The Travels of Garmisch: Sicily: Marina di Modica

Marina di Modica is located on the shore of southeastern Sicily. The beach is nice, the town is cute, and the hotel we stayed at, the Modica Beach Resort, was quite nice.

We didn't take any pictures of the hotel itself but here are a few sunset pics of the beach and the restaurant area that overlooked the beach:

And the beach in the morning. What's nice about this resort is that they assign you a spot on the beach and nobody else can take your chairs so they're always there when you want them. It's such a great way of doing things ... a lot of times at beach resorts people "reserve" lounge chairs on the beach or by the pool early in the morning for the entire day when they don't arrive until like 1pm and it's so annoying. Though at this resort they also had plenty of chairs so there were always plenty sitting empty.

You could walk ~10 minutes along the beach from the hotel and be in the center of the town ... right at the ice cream shop. :) There was also a general store and did I mention the town was cute? Maybe you could call it more rustic ... anyway several nights we made the trek and enjoyed great meals at the only two restaurants that were still open in late September. Here's a pic of the trek during sunset:

The trek back to the hotel was in the dark but there are a few lights on the beach and we had plenty of moonlight as well.

The first restaurant we ate at was Osteria dell'Emporio which has maybe 10 tables and is run by a couple and their daughter. You can watch them cooking your meal over a tiny stove in a tiny shoebox of a kitchen. The food was perfect - caprese salad and pasta dishes that we had. Service was also great, english-speaking, helpful with wine, etc. This is my perfect idea of a restaurant in Italy - small, family-run, fresh homemade food.

The second restaurant in town was called Boca Marina and catered to a larger crowd. Martin had a really good mixed grilled fish plate. I had some pasta with salmon that wasn't quite as good as the pasta with salmon that is made at our local Italian restaurant here in Germany. The salmon was dry and there were just tiny little bits of it. While Martin was impressed with the food, I was not. Here's a pic of his fish plate though:

The hotel restaurant had good food, we ate there 2 nights, but the service was hit or miss. You had to get there before the rush at 8pm or you'd be lost in the rush ... and likely forgotten about entirely.

But breakfast at the hotel! It was pastry and cookie heaven. Sure, they had some scrambled eggs, fruit, and muesli, but the main attraction was this table shown below... and behind that table was a long table covered with cookies.