Random Italy Photos

I’ve been procrastinating with these photos because I don’t want it to be over! There are still some more to post, don’t worry. I’ll probably dole those out in small pieces, not to keep you in suspense, but because I’m not ready to become mundane. I was looking through the photos tonight and it was making me a little sad. But enough with the moping. Time for some photos!

One photo that I never posted from Sicily. It is the reason that I would go back to the resort.

That’s right, Prosecco on tap!! I’m not sure that the way he is pouring it is best for the bubbles, but prosecco on tap!! I want one for my house. Jim is thinking about getting a wine cellar stubbed in in the basement; I want Prosecco on tap.

We couldn’t leave without getting some photos of our favorite place in Florence, Le Volpi e L’uva (The Fox and the Grapes). It is the most amazing little wine bar.

There are some outdoor tables and room for about ten people inside. After the first couple of weeks, we would call earlier in the day and make a reservation for a table outdoors. It is one of the things that I really miss about Italy: eating outside. Some friends came to visit today, and I took them to the same place that I took them to last time: The Taproom. It’s the only place close that has outdoor seating in the summer. I love to eat outside!

We love wine!! We’re all happy, but it is our last day together in Florence, so a little sad too!

The place has an amazing wine list, that is constantly changing.

They specialize in small, out of the way wineries with great values in wine. Most of the glasses cost between 3-4 euro each. (Of course, that’s about 6 bucks now, but it is still a pretty good deal.) We tried to taste everything that they had on the list. If there was something new that we had never heard of, we had to have that! They also make cheese plates and the most amazing crostini. Our favorite was sausage and cheese. YUM!!

Our last dinner in Florence was with the University of Florence contingent. I can’t remember the name of the restaurant, but we had the hardest time finding it. It was by Pitti Palace, but it took us a good 15 minutes to finally find it. It was good, with lots of traditional foods. We started with Fritto Misti (Mixed fried stuff, hard to turn down), and I think Jim had a truffle pasta and I can’t even remember what I had.

We tried to get a picture of everyone but honestly, photographing Italians is like herding cats:

We took about four photos but all of them are bad. Either people aren’t looking at the camera, they are chopped out or making funny faces. This is best.

From the left: Dante’s wife (cut out, but an amazing cook), Andrea Dei (he was our host), Roberta Sessoli (really smart and super nice), Jim, me, Dante Gatteschi (lots of fun and also really smart), Andrea’s wife, Andrea Caneschi (runs the group in Florence).

We miss you all!!

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Thinking about going to Florence? I got two books for you:

Brunelleschi’s Dome by Ross King – talks about how the dome was constructed. Very interesting!

The Agony and Ecstacy by Irving Stong – amazing book about Michelangelo. I wish that I had read this before going. I think I would have seen his sculptures and art in a new light. Long but I couldn’t put it down, especially the first half. I think he ran out of steam for the second half. But the second half is mostly about Rome, so who really wants to read that if you are going to Florence?

A Day at the Pool

I have to admit that lava was pretty much the high point of the Italy trip. But there were some other pretty cool things. And then there were the random things. One day by the pool in Sicily was a little bit of both. Cool and random.

Random first.

I spent a lot of my time in Sicily sitting by the pool. Reading, working on the blog or just sitting. One day, I was engrossed in getting a post done when some action at the pool caught my attention:

Scuba lessons in the pool. I guess they have to learn somewhere and the big scary ocean isn’t the best place for a newbie to go under for the first time. But two things really caught my eye.

One – the guy on the side of the pool, gesticulating wildly. Teacher? Cheerleader? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the teacher to be in the pool with them? I guess I don’t have a lot of confidence in an scuba instructor who doesn’t have the breathing apparatus on. Does he really know how it works?

Two – The camera crew. I agree, people scuba diving in a pool is unusual. It was salt water, but come on. Is there really anything interesting on the bottom? I can see the bottom, without actually getting in the water.

I don’t know what they were doing, but one of the pool critters (of which there seemed to be more and more every day that we were there) thought they were great fun.

Trust me here, the little girl is riding on the back of one of the scuba divers. Either that or using her arm floaties to help pull him to safety. I’m betting on the latter.

Pretty soon, the scuba divers were out of the pool and on there way to the next site. Maybe an aquarium in town?

Anyway, I stayed by the pool, because where there is one random event, there tend to be a few more to follow it up. I wasn’t disappointed. Again, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye.

