Monday 13th June - Syracuse, Sicily

Oooooooo!  We like Syracuse.

The only thing we knew about the place was that it had an old town so when we got off the ship, we turned left and headed for it. 

In actual fact, the old town we were looking for is actually the island of Ortigia.  I say island, - it's very, very close to the mainland, and attached by two bridges, and you wouldn't really think about it until you looked on a map.

We loved the atmosphere of the area, the tall buildings and narrow streets lined with little interesting shops which displayed their wares tightly against the walls.  

Our aim was just to wander and take a look at the main attractions which are:

The Temple of Apollo

 

The remains included a couple of columns still at their complete height, with the remnants of the ceiling they would have held up.  I tried to imagine what it would be like walking between those columns. Amazing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The Fontana di Diana

 

Cattedrale della Natività di Maria Santissima

 

 

 

 

We noticed, both outside and inside the cathedral, that it seemed to be built using the foundations and columns of a previous building.  I've just checked, and this was previously the 5th century BC temple of Athena.  So these columns are around 6-7000 years old!

In the square outside the catheral were various busking musicians, the most memorable of which was a monkey playing the xylophone.  (Actually it was a well designed puppet.) Peter has that photo.

 

We took a look at the Fonte Aretusa - a natural spring of fresh water, right alongside the sea. Amongst all the fish was a humongous coy carp (not in the picture though).

 

Amongst the market stalls and I spotted and bought a black pendant, something I had been looking for for a while.  The stall holder told me it was Obsidian from Lipari.

The heat was building up as we made our way to the fort at the end of the island, but decided we were all castled out and left it this time.

It took us a while, but we eventually found our way to gardens alongside the Arethusa Spring for short break. We had fruit and water from the ship to bring our fluid levels back up, and we set off again to walk along the other side of the island.

 It was here that we found the locals using rocky platforms for sunbathing and swimming.  As we were getting hotter and hotter, I was quite jealous.

We worked our way back to the bridges, and found a cafe.  Vanilla icecream and beer for Peter, mine was a coffee and cream concoction which was absolutely delicious. 

We had hoped to to visit a cone shaped cathedral on the mainland, but as always, the heat is exhausting, and we decided we'd leave that for another day. 

Yep.  We like Syracuse.  Hopefully we'll visit again someday.