We arrived in Syracuse Friday afternoon. (Again, thank goodness we had the TomTom! Our hotel was located on an alley that's inaccessible by car. Even with all the driving we did around Ortygia trying to get to it, it would have taken far longer and been way more frustrating without our trusty technology, armed with the most authoritative voice of Eddie Izzard. We now just refer to the TomTom as Eddie. "It's going to take Eddie a while to figure out where we are." "Where does Eddie say to go?" "Ignore Eddie. He doesn't know this is a roundabout." But I digress...)
We got a recommendation for dinner from the hotel receptionist and headed out to see a little bit of Ortygia. We passed through the Piazza Duomo, with the cathedral lit up for the night and possibly the most beautiful Christmas tree I'd ever seen, covered in white lights and (artificial) white pointsettia blossoms.
Actually, there were Christmas lights all around Ortygia. The first of these were taken on the Corso Matteotti as you drive from the mainland onto Ortygia, and the second on the Piazza Duomo:
Dinner was at a restaurant called Cambusa off the Duomo. It was recommended it for its seafood, but the receptionist also mentioned that the owner's wife is Japanese and that they also serve sushi. We weren't about to forego authentic Sicilian for sushi on this trip, no matter how good it might be or how much we miss sushi in the Netherlands, but we went there anyway.
We got there REALLY early by Sicilian standards (7:30pm?), but that's what we do with a baby! They sat us but weren't quite ready to start taking orders or serving food, so we had a glass of prosecco and some breadsticks to pass the time. Aldus was interested in the prosecco - or at least the glass. But no, we didn't actually let him drink any.
I don't remember exactly what we had (Charles had something on a skewer), but I remember that it was really good! We were tempted to get gelato or other dolce on the way home, but even I was too stuffed for dessert!
How cool to have a satnav / tomtom thing with Eddie Izzard's voice!
Beautiful pictures--What an amazing holiday you three had!
Posted by: Amanda | January 08, 2008 at 02:59 AM