Sicily

This is our last night in Sicily and WOW it has just been a whirlwind of intresting events. Sorry I haven't written anything for a few days but as you will read, we have been so busy there has been no time. When you come home you just want to go to bed because you are so tired. We stayed at my aunt and uncle's villa and it is amazing.

It was very luxurious you felt like you were at a movie star's house. They had everything a movie star would have even a chef that would come and cook these unreal meals for us. They were often 3 courses and very big portions - always pasta.

There was a town just outside of where we were staying called Modica. This is where my three little cousins, the youngest being 3, took cooking classes. For one of their classes I tagged along and took part in it. We made eggplant spaghetti rolls. They were very good. 


In fact a lot of our time in Sicily has revolved around food. One day we went to a herb farm nearby. We had a tour of many different kinds of herbs, sat down to enjoy the view and BAM out came the food and some more food and some more. Then when you thought you were going to explode from eating so much some more came out. It was delicious, my favorite being the fried sage.


This area of Sicily is famous for its Baroque towns (Scicli, Modica and Noto).  These towns have many beautiful cathedrals and buildings made out of limestone and built with arches, stone decorations and carved gargoyles which is the Baroque style.  Just like Malta, this area of Sicily was devastated in 1693 with an earthquake and tsunami.  Everything had to be rebuilt.  The Baroque style was the popular choice.

Yesterday we left Scicli and the cousins and luxury and came to Catania.  It's the town closest to Mt Etna so we did a trip to the volcano. I now know everything there is to know about volcanos.  Did you know that when the volcano explodes the lava travels slowly and it is often pushed on from the lava behind it and it sounds like breaking glass.  We saw lots of lava flows because there have been many  explosions, the latest one being in 2007.  We got to walk on the lava, it's not shiny like in the movies, it's rocky.  Some of the flows had houses in the middle of them and some villages were totally covered. Our trip was in a 4wd jeep and it was very, very bumpy. I thought it was just going to be a quick up and down sitting in the jeep, but oh no, we had to get out and do a 2 hour hike up to a crater.I'm over volcanos, 6 hours of looking at one and I'm all good.

Today as a treat we got to do more walking. We couldn't figure out the Italian train and bus times so we couldn't get to Siracusa and walk around the ancient Greek (although we are in Italy) amplitheatre. Well, that didn't make me too sad. No problemo! There's lots of ancient things in Catania (where we're staying). More walking. There is even a Greek and Roman amplitheatre here that dates back to the 1st century. I think it was Greek first and then Roman.  The famous thing about this one was that it was covered up and built over with houses for hundreds of years and it's still being excavated now. Did you know that in the 2nd century it could seat 16,000 people and I got to sit one one of the seats today. A lot of the stone is lava rock. Did you know that the word arena is latin for sand which was placed on the amplitheatre floor to soak up spilled blood (google is my friend).