12a. Ortigia arrival day

Ortigia: Sat Sept 17 – Wed Sept 21

Accommodation link.

It was with some surprise this morning, as I got up early to bring in the washing from the balcony, that I felt a few drops of rain. It didn’t last long though so we were able to get out for one final walk around Catania before heading off to Syracuse, about an hour and a quarter drive down the coast. We decided to head to the fish markets to see them in action and they didn’t disappoint; Swordfish seemed to be very popular. We then did a loop up by the Roman amphitheatre and through some back streets where we found a huge market in progress, Mercato di piazza Carlo Alberto; probably not surprising given it was a Saturday. Our coffee stop this morning was marked with some achievement; I finally nailed the iced coffee order. It only took me 3+ weeks!

It was them back to the apartment to get ready to pack up for our departure. It wasn’t the best timing on my part, probably, as the Swans were playing Collingwood in the preliminary final and that kept Mark quite distracted until our check out at 11 am.

Roman Amphitheatre again but this time in daylight

Finally nailed the iced coffee order; only took 3 week!

The sun was back into overdrive by the time we left the apartment for the drive down to Ortigia, Syracuse and the journey was fairly uneventful; the stress of Italian driving though superseded by the monitoring the last few minutes of the Swans v Collingwood game. We found some short term parking on Ortigia, the small island off Syracuse, so that we could offload our bags and make it to the apartment but finding longer term parking was going to be an issue; apparently there is no long-term parking on the island.

Our Airbnb host, Maria Teresa, was friendly and helpful and gave us some good tips for our stay in Ortigia. However, the unrelenting heat was really starting to get to me with continued days of high 30s, high humidity and today there was a hot wind thrown in on top! There was no reprieve at night or in the morning either; it’s like the thermostat got jammed on a ‘fan forced hot oven’ setting up here. The current temperature was 35 ^oC with a ‘feel like’ of 37 ^oC. I’m sure I had a glazed look on my face whilst Maria Teresa was explaining about all the key places to visit because I was simply thinking ‘I’m not leaving this air conditioned apartment’. There was a lovely view out over the water from our lounge and lying there would do me just fine for the next three days, thank you very much! Not so for poor Mark though; he had to go and move the car from short term parking and to try and find some long term parking; with an added order of ‘pick up some milk on the way back please’!

We did venture out again at 6.30 pm but it was still 35 degrees and with a hot wind blowing. We’d found a recommendation on Forbes for the bar Mikatu and this turned out to be great. In fact this was the best venue for ‘snakes’ so far! The only problem being that clearly every other traveller had read the same article and so the place soon became packed with lots of Gen X and Gen Ys and, sadly, we were the oldest 😞 It was a great vibe though and reminded us of home: trendy bar, by the water and lots of young people. Kinda sums Bondi up in a nutshell!

We did a quick Google search for nearby dinner spots and found ‘Locanda Maniace’ was just a 2 minute walk away and so that’s where we headed. What a good move that was! They had cloth napkins and we had the best meal of the trip thus far. We even found a local wine that we liked ( see photos). It had been a very full day but a good one!