What is that? It kind of looks like a palm frond, but I think it is a boat. It sailed up out of no where and all of a sudden several boats from the hotel raced out to meet it. For the next 40 minutes or so, it raced back and forth in front of the hotel beach, practicing tacking I think.

It was really cool. One of the conference goers said that it looked like an old Americas’ Cup race boat. Maybe the Italy team was practicing for the upcoming race? (Disclaimer here: I don’t know jack about sailing. Is “tacking” the the right word for turning? Are there teams in the Americas’ Cup that aren’t associated with either of the Americas? I make it up as I go along.)

When they were in the middle of a turn, the crew on the boat would go mad cranking this hand crank:

You can kind of see them in a row, hand pedaling away. I think a friend called it a coffee grinder, but I don’t remember.

I took lots of pictures, because it was so very cool. This I think is the best one of the lot:

It needs a little cropping, but what picture doesn’t?

Some people would say that watching the boat out there would make them want to take up sailing, but from what I saw, it was a lot of work for the crew. I wouldn’t mind riding on the boat, but up near the front. Not at the back where they might need help turning something.

Is that the city?

Back to photos!!

Remember, once upon a time, so long ago we can barely remember, I went to Sicily. Husband had a conference and I sat by the pool. Well, those meanies at the conference decided to give everyone the afternoon off, so their brain didn’t turn to mush by the time it was all over.

Leif, Jim and I decided to take the afternoon and check out the town of Taormina. It is north of Catania, and according to the guidebooks, quite the tourist destination. But some friends at the conference had spent the week before there and suggested we check out (yet another) Greek Theater. Plus, the sights were supposed to be amazing.

We had to drive to the city. The drive wasn’t bad, if a little boring and uninteresting, scenery-wise. I think that’s because we decided to take the highway and not the more scenic local roads. Jim doesn’t like being honked at.

But on our way up, we see this:

Is that a city on that rock? Is that where we are going? Do you see a road leading up to that or are we going to walk? I’ll admit, I was a little concerned.

But Toarmina is definitely used to the tourist hordes. There were actual PARKING LOTS. With space to put your car. It was posted, with actual signs and everything. I almost felt like I was back in the states. But to get to the parking lot, we had to cross this terrifying bridge. I only have a very vague recollection of it because it freaked me out good. Thank goodness I wasn’t driving. We would have come to a screeching halt in the middle of the road. I vaguely remember that it was only two lanes wide, with no shoulder. There were guard rails, but come on now. I really don’t know how it was held up. Toothpicks probably.

But husband was driving and so we made it safe and sound. At the parking lot, there was a BUS that took us up to the main square of the city, so it was quite painless. No walking at all.

It was much more crowded than Syracusa. There were people everywhere, but it was a very pretty town. We made our way up to the Greek Theater and saw some of the most amazing views of the trip.

Well, of course, we’re not the amazing views, but the coast and Etna behind us are!

The ocean was SO stinking blue. I could have sat there for hours!

Above the city sits the castello. You can hike up there, but it takes about 30 minutes and it was pretty hot out that day. The views would have been amazing, but we made do with what we saw from the Greek Theater.

As usual, the “Greek” theater is now almost entirely Roman (rebuilt in 3 Before Canada) and of course obscured from our view by some stupid concert set. (We were 0 for 3 in the Theater seeing department.)

Remember, scientists can take the fun out of any occasion. They were talking about science.

I like this next photo:

I don’t know for sure, but I hope those columns are some of the original Greek columns that the Romans incorporated into the “new” theater. Plus, you can see the cheap stone on the inside of the walls with the more expensive brick on the outside.

Whew!! All that looking can make a person awfully thirsty. Plus it was getting late in the day, so we found a place to have a drink, right next to a beautiful church:

Can you imagine getting married there? Well, someone did! At some point, a bride passed us on the street. Plus we kept seeing all of these people dressed to the nines, promenading in the sunset. Very cool.

I left the boys to do some tasting of the local beverages while I did some shopping. I passed a shop and saw a rug that I really wanted:

I’m not sure if it goes into the “Dogs in Inappropriate Places” photo essay, but it made me laugh.

As we were leaving, I saw a GREAT sign:

If you don’t read Italian or English, or even if you do, does this really explain what is forbidden? Holding hands? Relationships? And what is the last one? No eating? Thank god they didn’t catch us at dinner then!

One thing I will miss about Italy:

Well, duh, the wine!! But beyond that, this is a bottle that we bought in Toarmina. Even though we were going to open it in about 3 hours, they wrapped in beautiful paper and tied a ribbon on it. Almost everything that you buy in the smaller shops is wrapped up in beautiful bags or paper. I will miss that pride.

