We had a good night’s sleep and was happy to find that our laundry (mostly socks and underwear) was almost completely dry. Not bad for not having an electric dryer and for hanging it all over the kitchen where a pellet stove blew warm air.
We had oranges and leftover snacks from the plane ride for breakfast and were out the door shortly before our goal time of 10:00. I think we somehow missed a turn on the way to the Valley of the Temples, but it provided us with an opportunity to get gas. After filling up we turned on the correct road and found a parking area. We paid our 10 Euro per person and entered the archaeological park. Unfortunately our entrance did not include a guide or a map so we wandered a little aimlessly around a bunch of really old ruins before we found our way to the two big temples in the park. It was nice being here off-season, so for the most part we are missing all the big group of tourists. We did however run into a nice family from Chicago that we talked to for a couple of minutes. We took our time snapping pictures and enjoying the sun on our face, for we were once again blessed with another gorgeous spring like day.
We kept our eye on the clock because we knew if we wanted to do two things and get to our AirBnB by 5:30 we would have to keep moving. We were leaving the park about 12:45 when I noticed a post card at the souvenir shop for something I had written down in my guide book, Scala dei Turchi. I noticed the note earlier in the morning when I dragged it out to ready about the Valley of the Temples, but I couldn’t remember what exactly it was until I saw the postcard. It is a natural sculpture, consisting of a fine sedimentary white rock of limestone and clay of which the wind and rain have carved a natural staircase. We were originally planning on going to Villa Imperiale del Casale which is an old Roman villa that contains 50 rooms of ancient mosaics. I knew we wouldn’t have time for both, so I asked Tom which he preferred to. He said he didn’t care so when I asked him to GPS the Scala dei Turchi and found out it was only 17 minutes away, we decided to go there.
We saw the signs for parking, but quickly realized we could also park on the street. We parked and wandered down the hill to find out where we could access the beach that would take us to the big white rock/cliff. It wasn’t too far, but disappointed when we saw there was street parking even closer to where we needed to be. We could have saved ourselves a few steps! We hiked down the stairs and walked along the beach less then a half mile to get to the rock.
The rock/cliff was very easy to walk on and when we got to the top we sat down and enjoyed a snack. I of course pulled out the geocaching app and saw that we were just 150 feet or so away from one. It was an easy find and was able to leave a travel bug my mom gave me and, picked up one to give to her. We kept walking a bit further, but when the sun came back out from behind the clouds, Tom was ready to head back. On the way to the rock we had written in the sand our traditional location and year, but nobody was walking by to take our picture, so we were hoping on the way back maybe there would be some more people. We saw the nice family from Chicago again (guess the island is not that big after all), but we did not pass them before we got back to our picture spot. When we did, we asked someone walking by to take our picture, but they missed the whole point of including the writing in the sand. I don’t know why that was so difficult. The selfie I took turned out better.
There was a little food shop on the road on the way back to the car, but we decided not to grab something because it didn’t look like they had that big of a selection (we probably should have because we never ended up stopping anywhere after that). We just plugged in our next AirBnB’s address and started heading in that direction.
I was about to follow a sign to Syracuse (the city of our next stop) but Tom told me GPS wanted to take us another direction so it had us turn around and go the other way (most likely to the freeway instead of taking local streets). Once on the freeway it was smooth sailing until we got to some road construction. I wanted to follow all the cars in front of us, but Tom wanted to follow the GPS. This of course lead to a disagreement, but we followed the GPS as it took us twice down different dead end roads. Needless to say we went back and followed the traffic and got back on the right track. That’s my version of the story. Perhaps Tom will edit or comment on this post and chime in with his version. LoL.
We made it into Syracuse and found our AirBnB by 5:40p.m. The house directions had us finding a lock box and unlocking it to retrieve a key to the building which would then lead us to a mailbox to retrieve another key for the apartment. We were pretty sure we were on the right street in front of the right apartment, but we could not find the lock box the instructions talked about. We messaged our hosts and they apologized for the miscommunication and that they would be there in about 15 minutes. Come to find out later that they no longer use the lock box and they had sent me another message through AirBnB with further directions, but because I didn’t have any connectivity I did not receive it. It was not a big deal and soon they were showing us the apartment. This one is perfectly ok but not as nice as the previous night. There is also a strange smell that might be sewer, but for $45 a night we really can’t complain.
We brought up our luggage and then headed to Ortygia (the old city and island connected to Syracuse for dinner). We were more then hungry and I think it was safe to say that Tom was nothing short of hangry. We found a pizza place that our hosts recommended, but they would not open for another 15 minutes, so we continued to wander down the street to kill time. We ran across a very small, quaint bar where we enjoyed a local Sicilian craft beer. When the beer was gone enough time had passed that the restaurant was now open. We enjoyed an excellent pizza each and a berry penna cotta for dessert. We were both tired and actually had a little bit of sunburn to the face. It was a good day and we were happy with our decision to visit Scala dei Turchi in liu of seeing the mosaics at Villa Imperial del Casale.
Stats of the Day
Geocaches: 1
Steps Walked: 17,516
High Temparture: 62 degrees
