Middle-aged flash packers

Spent the day exploring Syracuse, where Archimedes was born and where Plato was the advisor to Dion. It’s also famous for the painting of St Lucy by Caravaggio so a star studded place indeed.
We wandered down to the old town known as Ortygia, which is an island connected by bridges to the rest of Syracuse.
Ortygia is similar in feel and architecture to Venice, minus the canals. It’s a place to just wander through the alleyways and streets and soak up the atmosphere. Very busy on the main avenues, but you only have to dive down one of the narrow streets and you are alone.
The really nice thing about Ortygia is that local people still live there, it’s not an Italian Disneyland where the ordinary people have been pushed out by developers or second home owners.
The bad thing about Ortygia, and indeed all of Sicily that we’ve visited so far, is that no-one cleans up after their dogs – they don’t give a shit about dogshit and its most unpleasant, especially when you are wearing sandals.
By the time we had finished our wanderings it was 3pm and the storm clouds were gathering. Time to take a leaf out of the Sicilian book and head back to the hotel for a quick siesta.
Revived, we literally crossed the road I see the Greek amphitheater and the Orecchia del Dionysus – Dionysus’s ear.
Both were fantastic. The amphitheatre was sometimes flooded deliberately by the Greeks so they could re-enact famous sea battles. Behind the theatre is a river that flows into a cave, presumably they diverted this to flood the stage. Damn clever them Greeks!
The Orecchia del Dionysus is a cave that looks like an ear and has the most incredible acoustics. Just the pigeons cooing sounded amazing. I’d read some reviews of the cave that said a Welsh choir had visited and had spontaneously sung in there – just the thought of it makes me have goosebumps. Wish I’d been there on that day.
We must have walked over 10 miles but in order to find somewhere to eat that evening, we couldn’t hang up our walking boots (well sandals). No restaurants close by but the walk was worth it – 5 delicious courses and a bottle of wine later we were on our way home.
Interesting bit of street life, families eating from the Sicillian equivalent of a kebab van – meat panninies.
Less heartwarming were the two prostitutes (they both got business) and the drug deal. Oh well, not too different from any city in the world I guess.