed back to our room to relax for a couple of hours since the dinner hour doesn’t really start until 8:00pm. I used the time to find an AirBnB for our next stop in Taormina and to start writing the blog.

We headed back out for dinner and went to a restaurant on Orytiga we had passed earlier in the afternoon. Here Tom finally got the mushroom risotto he had been hunting since I had mine on Valentine’s Day in Milan, and I had a tagliatelle scampi. I was expecting shrimp, instead they were more like mini lobsters with claws. I probably should have taken a picture of them, but there was not that much meat to them. We did also try a sea urchin bruchetta for an appetizer. It was good, but not so much that I would order it again.

For not having anything planned today, it turned out to be a nice relaxing day.

Stats of the Day

Geocaches: 1
Steps Walked: 19,838
High Temperature: 57 but felt like 53