Syracuse has almost no beaches, but there is the sea and yachts in which you dance and drink to forget, and you become in love - the water is blue and pleasant even in May.
Getting to know one country most often happens through her capital. In some rare cases - through her famous resorts. People most often get familiar with Italy through her capital Rome. Fountains, squares, piazzas upon piazzas...Rome is a cosmic city, ancient, lush, juicy, tasty, bigger and older than many other places in Europe. When someone hears you are going to Italy, he will surely visualize the Fontana di Trevi or a scene from a Fellini film that he accidentally watched somewhere on YouTube. And you're free there - wearing skirts, dresses, blouses waiving your hair...and Rome is for your background.
But Italy is not just Rome, and thank God, so my first date with her is in the warmest and most southern part. I and Italy get acquainted with the more her more banish, poor, exotic, exciting and hiding one Caravaggio and a bunch of cathedrals among her piazza parts – namely Sicily.
More modern and polished Italians see Sicily as the ugliest and slightly unpolished version of themselves. Because Sicily is swollen and sunken in the glowing sun. The trading and the buzzling life is going non-stop trough her streets. During the day, little dark Sicilians try to sell everything you think - from toys to food. Everything you smell, slightly smells of a scam, especially if you decide to divert from the Stasicoro Piazza in Catania, from where the city center starts. In the evening, these same dark elements are chasing you from a pub to a pub trying to sell you all kind of junk. Especially if they suspect that you are a foreigner, they can show you everything from focuses to a broken English within 30 minutes, while you are eating a freshly made pasta with a glass of wine.
Refreshing Ice Cream for the heat
Other typical behavior of Sicilians is to drive on the streets as madmen - all sorts of vehicles, but mostly small cars and big scooters, with the music ramped-up to the absolute max. And there always is at least one lavishly girl in each pizza, prone to gurgling to the loud rhythms. The road safety regulations DO NOT have a place here, no matter what time of the day it is. In any other place, it would be so ridiculous that shame will grapple your European body at once, but not in Sicily and, in particular, in Catania. Here this is the norm.
Exoticism meets Europe in the best symbiosis that poverty, the smell of sea and fish and tourism can bring forth.
Palermo is the central point of Sicily, as a district center can be. The city is at the other end of the island, which is almost empty in the middle. I did not want to stay in Catania. From there I went to Syracuse - the more modern, European and historical point of Sicily and, of course, Taormina.
The most famous resort town on the island is the point between the mountain and the sea. The two give birth to a shriek of colors and white wine, of history, of beauty and of the most impressive antique theater in the area.
Taormina and her endless blue water are where your heart stays while your feet are digging into her big-grained sand.
It is the modern Sicily. The one you're going to go if you do not want to see the poor, swarthy beauty of the rest of the island.
Syracuse is proud of its history. It has ancient Greek ruins, the island of Ortygia, the medieval part and the small streets that lead to incredible views of the sea. There is the harbor fortress Castelo Maniac, which surrounds the main pavement of the center, and keeps the city from the sea, which again carries an Italian disco or some other pop cacophony in small yachts, full with half-naked young people. Syracuse has almost no beaches, but there are is the sea and yachts in which you stand and drink to forget, and you become warm - the water is blue and pleasant even in the early spring.
Syracuse's Cathedral
Syracuse’s jewelry, her most important child and great pride, is the huge Duomo Duque and, of course, the Basilica of Santa Lucia al-Badia, which incorporates ancient Greek columns and exhibits the masterpiece of Santa Maria's Funeral of from Caravaggio from XV Century. You covered, walk around because it's huge, do not take any photos like a busy tourist, just admire and go out with the clear idea that you saw what people most commonly call a "masterpiece." Then you drink a bottle Cold Grillo and go to bed in the early hours of the next day.
In Sicily, the days merge. It is always warm, always loud, people are always doing something, traveling with bikes, singing, playing, and eating. For delicious food and good outdoors you have to wait, sometimes longer, but it's always worth it.
Sicily is being treated as the small, dirty kid of Italy, but it is all so beautiful that your soul can scrap the little tricks of inconvenience it tends to make you feel. Still, this is the homeland of the mafia, and it is not by accident that the Godfather is shot here. There is a way to get to the shooting points as long as you want, one is even in Catania.
Sicily is...delicious food and love at first glance. And since the first meetings are the most important, I'm glad I’ve met this magnificent country this way. We will see each other again, at least once in my lifetime!