Sicily: Etna and Surroundings

We spent the last 4 nights of the trip in Viagrande at the Relais San Giuliano hotel. This hotel is brand new and was really nice. The front desk staff was especially noteworthy - they helped us find restaurants, book dinners and wine tastings, find hikes, and just gave out tons of helpful information while we planned our days. We would tell them what we were looking for for dinner and they'd come back with a list of choices for us to look into and decide between.

The obligatory pictures of the hotel pool. The water was "refreshing". This was the only hotel that we stayed at that had poolside drink and food service, which we made use of a few days.



The slopes of Etna are known for their wine, so we naturally did a few wine tastings while in the area. The most notable winery, where we actually liked the wines, was Nicosia. This was about a 5 minute drive from our hotel so we went there for dinner one night and then went back again for a wine tasting. The location was beautiful, food was excellent, the waiter english-speaking and amazing, and we ended up buying some of their wines. They have very reasonably priced shipping to Germany so we didn't have to lug bottles back in our luggage.

Martin (who was not the DD) had himself a very generous wine tasting of 7 wines. He didn't like the red wines grown on Etna as much as the wines grown in southern Sicily. The wines from Etna are much more mineral-y, which for us works well for white wines but not for reds.



The view of Etna from the winery. The top was surrounded by clouds every day we were there except for the day we drove in. It may be harder to get a good picture of Etna than we had thought.



The other winery we tasted at was Gambino. This is one of the bigger wineries and they had a huge area which accommodated several large groups at a time for wine tastings. They also would feed you a small meal during your tasting, which I appreciated since I wasn't drinking the wines. Martin didn't like any of the wines there enough to buy them but the view we enjoyed during the tasting was really gorgeous, overlooking vineyards, mountains, and also the ocean.



The remnants of the meal and tasting.



There was a park with a "hill" just a 10-15 minute walk from our hotel, called Parco Monte Serra. The park had a playground, butterfly garden, and things for the kids to do. It also had a challenging (read: very steep with crumbling steps and no railing) ~350-step staircase from the top of which you could get an amazing view. We hiked up this twice during our 4 days here as it was really good exercise and you couldn't beat the views.

To get to the park, you had to walk up this road ... which is a legit road according to Sicilians and google maps. It's basically a pile of broken pottery and pieces of asphalt.



Some pictures of the staircase.



And the views from the top. I really liked this cloud hanging out over the ocean.



Again, Etna was always hidden by clouds.





There were paths at the top of the staircase and you could supposedly make your way down back to the bottom of the park again by taking them. We always just went back down the stairs to avoid the possibility of getting lost in the park and having to backtrack.



There was a festival in Viagrande the weekend we were there. It had something to do with wine. It was fun watching the little parade of horses through town. The guys in the carriages were playing catchy music as well. There was also a market set up in the town park and a lot of dancing and entertainment. It was neat that we just happened to be wandering through town during it.



We did, on our last day, drive up to the Etna base station at ~6,000'. The top of Etna is ~11,000' but it varies from year to year due to eruptions. It's one of the most active volcanoes in the world, and the most active in Europe. Anybody can drive to the base station and then take a cable car up near the top, followed by a jeep the last few hundred meters up to the top (you can also hike any part of it, though you might need a qualified guide for the top). Of course the cable car and jeep do cost money though I'm not sure how much as we didn't use them. We just wandered around the crater at the base station and enjoyed the view.

Since we were above the clouds that always seemed to surround Etna, we were actually able to get some pictures of it!



The extinct crater we walked around.



Some other random views not looking at Etna. It was a really gorgeous morning.



And, in case you were wondering, there is indeed a full bar at the base station! So you can sit and have yourself a nice drink ... with 89543789543 other tourists.

Sicily: Modica, Ragusa, and Noto

Al 3 of these towns are UNESCO heritage sites; they are part of a total of 8 towns in southeastern Sicily that were rebuilt or repaired in the late baroque style after a devastating earthquake in 1693.

These towns are less than a 40 minute drive from Marina di Modica, which is where we were staying. So they're perfect for day trips. Each town has something unique and impressive about it and I'm not sure I could choose just one to visit if I had to.

