We’ve grown to love this little village of Marzamemi over the last two days. It must be a popular spot in high summer. We see preparations for holiday-makers and day trippers arriving, all through the place. The beach is being cleared of all the seaweed that has piled up in the winter storms, umbrella- shades have been put up on the beach, cafes, restaurants and tourist shops are opening. A huge field behind the village has been marked out for car parking. This is all helped by the sudden improvement in the weather today. It feels as though summer has been switched on. It’s the first evening that we have sat out on deck in t-shirts, at the end of the day, watching the sunset.
We went to Noto today. This involved walking about 5 km to the nearest town to catch a bus. All went well, after Steve (with help from Google Maps) had tried to lead us across an overgrown field, which had a dead end. We were in the Baroque town by midday, joining the groups of school children, cruise ship and other general tourists, to walk around this very beautiful town. Noto is about 16 kms inland from Marzamemi. The old town was destroyed in an earthquake in 1693 and then completely rebuilt by a small group of architects, working in collaboration, using local Iblean stone, which is a beautiful rich honey colour, restored now that traffic is very restricted, in the centre, and it has all been cleaned, after getting into a sorry state during the twentieth century. One enters through the monumental Porta Reale and follow the Corso Vittorio Emanuele along which are some of Sicily’s “most captivating buildings”. There’s, of course, the Duomo, Museo, Teatro, Palazzo and several churches, all built with classical proportions.
We toured an art exhibition about little known female artists from the seventeenth century onwards, all very impressive until we got to the modern stuff, some which could have been done by a seven year old and Yoko Ono’s piece was just obscene. I’m sorry, I just don’t get modern art!
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Miles 2022 - 327
Tricia (and Steve)
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