Syracuse, Syracusa, Siracusa?

Remember how I said that it was hot when we visited Siracusa? It was really hot, about a billion degrees. We parked about 16,428 miles from the interesting parts of the city in order to avoid the traffic. Leif and I decided that it was really too hot to walk and Jim should drive down to Ortygia, the island which makes up the old part of Siracusa. Remember, we don’t have good maps of the town, which really didn’t matter because once again Jim had to put up with two people yelling opposite directions at him from different parts of the car. I really am amazed that Jim didn’t kill one or both of us.

No one honked at us the whole way into the city! But we couldn’t figure out what the parking signs meant once we were downtown. We knew that they said something about residents and parking but couldn’t decide if the sign meant that only residents could park there or if they weren’t supposed to park there. Leif and I had a nice discussion for about 5 minutes before I wandered over to a restaurant to ask for clarification. After they told us we would go to parking jail, we found a nice pay lot with plenty of spaces to park.

Lunch was next on the agenda. We happened to park right next to a restaurant that was recommended in the Rough Guide (lots of good info, but not as funny as my boy, Rick). This sounded great to us and we marched right over. There was this gentleman in a black suit standing at the entryway and I just assumed that he was a maitre d’. My bad. He was a patron, and probably part of the mafia. I think this was the case because it took about 10 minutes for someone to bring us a menu after we sat down. I think that he had a few words with the staff…

(By the way – in most Italian restaurants, they don’t have a hostess stand or someone waiting to seat you as you walk in. You see an empty table and just grab it. It takes some getting used to at first but I kind of like it. I get to chose where I sit. Back in the states, I’m not enjoying having my table chosen for me. Call me a control freak!!)

But we finally get some food, and more importantly, wine!

Jim modeling our wine choice. Notice the name on the bottle. I wonder if the guy I offended is related…

This was my lunch. It was the local fritto misto, or mixed fried stuff. It was the best calamari that I think I have ever eaten, including the appetizer at 23 in Chapel Hill!

What meal in Italy is complete without gelato? We head down to the check out the sights, keeping an eye out for a promising gelato stop. This is what we settled on:

Of course, I had to get a picture of the professors at the Caffe del Professore! It was good, but they didn’t have lemon. What a waste.

Across from the caffe was the Temple of Apollo. The oldest parts date from the sixth or seventh century BC. That’s not “Before Coffee” or “Before Chocolate”, that’s 2700 years ago folks.

The town of Siracusa is mostly done in the Baroque style because of an earthquake that leveled the city in 1693.

I don’t know what “Baroque” means, but I liked it. The buildings were so ornate and scrollwork was everywhere. The little street above was very typical of the streets that we saw in Siracusa. It made me laugh that all of the buildings on this tiny street had balconies. A cat could visit the different building without ever touching the ground!

It wouldn’t be a visit to an Italian town without seeing the local Duomo.

It was another masterpiece of the Baroque style. But I don’t really understand why the church is called “the Duomo”. I didn’t see a dome anywhere on that building.

The inside of the church was very unique. The church was built on the site of a temple to Athena that was started in 530 “Before Chianti”. Instead of razing the old temple, the builders incorporated the architecture and columns of the pagan temple into the church.

I really loved the atmosphere of this church. You could look around and see the contradiction of the Catholic Church and the old pagan temple. It kept the dimensions of the old temple and didn’t try to be too big. It was very cosy for such a grand structure.

In the loggia of the Duomo, there were a couple of sculptures. One in particular caught my eye:

Is that a flame coming out of his head? I have no clue who it is, but his head is on fire.

After touring the Duomo, it was getting time to head out. We, being Jim and I, were getting tired. It was hot and all I wanted to do was take a swim. I think that Leif could have kept walking around, but we outnumbered him. Plus Jim thought that we were running out of time on our parking meter and didn’t want to get a ticket. Sounds like a good excuse to me!

We walked back to the car along the coast. The city designers had built a promenade below the old city walls. It was tree lined and very cosy. There were a few kiddie ride set up and several food vendors. Thankfully, one of them had lemon gelato so I got my fix!

The tree lined promenade. We walked in the shade. It was still pretty hot.

Jim by an ENORMOUS tree. He’s holding up to the heat pretty well!

We got back to the car and still had plenty of time on the meter, so all was well. Our only hurdle was to get out of the city without:

• getting lost
• getting killed
• getting a ticket
• getting in an accident

Remember, we don’t have very good maps and the Swede in the passenger’s seat isn’t that good at reading maps. We felt confident as we started out, but didn’t take into account one way streets. It was the usual scene; Leif and I yelling directions, Jim getting mad because nothing we were saying made sense and he didn’t want to violate the four rules above.