A side note about the driving ... if you can avoid driving in Sicily, that's the ideal situation. However we rented a car (unfortunately Europcar gave us a Jeep SUV - make sure you get something smaller!) and even with a built-in GPS, our GPS from home, and 2 iphones running google maps, we still had some interesting times finding routes. Some of the roads in Sicily just aren't well documented by navigation companies. You'll be fine if you stick to the main highways - driving from Catania to Syracuse to Marina di Modica was totally fine with no issues. Once you get on the smaller back roads things get narrow, unlit, windy, poorly signed, and extremely bumpy - if you were lucky enough to be driving on pavement in the first place. And there are no laws on the roads - people run red lights, go any way they want down one-way streets, sit in the middle of intersections, double and triple park anywhere they want, drive either way above or way below the limit. Anything goes! It's total chaos you just have to embrace it. It's nothing short of a miracle we didn't damage our car or kill somebody on a moped.

Modica

Okay, first stop was Modica - known for its chocolate so I was looking forward to this stop. The chocolate in Modica has a unique consistency and is actually very grainy so it's more like you're eating kind of a cookie. I really like it. So we stocked up on some of that. Modica is also built between and up several large hills with a nice church on top of one so we had ourselves a nice uphill hike here. Here are some streets around town.



Starting the steps up to the church:



The view from the church, you kind of look across the valley to the other hill.



Some more fun streets. You get a great view from the top of the hill. There's also a castle up there but not really much to see inside it it's just kind of an empty building but they let you wander around.



A pano of the view:



Some views from the castle (which is right by the church):



After our little walk and some chocolate buying we went in search of lunch. Found some cats first. There weren't very many cats hanging around, to my dismay. I would totally be the person that put out bowls of food and water for the street cats though.



We ate lunch at Cappero Bistrot. I highly recommend going there. The food was unique and delicious - I had spaghettone in an almond sauce with chives on it. All the food is locally sourced and really fresh and the waiter/owner tells you where everything is from. Here's a picture of our little table in the courtyard. There are maybe only 4 tables in the courtyard and a few more inside the restaurant.




Ragusa

The next day, we headed out to Ragusa. It was rainy but we still enjoyed a wander around the winding streets there. Ragusa-ibla, where we were, is where the old part of town is with the winding streets and touristy shops. It also has a little park at one end, shown below.



In Ragusa, we parked at the bottom of town and walked up into it. It's not a long walk, maybe 10-15 minutes. You can't walk anywhere in Ragusa-ibla without going either up or down hill so prepare yourself for that. You really have to park at the bottom of the hill because trying to drive around the streets up the hill seems like something better left to the locals, in my opinion. There is a nice little pedestrian area right around the Duomo here and of course many cute, narrow, windy streets.

Here's the church. You do have to walk up about 100 steps to get to the entrance.



And some fun streets we saw while wandering around. The first one is part of the pedestrian-only strip leading up to the church.



I love how these people filled their little courtyard/alley with plants. It was gloomy and rainy and the picture doesn't do it justice but it was really cute.



Some neat views of the town and how it's situated at the top of a hill. The modern part of the town is separate from this part by a gorge.



And ... cats! Look at the two sleeping on each other. The person who lives here has left out food for them ... this would be my house if I lived here.



We ate lunch at a place called MAD, which stands for Magazzini Donnafugata. Honestly the food was good but not remarkable. I'm sure there are better places to stop in Ragusa. We chose this place because it was already after 2pm, which is the witching hour when many restaurants close until 7 or 8 pm, but this place was still open.

We then drove another 20 minutes north to do a tour and tasting at an olive oil factory, Oleificio Gulino. This was really neat, and their olive oil was quite tasty. Below you can see an olive tree (duh) and on the right is the olive oil right after it's been pressed out of the olives. It's super green. Below that are pictures of the inside and outside of the building where all this magic was happening, respectively. We stocked up on some of their products afterwards and I think you might be able to buy their oil online and have it shipped to you as well.



Noto

It seems to me that Noto is the most famous of the baroque towns, yet I found it the most touristy and least impressive. The buildings are beautiful, don't get me wrong. Maybe it was just that the streets were on a sort of grid and there was no dramatic hill. We only stopped here to stretch our legs on our drive to our next hotel in northern Sicily and so only took a few pictures along the main drag. The church is impressive - there are actually something like 50 churches in Noto so you could spend several days just exploring those. You can climb to the top of many of them too.



Some street pics. The first is of the main drag that the church is on - which is very nicely pedestrian-only - the rest are side or parallel streets to the main street. We didn't venture too far here.



We ate lunch at a place called Picnic. It was a bit of a breath of fresh air - salads, smoothies, vegetarian dishes - avocado! Lighter fare than pizza and pasta for sure, which was in line with our goal for the day: to be hungry for dinner at a reasonable hour.

And that wraps up our tour of the baroque towns. All worth a visit, if you have the time.