quaint Ortigia

After visiting the ruins in Siracusa, Carrie, Ginny, Lena, and I wound our way towards the beautiful old port town of Ortigia.  Because of the narrow channel of water separating this island from the mainland of Sicily, Ortigia seems distinctly different from larger Siracusa.  It felt like we had left the hubbub of modern Sicily behind and had stepped back in time.

We wound our way through a fruit and vegetable market, stopping here and there to snap pictures or dip into Sicilian ceramic shops.  Carrie snapped this photos of Lena on my back as I bent over to take pictures of sun-dried tomatoes.  Someone was getting a little weary of all the adventuring!

Eventually we walked into the blindingly white central piazza, Piazza del Duomo, where all the buildings and pavement gleamed of clean limestone.  After some perusing of menus, we settled on a charming little trattoria with amazing pizza offerings.  I ordered un mezzo litro del vino bianco della casa (hope my grammar is right, but I meant “a half-liter of the house’s white wine”), and we settled down to take in the piazza.

photo by Carrie

                                       photo by Carrie

The pizza was amazing.  I’m definitely taking our future visitors to this restaurant, with the strong recommendation that they order the quattro formaggio pizza: a four cheese pizza (made entirely with local Sicilian cheeses) hot out of a wood-burning oven… to die for.
 photo by Carrie
After our dog-sitting adventure the other week, Lena is now obsessed with all animals, especially dogs and cats.  She followed this little cat all around the restaurant.

After we had wined and dined to our heart’s content, we walked across the piazza into a trendy gelateria.  Lena had her first taste ever of pistachio gelato and loved it.  
We wandered back through town, snapping more pictures and soaking up the delicious sun, so warm and refreshing after a cold, wet winter.  Just a minute before we reached our car, I looked down and discovered we had tuckered someone out completely.  Sweet little thing, she slept the whole way home!

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4 Responses to quaint Ortigia

  1. PoppyG March 31, 2012 at 11:42 pm #

    Oh let’s do the pizza in the piazza. Love that little punkin and miss you and Elliott. Hugs from the seemingly boring by comparison ‘new’ world. Pai

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