A Day With Angelo and the Baroque Cities

We saw some of the hillside towns near Ortigia/Siracusa today. I should explain that Ortigia is the historic center of the city and it is an island. Defensible back in the day when the European countries were constantly attempting to extend their own particular culture and power. And often their religions. Sicily, in particular, has a history of conquest because of its ports. Phoenicians, Carthaginian, Spanish, Byzantine, Greek, Norman, German Swabia, Roman periods existed here (that’s probably not all of them!) and the remnants show in their culture and great food.

The Baroque cities are unique in that they are phoenix expressions for towns completely demolished by an earthquake in 1693. And redesigned in the dominant architecture of the time – baroque.

NOTO

This is the city we finally chose granite over gelato or at least Mary and I did! Beth had her first gelato at 10:23am in Noto. I guess that would’ve been a late night chaser on her internal pacific time clock😆

Granite is ice and sugar and a flavor of your choice discovered when the Arabs brought sugar to Sicily. Sort of a cross between a snow cone and sherbet. We approved!

Nice little shops with typical local products. We left with lemon olive oil, pistachio pesto and beautiful spaghetti and black squid ink pasta (easy to pack).

MODICA

Famous for its chocolate, we tasted but didn’t walk away with any. They claim their cioccolato di Modica whose origins are from the Spanish period doesn’t melt!?! They mastered their specialty crushing cocoa beans and sugar on basalt plates. It’s grainy and quite nice.

We chose lunch here ……. The tagliere tasting boards are a little daunting in the number of items, but wonderful examples of local eating and fun to identify what you’re eating!

RAGUSA

Returning to Ortigia, our tour driver shared the waterfront, the Basilica of Santa Lucia with a Caravaggio altar piece, Sanctuary of the Madonna of Tears (a very modern church that dominates the new City of Siracusa skyline), makes sure we know Siracusa is the birthplace of Archimedes, drives us by the 5th century Archeological Park that we won’t choose to get to (Roman ruins ahead) and encourages us to get the the castle.

And then there is Angelo (our driver) to remember! A classic gentleman, Angelo was a charmer. He shared so much our heads were full. The history makes mine spin sometimes, but is fascinating in the moment and spaces we visited. Like our other encounters in day tours, our leaders seem genuinely passionate about their country. Angelo also shared “surprises” – little extras that were fun. But the most memorable was his opener when he told us about being a tuk tuk driver for Whoopi Goldberg – with the photos to prove it. Evidently also Harrison Ford, though no photos and he definitely wasn’t as impressed. We are sadly not in the celebrity category. Angelo also shared photos of his son Sebastiano, who is a musical theater performer (video proof NYC) as well as being a model. Sebastiano’s body baring photos got a “one hot Italian” exclamation from me!

We had a great day and got to see beautiful countryside before ending up on our terrace watching the harbor turn to dark.