Our first full day was taken up mainly by heading over to Sicacuse and the Archaeological Park and Museum. (they are two different things)
On our way there, we stopped and had a great espresso at a coffee shop called Violet. All the baristas were woman. I am not sure if this is there thing, but they do make good coffee.
It lit us up.
Then we saw some street art. Potato head street art. It was all gone by the time we went home
We also walked by the fish market. I am a real sucker for a nice fish market:
They had other things, too. Like olives:
and sun dried tomatoes:
The first thing you see in the park is an old Norman church. One of the last one's here. If you read Norwich's book about Sicily, you learn a lot about the Normans.
There are Roman ruins, this one is a cistern:
and this is a stone bench. Look at the volutes on the end. It looks like a sofa!
There were hundreds of these niches. The guard (and the books) tell us they are Votive Niches. Votive plaques (see next post) would fill these. Imagine!
Archimedes was a Sicilian. I am pointing to his tomb here:
and here is a closer view. You can't get too close to it, or I would be sitting inside.
There were a couple of the niches that had more detail on them. Here are two:
This whole area was a quarry. They also used it as a jail. This is one of the stopes that was used by the ropemakers:
and this one was called "Dionysus Ear" because of its shape and the acoustic properties within:
It was HUGE! They said that they worked 6,000 slaves to death in here. If you couldn't repeat some Greek plays, they would leave you to die. Brush up your Shakespeare!
This was a torso just lying around
I tried (somewhat unsuccessfully) to get near it:
The big payoff was the Greek amphitheater. They still use it!
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