Thursday, October, 5th, 2006
Today we decided to explore the island attached to Siracuse called Ortygia, it was beautiful. The weather in Siracuse was very nice, really sunny and warm. We wandered around Ortygia and found that we enjoyed looking at the ocean more than looking at the "historical sites" in the area since they were all pretty much disappointing. There was the acclaimed "temple of Apollo" that was pretty much just a bunch of crumbled stones and not much to see at all. I guess that Siracuse did not have as much love to preserving their monuments as the rest of Italy did. But the ocean was beautiful.
We went to visit a fountain on Ortygia that was called "Fonte Aretusa" and it was really cool. It was gigantic and lower in the ground so we could only see it from above. There were giant papyrus plants growing in the middle area and it was a haven for ducks and geese and giant, mutant fish. It was very cool to see up close and we got an even better view of it by going down into the aquarium and then walking through to be at the same level as the fountain. We didn´t plan on going to the aquarium but the woman running it (who we´re pretty sure was a transvestite and had a very intimidating deep male voice) unwittingly intimidated us into going. It was worth going to visit though, lots of cool ocean creatures.
There was also a very cool fountain in the Piazza Archimedes, in the middle of the island, that Tyler really wanted to go into but was too populated for that to be possible. The fountain was huge and was really cool because unlike all of the other ones we had seen in Italy, it hadn´t been cleaned. There was moss growing all over it and it looked like the men in the water in the fountain were being swallowed by the sea because they were covered in this seaweed. The ocean was reaching up to get them, it really amused us. We both agree that statues should be kept dirty, it´s more their "natural state".
We tried some good ol´ fashioned Italian fast food at a place called Cocco Drillo and it was much better than McDonalds. And it was very good to have some red meat for a change, even if it was a very flat piece of red meat. It was nice and cheap so that suited us just fine. :)
-Jenny and Tyler, wish we were covered in moss
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