Overnight in Marzamemi
03 June 2012 | Sicily
George. Scorchio
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We came here on Fandancer for an overnight stop on the way to Syracuse. The wind was blowing quite heavily from the south, so we have decided to stay a day longer before leaving. The mooring fee in the adequate marina was 40 euro a night, with water and electricity, and free wifi. After downloading a map using good old Google maps, we found the main area of interest to be approx 500m away, called La Balata, which is the old fishing village. It is very picturesque with stone cottages, a lovely square, many restaurants and bars. On the Saturday night we were there, part of the main street was closed to prevent traffic, so the locals could promenade at dusk. There was also some sort of music festival on, which made the place lively and colourful.
I was surprised to read another reviewer's comments on Trip Advisor that there were no food shops or supermarkets at all, and we set out to prove this wrong, but we couldnt! We literally did not find anywhere that sold food, except a mobile open top van selling fruit and veg where we bought some tomatoes. Where do all the locals go shopping?
We found out that Marzamemi/La Balata are suburbs of the larger town nearby called Pachino. Thanks to Google Maps And street view we managed to find that Pachino was approximately 2.5km inland so we decided to walk there as we also found there were at least 8 supermarkets. Amazingly, we found out from an image on google maps which focused on the front of the shop and actually showed the opening hours on a hand written poster! It was Sunday so didnt want to walk all the way there to find it closed. It took about 40 minutes of walking in the hot sun, and we then found there were about 4 small supermarkets in close proximity to each other, but we didnt find a bread shop, which we found strange, having recently been in France which has a Boulangerie on every corner. Don't Italians eat bread?
La Balata is a bit like a small seaside town. There are a great number of holiday apartments, and a fairly decent small beach. Probably not the first place you would come to for a beach holiday in Sicily, but ok for a day out. I expect the residents of Pachino would think it was heaven. The old part of the town near the old tunny factory and round the square, does bring to mind a town from the old wild west USA and you expect gunslingers and wagons round every corner. But we liked it. Lots of bars to quench your thirst.
Incidentally, when I typed in " supermarkets Pachino " into Google, one website came up which described a drug supermarket in nearby Catania! It described that the area where we are is the biggest producer of cannabis plants in Sicily, grown in glasshouses nearby, and gave instructions of where to go to buy different sorts of drugs! Apparently 500 euro for 1kg of hash! How do they get away with that! Mafia influence, I suspect.........