Day 7 - Siracusa

Mount Etna without Clouds

Another bright, beautiful, sunny day and we headed down to Siracusa for a day trip. It was a pretty easy 90 minute drive and there were no mountain roads and almost all autostrada! As we left Giardini-Naxos, we got a great view of Mt. Etna, this time without the peak being covered with clouds and you can clearly see the smoke (or maybe steam) coming out. Etna is a pretty active volcano with eruptions every couple of years with the last one in March of last year.

Greek Amphitheater in Siracusa

I think I need to explain some Siracusa history to better point out its significance. Siracusa is one of the oldest Greek cities in Sicily and the most powerful, rivaling Athens when it was at its peak. Its most famous citizen was Archimedes who was the top mathematician of the ancient world, the first one to approximate pi, but probably most famous for shouting "Eureka" after discovering the principle of displacement in his bathtub. He was killed in 212 BCE when the Romans conquered the city.

We parked just outside the oldest part of the city, the isle of Ortigia, because it is closed to traffic on the weekends (supposedly closed but there was still traffic). We then rode the Siracusa Hop-on Hop-off bus to get to most of our destinations.

We spent the first part of the day touring Greek sites including the large amphitheater and the Ear of Dionysus. The Ear of Dionysus is a natural cave with amazing acoustics. Even a small noise echoes loudly in the cave.

Charlemagne (r) with Two Knights

After that we rode back to Ortigia for touring and a puppet show. Today is my birthday and the puppet show was my choice. The puppets (similar to marionettes but with only three strings) are three feet tall and reenact scenes from the tales of Orlando, which is a medieval story about knights in Charlemagne's court. Of course there are sword fights galore, including one where a soldier gets decapitated. Not sure how they did that, but they did. Not exactly what I would call "kid appropriate" in modern times but it seems to work. We both enjoyed it immensely.

Procession in Traditional Dress into Church

Cathedral of Siracusa

The following are a couple of random shots.

I'll just close by saying we had another nice dinner near the hotel to celebrate my birthday. I had Orata (Sea Bream, best fish so far) and Jeanne had Spaghetti Carbonara again (best one so far). Birthday cake to be followed when we get home because that is something that doesn't exist here.

Ortigia Shoreline