Saturday morning, we were up early again (7:00 seems to be our normal time now), had breakfast in our room and finished packing and headed out finally around 9:30 for Siracusa, with a stop along the way planned in Noto to see one of the "Baroque towns" in eastern Sicily.
Well, we made it to Noto without too much of a problem, despite taking a different route than we planned due to missing a turn. Of course, once in town, the signs directing one to the Centro Storico are few and far between and we were driving around trying to head in the general direction that we knew it was (we could see it up the hill at times), when I decided to "try this left" and BAM! A scooter had decided to pass me on the left at that moment. Now, this was on a one way street and, as the police made very clear later, the scooter had no business passing me on the left, period. The driver of the scooter, a 17 year-old kid, was fine--a couple of scrapes. His phone did go flying across the street, though, so I don't know if he was actually texing or just waiting for texts with it in his hand. His bike was a little worse for the wear, with a broken windshield and some good scrapes, but totally functional. Anyway, he called his father, who apparently called a friend who was a cop (off-duty) who then called a couple of on-duty cops (who were adament that it was the kid's fault--and Dad was not pleased). So, we got the insurance report filled out, finally, after about an hour, and got on our way. Now, this was my first accident--EVER (other than "laying down" my motorcycle a couple of times, but first involving another driver), so I was quite shaken. I do have the super premium zero deuctible coverage, so no worries there. We did go for lunch and take a bit of a wander aound the old town eventually. It really wasn't much of a visit, though, since we had lost so much time and my heart wasn't into exploring, especially since I was quite sure that the day wasn't going to get much better in a hurry--and I was right.
The phone number for the place that we were going to be staying at in Siracusa (actually in Ortigia, the Old Town island adjacent to Siracusa) was not working. We had been trying since the night before and it was clear that it did not work. This was the only contact information that we had received from Expedia when we made the booking. I had tried sending Expedia an email but had not received any reply by the time we left Noto. Well, sure enough, we got to Ortigia, found the place quite easily and there is just a lock-box on the front door. No way of contacting the owner. So, we headed to a cafe for wifi so I could look up numbers and bit the bullet and called Expedia (no foreign voice plan, so $$$) and after about 45 minutes on the phone, finally got hold of the owner. Turns out the phone number that Expedia had sent me on the booking was totally different from the owner's number and from the number that Expedia had as a contact number for him. (It wasn't even a valid format of number.) Needless to say I was furious, but I will deal with Expedia when I get home. We were just so glad to get into the appartment, which is very nice, but about 2 hours after arriving.
We got cleaned up and went out for dinner around the corner and both had a good "Pasta Norma", which every restaurant in Sicily seems to have a different version of. Oh, and then there was the parking of the car. I wasn't really sure if the place I had parked would be OK or if it would be ticketed (or towed). And I hadn't been able to get hold of the car rental company to report the accident. So, although I was out cold in seconds after I went to bed, I was up at 1 in the morning worrying and went out to see if I could move the car and squeeze it into a space in front of the apartment. All in all, a day I would rather forget completely.
Next day, Sunday, was a good day. We explored Ortigia in the morning. It is a quite large Centro Storico, I guess because it is hard for the "real city" to encroach on an island. Then, in the afternoon, we headed over to the Archaeological Park on the mainland and checked out the Greek Theatre and the Roman Amphitheatre, which were impressive but not spectacular. But talk about spectacular, we had just an amazing dinner at a little place called Di Vino Mare. I had a tremendous cod with broccoli cream and Carol had a fabulous gnocchi with clams. Sounds simple, but it was really special. Oh and wonderful "deconstructed" cannoli for desert.
Monday, for our grand finale in Italy, we drove about an hour and a half up the coast to Mt. Etna and took the cable car up the south side to 2500 metres and then the "jeep bus" up to 2920 metres (9580 feet), where we did a walk with a guide up and around a side crater that last erupted in 2002 and also wandered over the lava flows from the big eruption of the main crater last year. That eruption completely changed the landscape of the south side, and wiped out the cable car, coming right down to the parking lot at the "base" at Rifugio Sapienza. Everything had to be re-built since then. It was a fabulous clear day, which is a matter of sheer luck, but made the views really stupendous. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a ground haze far below, so some of the photos don't really show the detail and distance that you could see with the naked eye. As we were heading back to the buses, we even happened to see a big explosion of gasses from near the top of the main crater. A really great day!
Then Tuesday, off to Catania to turn in the rental car at Europcar (no problem, even though I had lost my copy of the accident report--good thing I had the "super deluxe" coverage) and check in for the night at the Catania Airport Hotel, a bit of a change from the places we've been staying, for our very early flight to Malta on Wednesday. Hard to believe that we are done with Italy already--4 weeks goes fast!
2025-02-08