Antiquities

Since our last posting, we visited the Parco archaeologico in Syracuse - home of the Teatro Greco - pretty impressive for being over 2,000 years old.  Enjoyed imagining all those Greek bums sitting at the theatre watching the latest Greek tragedy and then later Roman bums in those same seats screaming their lungs out for their favourite gladiator. Yup, they all took place at the same place, just hundreds of years later.  Apparently, there are reruns of Greek plays here as well in the summer. That would be worth watching.  Would be curious to hear how well the acoustics work.

Teatro Greco

Unfortunately the Roman amphitheatre (also at the Parco archaologico) is under repair/renovation so we didn't see it up close.  The best we could do was to peer through the iron fence. Apparently, Roman replays of naval battles was one of the spectacles shown at the amphitheatre.  Leave it to  Roman ingenuity. Water from the nearby pool was used to flood the amphitheatre and voilà all was transformed into a fake ocean for a fake naval battle. 

 

Visited the archaeological museum again as well.  The place is so full of pottery that we both were potteried out in a few hours - we couldn't have handled looking at one more shard or even a whole vase for that matter. There are so many fabulous Greek pots done by some very famous Greek pottery painters.  There's still more to see.  Let's see that's at least three1/2 days spent at the museum and we have seen section A, B and F.  We have Section C and D yet to see.  All the artefacts are from Sicily and there are thousands of years of settlements so that makes for lots of debris left behind for archaeologists to sift through.




 Yesterday was a lovely day - warm and sunny.  We walked by the Ionian sea, famously referred to as the "wine dark sea" by Homer.  It didn't look too much like wine but I bet it's nice to swim in when it's warmer.

Had lunch in Ortigia at Il Portocciolo; however, I've been told by Albert to say no more. He thinks we'll stir up too much envy if we go into any kind of description of the meal, so all I have to say is the seafood was fresh and tasty.

Today was a quiet day.  It was sunny but quite windy and cool, so we decided to stay in and plan for a week long getaway to Enna, Agrigento, Catolica, Selinunte, Trapani, Monreale, and Palermo.