May 18, 2006 - May 21, 2006
We caught a flight from Florence Airport to Catania around 6:00 on Thursday. We then drove by bus to our hotel in Siracusa. Unfortunately, the bus couldn't go all the way to the hotel so we had to hike a little ways to find the hotel. The hotel was rather nice, though being that we got to stay in a 5 Star hotel for two nights. After we got to the hotel we dropped our bags and then went out looking for a late dinner since it was already 10:30 or so. We stopped to eat at the first place we saw which claimed to be a pizzeria. Well, apparently they weren't serving pizza at night and so we had to order other things. Two hours later we still hadn't eaten (yes it was nearly 1:00 by the time we got our food). The food wasn't even anything to jump up and down about, as it should be if one has to wait two hours when starving. Since it was so late when we finished dinner we just called it a night.
Friday morning we had a walking tour of Siracusa. We saw the Duomo of Siracusa as well as the catacombs below. The catacombs had been used as air raid shelters during WWII. After that we had some free time to walk around Siracusa, which is a beautiful city.
In the afternoon we had a conference about the Mafia in Sicily with a current Judge. He talked a little about the history of the Mafia as well as what is currently happening in Sicily with regards to the Mafia. After the Conference on the Mafia we packed up into the bus and went to an ancient Greek theater. There we saw "The Trojan Women" a play by Euripedes. It was a bit hard to understand since it was all in Italian, but it was fun to see the spectacle of it. Interestingly enough, we were allowed to take pictures, so I have some shots of the play going on, of course "senza flash".
After the play we all had dinner as a big Stanford group at a restaurant near the hotel. Dinner was good, but not the best dinner we've had. The meat was a tad overcooked and hard to chew. The pasta was pretty good, however. After dinner I again crashed, as the day was long and exhausting.
On Saturday we departed from Siracusa and started our journey to Palermo. On the way to Palermo we stopped at an ancient Roman Villa. It was probably used as a hunting Villa by a wealthy Roman Senator. The entire Villa was covered in mosaics that were probably made by a school from North Africa since it is in the North African style (apparently).
After the Villa Romana we headed to Agrigento and saw the Valley of Temples. There are Greek Temples on the site dedicated to many of the major Greek gods. One of the Temples there is the second best preserved Greek Temple in the Mediterranean. During the visit we stopped for a while to wait for people to use the restoom and I had some "granita" which is Sicily's version of the Icee. They're quite good. Anyway, we unfortunately weren't able to walk inside of it as there is bomb damage from a crazy person who was protesting the war in Iraq. Look what Bush is doing, not only is he destroying Iraq, he's also destroying Ancient Greek Temples in the Mediterranean.
After the Temples we got on the bus again and headed the rest of the way to Palermo. We had a nice dinner in Palermo next to a family celebrating some occasion with a small child. The little child was very cute and the family was trying to get her to say small things in English since she was clearly taking it in school. Anyway, I had calamari fritti, which were much larger than they are in the U.S., but still quite good. I should've taken a picture, since you could still see the tentacles and suction cups, yet I ate it. Crazy, huh?
Sunday we had a new tour guide for seeing the sights in Palermo. She first took us outside of the border of the current city of Palermo to a small city called Monreale. There was a church with some nice mosaics as well as a very pretty ancient monastery/cloister. We also saw the place where the Sicilian government/parliament sits and whatnot. Unfortunately, our tour guide didn't project her voice terribly well and it was difficult to hear what she was saying about all these places. After this we returned to Palermo for some free time.
In the afternoon we had another conference, this time about the Italian and specifically the Sicilian diet. The lady pointed out that Italy has the longest average life expectancy of any country in the world. This is clearly because they eat well. Now who said salame isn't healthy? We didn't have too much free time after that so we sat down in a park near where the bus would pick us up. Then we hopped on a bus and headed to the airport to go back to Florence.