At the Greek theatre
The nights are drawing in heralding the end of our sailing season. We needed somewhere to hang around for a week or so before heading in to Ragusa and Syracuse (or Siracuse or even maybe Siracusa depending on who is writing the name) has a good anchorage for us to do that. The view of Ortigia's (or perhaps Ortygia!) waterfront is easy on the eye and it's a pleasant place to while away many hours just wandering it's tiny streets. There are plenty of other boats hanging around too but still loads of space.
On our first morning we were visited by a customs boat, I went to fetch the papers we'd been given when visited by the customs boat in Taormina (I forgot to mention that in the blog - they were very friendly, we did the ah football thing when we listed our home port as Brighton; had a bit of difficulty when the customs man asked us one question - he kept mentioning police and we got a bit worried - he went away, came back and said 'anything to declare?' - ah that was what he was trying to ask us! To which we answered in union 'no!') but they just wanted to know how many on board and how long we were staying.
The size of the bay can be a problem when the wind blows, which it seemed to do for most of the afternoons we've been here and set up a nasty short chop. On Tuesday it was so bad that moving around the boat became a bit of a trial as we bounced around every which way. But come evening, like a light being switched off, the wind usually died away to nothing.
The duomo
To make the most of the calmer periods of weather we went ashore in the mornings, although we still got caught out a few times and had a soggy dinghy ride home. We paid the €2 to go inside the duomo (cathedral) and see the ancient columns from the temple of Minerva around which the duomo had been built. The room of objects with eyes on them (tokens for saint Lucia) was a bit creepy as they seemed to follow us around..... At the far end of the duomo piazza was another church, this one contained a Caravaggio painting. Full up on enough culture I was just happy to bimble around the streets for a few hours in the mornings, then some more bimbling in the market and then meet Colin for a coffee in the duomo square. I loved the colours of the market and it's bustle - in one of the fish stalls there was an impromtu sing along going on, we didn't know the words but clapped along with everyone else instead. We saw a wedding in the duomo, a folk band making a video of their songs and enjoyed the everyday comings and goings of the locals.
A sing song in the fish shop
Market stall
Sunday was forecast to be calm so we took a chance to go and see the Greek and Roman theatres in Syracuse. We bought the joint museum and theatre ticket and because it was a Sunday and the museum closed early we headed off there first. Blimey so much history and so many artifacts! We got prehistoric pot burn out from seeing so many, after a while it was a quick glance to see if anything really stood out before moving on to the next cabinet. Most displays had a description in English although a tiny few were only in Italian.
We had our sarnies in the museum gardens, got bitten by lots of wee bitie beasties so hurried on back to the theatre ruins. The Roman theatre was free to see, well no one asked to see our tickets anyway, but much of it was roped off so that we were only able to walk around the outer edge of it.
They did check our tickets for the Greek theatre after which we could wander round most of it apart from the stage area. In the caves at the back (which I learned today were tombs) it was lovely and cool whilst outside the sun bouncing off the white stone was blinding. The caves also had excellent sound qualities as tested out by a man who farted very loudly in one which set all the rest of us in there giggling. His comment: 'just testing the acoustics' got an even bigger laugh.
There was a lack of information boards and we hadn't even seen anywhere selling guides. We had no idea what the little house perched high up at the back of the theatre was, back home I found out it was the last of some 16th century watermills built to make use of the fresh water running through the site.
Next to the theatre is the area of Latomie - stone quarries - from where the stone was taken to build the fine mansions on Ortygia; they also nicked off with a load of stone from the Greek theatre. On our way to the quarries and caves we saw a gorgeous ginger and white kitten but Colin wasn't persuaded by my arguments for a boat cat. It was so cute. The quarry gardens were a bit of a let down as most of the area was closed off, as were two of the three caves. The ear of Dionysius cave was impressive though and also had excellent acoustics but without any farting (that I heard anyway) to test them out.
Syracuse and Ortygia
We could only walk past the end of the ruins of the Altar of Hieron II (where they used to slaughter 400 bulls at one time) and the tomb of Archimedes (he of Eureka! fame was from Syracuse) area was also closed off, maybe because it was a Sunday and we felt the whole park had a bit of a run down air to it. We don't think it was worth the €10 entry so was glad we'd bought the combined ticket for the museum at €13.50 which felt better value for money.
Oooh and I mustn't forgot to say there's a Lidl (we've also heard there's one in Ragusa old town too) in Syracuse so a good chance to stock up on cheap beer and restock our chocolate supplies. Sad to find they didn't have any Cheddar cheese like we'd found in the Spanish Lidls but they did sell an Italian ale which was an unexpected delight. On the subject of beer, Colin had an Italian dark beer in a bar the other night too which was tasty. Proper beer in Italy - who'd have thought it?
So just a couple of short, day sail trips and we'll be in for the winter.