Fri, 3/28/25    Siracusa

Day 82 - Friday, March 28th, 2025 – Siracusa

Mary’s hard work in researching and locating excursions for these one-off sites paid off today. She's been having ongoing conversations with Vincenzo for a couple of weeks. After a poor night sleep, Mary had both of us up by about 7:30. We had breakfast at 8 in the room. We gathered up what we thought we would need for the day and headed out. I had a T-shirt and the lighter sweatshirt. I took my vest in case I needed it. As we're getting off the ship it became apparent that I was gonna need the vest all day. The temperature was about 60°. The sun was out. It was the wind that was my killer. Without exaggeration the wind was 40 miles per hour almost all day, except when in the van.  By the time we go down the ramp on the ship, through the terminal and the quarter or so mile to Vincenzo’s van, I am frozen already. I just cannot recover the rest of the day. So, unfortunately, that's how I started my day. I don't want to say that my whole day was terrible. That's far from the truth. I actually had a very good time. I just chattered my teeth through the whole day.

His name is Vincenzo. I'm gonna get tired of typing that, so I'm gonna call him Vinny. Vinny had this van for four days. It was beyond brand new. He loaded me in the van. He had nice tie downs. I felt secure. Mary sat in the row of seats behind the driver with me.

The language barrier was a bit of an issue. Not a showstopper. Vinny spoke pretty decent English. We didn't speak any Italian. Nonetheless we were able to make a day of it. Mary did a better job of hearing and translating Vinny and I did. He did have a lot of history which he shared. Then he said that the Greeks were the primary culture on the island for hundreds of years. The Greek engineer in mathematician Archimedes plays a large role in how Siracusa was initially laid out. Today they have an area called the Neapolis Archaeology Area. This was our first stop. We spent the next two hours wandering around looking at it ancient stone formations. We were able to see parts of the original Greek Amphitheatre. We saw parts of an ancient quarry. This is where they cut all the stones or the amphitheater and other buildings in the area. We saw several areas where just the foundation of buildings existed. The Amphitheatre was interesting. They had a small stage area that really looked to be maybe 50’ X  50. Up from there rose stairs that were probably 200 feet away at the top. I can't imagine someone hearing what was happening on the stage way at the top.

The quarry was interesting too. Then he said that hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives cutting stone in these quarries. You can see the scratch marks from the tools on the walls. You might be able to imagine, this was not all flat territory. This had us going up 50 feet and then going sideways and going down 50 feet. We were on a roller coaster for two hours. I did not have to do much but hold on for dear life. At any point, if Vinny lost his grip, I would have ended up 3000 years into history. The pictures do not show it, but these walkways were steep. Vinny and Mary did the work. Vinny was a smoker, and he smoked a lot. You could tell that the smoking was catching up with him as he tried to push me up a couple of these steeper hills. Nonetheless, he did it. I tried to think of some of the oldest places in the world I've been to. This goes back to about 500 BCE. I know Stonehenge is much older than that. There are certain sections that are under reconstruction. They're trying to rebuild the amphitheater so they can hold shows there again. Sounds kind of cool. It was a very interesting and educational stop.

In their conversations, Vinny and Mary were trying to figure out what would be best for us to see. The topic of a winery came up. Then he researched the wineries in the area and he found one that was a go to. It was an hour from where we were, but it was worth it. The winery was called Feudo Maccari. Vinny arranged a wine tasting for us. Yes, I know. Another wine tasting. At this point, we are professional wine tasting participants. This one was no different than the others. I would have to say that the food presented with the wines was 1000 times better. I included some pictures. This finger food was higher end. I lost count, but I think we tried eight different wines. There was one that was a clear white. There was one that even the guy couldn't tell if it was a rose or not. There was one definitely rose. Two or three or four reds. Finally, there was a dessert wine. We ended up buying 6 individual bottles. Bought the two whites. We did not buy the real rose. We bought the dessert wine. We bought the two heavier reds. We will likely bring the majority of this home. The wine was not that expensive either. That always helps. I think the most we paid was $20.00 for one of the reds. We can now say we went to a real Italian winery.

 We get back in the van and drove back down to the center of the city. Along the way, Vinny stops at in Italian bakery and picks up real cannolis. They are to eat on the ship when we get back. (We ate them later and they were very good.)

I forgot to mention it, but Mary was able to pick up postcards, stamps, and refrigerator magnet at the archaeology place we first visited. All that was left on the list was T-shirts. Vinny dropped Mary off and pointed her in the general direction over T-shirt shop. We sat in the van for the half hour before we phoned Mary again. She bought the T-shirts. She also stopped at a bakery. She bought croissants and pistachio layer cake which we will eat on the ship.

From there we drove back to the ship. We said our goodbyes and then Vinny went on his way. He was a very good tour guide. Mary piled the line on my lap and carried our other belongings under the ship. We had to turn in four of the six bottles of wine. They will return them to us when we get off the ship. Not a big deal. We still have all the wine from that first winery we did in New Zealand.

We made it on the ship and into the room. Getting off the elevator Mary remembered that she did not give Vinny a tip. It was still in her pocket. She called him and he was in the area, so he drove back. Mary had to go back on shore to give it to him. Hopefully he was grateful. He did a good job for us.

I was beyond exhausted from being so cold. It took me the rest of the night to get back to somewhere near normal. We stayed in the room the whole rest of the night.

Despite being freezing and uncomfortable all day, I would say it was a successful day. We got to learn a lot about Greek and Roman architecture. Sometimes the amount of history that a place has gone through doesn't enter my mind, but when you think about it the Greeks were there 3000 years ago. Think of the change that happened before the Greek and the changes after the Greeks. That's a whole lot of history. We saw a tiny sliver of that history.

Of course, the wine tasting was a hit. We got to learn a lot about Italian grapes. Then we got to bring some home. Vinny made this trip special.