Sicilia

We've had a great few days in Sicily. Siracusa was the definite highlight - a beautiful old town on the south-east coast. We spent the morning wandering through Ortygia (the old harbour town) to see the layers of greek, arab, roman and rennaisance history evident in the old buildings. In the afternoon we wandered to the greek ruins on the other side of the new town which included a massive theatre carved into the solid rock and a nearby cave - named the ear of Dionysus.

The next day we spent most of our time bussing to Agrigento. Although from our map it appeared that there was a direct road of some 100k's we had a 6 hour bus ride back up to Catania and through the interior of the island. This was still quicker than the 9 hours and two changes it would have taken by train!!

The reason for the excursion to Agrigento was to see the greek temple ruins - the largest remaining ruins outside of Greece and therefore a great warm up for the greek part of our trip. Around 500 BC some Cretans and Rhodians (sp?) decided it was a good idea to set up camp here and in the end were spending more money building temples on Sicily than they were back home. We got to see some awesome finds at the adjacent museum - mainly pottery offerings people sacrificed at the temple, including some very ornate and detailed painted vases.

Then it was back on a train and off to Palermo. It's been raining quite a lot (mainly thunderstorms) but judging from the dry parched countryside we saw on our bus and train rides the locals will be grateful. The rain was not so welcome in Palermo however where there is virtually no drainage system as it only rains once in a blue moon. The roads quickly turned to rivers and we had great fun splashing our way around in the dark finding a place for dinner last night.

Today we strolled the streets to the Teatro Massimo, the largest opera house in Italy. Took a look at the opulent interior with one of the deepest stages - big enough for them to use real elephants for some of the performances! Also famous as the setting for the closing scene of one of the Godfather movies. The local markets were also quite impressive with abundant fresh produce.

The hostel we are staying at has free internet (but still no luck uploading photos sorry) and we are just taking a break in its cool and breezy interior before donning our packs and heading off to the airport for our flight to Germany.

We have been invited to the wedding of a cousin of Fran's on Saturday and on Monday we are off to Munich to Oktoberfest along with Fran's brother Philipp, hopefully followed by a couple of days camping in Bavaria.

Until the next installment,

Ciao,
F & G