We got funneled into some street that we weren’t sure that we wanted to be on but we came across a disaster of a traffic circle that we recognized from driving and we were good. Jim had to cut someone off to get on the right road, and so we got honked at but no one got:

• lost (just minorly diverted. I quickly found where we were on the map.)
• killed
• a ticket
• in an accident

So driving in Siracusa was a success, no thanks to Leif or I.

Time Warp!!

Let’s take a trip back in time to a few weeks and pretend that I’m still in Italy. It wasn’t that long ago, and with the help of the guide book, I still remember what all of the things are!

Before we saw lava (and really, what can hold up to lava?), we saw some other stuff in Sicily. Jim wanted to drive down to Siracusa, on the southeast tip of the island. Siracusa has quite a history! Because of it’s location, it was a stop on the trading routes throughout the Mediterranean and was quite wealthy. Now a days, it is a much quieter town and I think it is probably more known for the Mafia than anything else. I think I had a little run in with one of the local Mafia at lunch. I thought he was a waiter! But that’s a different story…

Siracusa is about 1.5 hours south of Catania, where our hotel was. We went with Leif, our friend from Sweden who was also down for the conference. It was a pretty easy drive until we got into Siracusa. We didn’t have great maps of the towns and it was an interesting time for Jim. Poor guy, he had a Swede who can’t read maps giving him directions in the front seat and me yelling corrections in the back seat.

Our plan was to go to the Neopolis in the Archeological Park first, and then walk south about 1.5-2 km through the city of Siracusa to the edge of the city that overlooks the Mediterranean. This way we could park outside the city center and not die.

The Neopolis was the city’s collection of altars, temples, theaters and other non-house type places. Our first stop was the old Roman Amphitheater.

The guidebook (Not Rick Steves’. Apparently he doesn’t think that Sicily is part of Italy and so doesn’t include it in his book.) says that at 140m long, it is one of the largest of its kind. Really? It didn’t look all that big to me. I guess the movie Gladiator has tainted my ideas of history.

Jim and Leif were thinking about staging their own combats. People would come from miles around to watch two scientists duke it out over who has the shortest laser pulse! Think of the glory!! You know, scientists can suck the fun out of any occasion.

I was amazed that some of the arches in the Amphitheater were still standing. I mean, our engineers can’t build a road that doesn’t crack in 6 months. These guys built arches that are still standing 2000 years later. Maybe we could learn something from them?

The main attraction of the Archeological Museum is the Greek Theater, which I didn’t take any pictures of. I take pictures of slugs and people I don’t know, but I can’t seem to get a photo of a large outdoor theater. Go figure.

I did take a pretty picture of the view from the top of the theater though:

The sea was so blue!

The top of the theater is lined with caves. There is an artificial grotto:

It was blazing hot, and I was thinking about swimming. It is fed by water from an ancient aquaduct. It isn’t clear if the grotto is from the ancient times, or just the water.

In one cave, there was a cool stone throne:

I tried to get someone to sit in it, but it was covered in moss and slimy stuff.

There was also a “Cave of the Scientists”:

As I said, it was really hot. We spent a lot of time in the caves, just cooling off.

A lot of rock was quarried from this area to build Siracusa. Rock takes up a lot of space and most of the time they don’t get filled in when the rock is exhausted. The left over pits are called the “Pits of Paradise”.

I’m pretty sure the landscaping is a new thing because the pits were used as places to hold prisoners of war. But it wasn’t always a prison. At some point, a cave with some unique acoustical properties was gouged from the side of the pit walls.

It is 20m tall and extends about 65m back. It is man made, too. I didn’t believe it at first, but you can see the gouge marks in the walls. I tried to get pictures, but the didn’t turn out too well. There are also peg marks in the wall that look like anchors for stairs. This begs the question: how do you think they dug out the cave? From the bottom to top, or top down?

There is also a great big ruin in the Archeological Park:

The sign said that it was the “Ara di Ierone II”. Great descriptive name huh? It wasn’t until I was reading the guidebook on the way back to the hotel that I found out that this was an ALTAR. Not a temple, but an altar. It was dedicated to Zeus and some historian records that 450 bulls were slaughtered there at a time. Wow.

Time for some more baby pictures!!

Baby Lemon Gelatos.

Next up, pictures from the town of Siracusa!