We have now moved south to a smashing and rather quaint apartment in the old town of Siracusa or Syracuse depending on which book you read. In fact our useless Eyewitness guide uses both spellings in different places just to confuse stupid tourists. We are staying here for five nights after which I am afraid we have to return home.
The area we are in is a tourist hot spot but fortunately we are down a little alleyway so we are unlikely to have people annoying us, after 8pm cars are banned so hopefully it will also be quiet.
Not that an Italian driver ever takes any notice of the rules, we have witnessed several cars heading off the wrong way down one way streets and we seem to be the only people to take any notice of parking restrictions.
We have been enjoying the food on our holiday, apart from one bad meal a couple of days ago every meal has been good.
Strangely the bad meal was not in a touristy area. We have had some of the best beef burgers we have ever had, some nice steak plenty of fish and in particular tuna which is a speciality of Sicily. Not the nasty white tuna we get at home but red steaks which even I like. The coffee, ice cream, pastries and cakes are wonderful.
There are two oddities;
Pizza - whilst the pizzas we have had are fine there is little variation. A pizzeria will have 20 or so options on the menu but they all all the same thickness (thin) and have any combination of cheese (only four varieties allowed), ham / sausage, olives, tomatoes, egg and olive oil. None are thicker and they don't ever have fruit, other meats or anything more adventurous. The best pizza I have ever had was in Tanzania of all places, it was deep and had a Bolognese type sauce with yogurt but here that would be considered an abomination.
Spaghetti - I like spaghetti, Gill thinks I am a philistine as I like to eat it with a knife and fork, she insists at home that we use forks and spoons but in Sicily they just give you a fork but because you end up with half of it down your shirt the waiter puts a bib on you. This must be the most bonkers idea ever.
Lastly I could not resist photographing the sign below which was on a church in Augusta, Expensis Fidelum sounds like a dubious activity.