Monday 20 May
Sicily has a long history, and for most of that time the primary means of transport was foot or horse. Consequently the Sicilian towns are not great places to drive around, we didn’t hire a car for our trip. So we are missing out on all the fun of being stuck behind tractors, driving round hair-pin bends up mountains and trying to find a parking place in a hill-top village.
The buses are regular and reasonably priced, but they are a bit slow. I have a thick Stephen King novel to read, so I can spare the time rattling along congested highways.
Today we went to Noto, which is about an hour to the south of Siracusa on a hill. Its origins go back to the Greeks, and has subsequently been occupied by all the many invaders after that. For a while it was part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a short lived 19th century kingdom. At the time, bizarrely, the Kingdom of Naples was also called the Kingdom of Sicily. When it amalgamated with yer actual Sicily it became the Kingdom of Two Sicilies.
There is a local Twickenham connection to this area. The daughter of King Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies, Princess Amilie, married Phillipe the Duc D’Orleans and lived in Twickenham in Orleans House. He later became King of the French and she became the Queen.
Anyway I digress considerably. Noto was destroyed by an earthquake in 1693 and was rebuilt in the Baroque style, and is mostly intact. This is in contrast to other Sicilian cities which were badly damaged by bombing in WWII. It is a UNESCO Heritage site, so you can’t add Velux windows or bi-fold doors to your Baroque palazzo.
We arrived at the impressive entrance gate at the same time as about five million school kids moving like wilderbeest on the Serengeti. I’m sure Italians get lessons in how to talk over each other extremely loudly. Having a conversation appears to be a competitive event, and a sprint rather than a long distance race. The mass of kids were slowly ingested through the gate like a crocodile swallowing a herd of colourful squirrels.
Once they had been swallowed we took a side street up from the main drag. The road was steep and lined with honey coloured houses with fancy balconies. I was convinced that there would be a spectacular view of the stunning countryside at the top. But there was just a big white concrete wall. What a bloody waste of energy.
S0 we walked back down to the town centre on a footpath about two feet wide. When someone walked in the opposite direction with a dog it was a stare-off until I decided the dachshund looked vicious and stepped onto the road.
We stopped at a cafe and ordered a sandwich for me and a salad for Julie. Oh, and I had a Heineken, it’s my birthday still innit? I noticed that in the cafe opposite they had cones of fried seafood which smelled delicious, and I immediately got food envy. C’est la vie.
There was a kind of flower festival in the town, with displays made up of petals and coloured rice making pictures. That’s why there were so many school kids visiting. It is a well-known fact that kids adore floral displays.
I would imagine that the local pigeons and rats would make short work of the colourful displays, so maybe they mix the petals and rice with a hideous poison or guard them with marksmen on the rooftops.
I heard a car revving extremely hard and noisily in the street. There were lots of Carabiniere standing around in their tight trousers and side-arms, so I expected them to arrest the miscreants. Then I saw that it was a police Lamborghini that was making the racket, fucking show-off.
There were also some Carabiniere on horses letting people take selfies with them. I guess that would terrify any local Mafiosa thinking of selling cocaine amongst the floral displays.
The cathedral is very beautiful, and looks like it was built yesterday. Thats because quite a bit of it was built recently. The dome collapsed in 1996 due to unremidied structural weaknesses after an earthquake in 1990. Having seen how they build their houses in Siracusa, I’m not surprised.
Anyway it is very lovely now, and worth a visit. Inside it is relatively plain compared to other Catholic cathedrals, but the ceiling paintings are very good. I’m always at a loss to describe paintings, my vocabulary for that stuff is very limited, and i guess that’s why I never became an art critic.
Noto has many many places to buy gelato, and today I had a piccolo-sized cone with chocolate and pistachio scoops. In fact I still have some tasty remnants in my beard I can enjoy for the rest of the evening.
The return bus to Siracusa was quicker than the outgoing and I slept for a while. The seats are designed for small people, and I am not. So I dozed bolt-upright with my head lolling about like a puppet with a broken head string.
We bought beers and went to our roof terrace to enjoy the rest of the afternoon and watch the swifts zipping about over the rooftops.
Julie is busy choosing a restaurant for dinner tonight, we didn’t eat out last night because we were full of salty snacks. I am, of course writing this wonderful blog for your entertainment.
timharnesstravels 