Today we tried to take in the Val di Noto which is in the southeast corner of Sicily. There are several good sized towns in the Val di Noto, and it would probably take three days to explore them all and it would be worth it. Unfortunately, we only had today so we had to limit ourselves to three of them, and we were definitely on the run to get that done.
Our first stop was Noto which is the city the valley is named after. We arrived fairly early, and parked down the hill from the old town. The walk up the hill from the modern town to the old town was good exercise to get us ready for the day. We came into the old town right at the cathedral. The cathedral was originally built in the 1700’s in the Sicilian Rococo style. The dome to the cathedral collapsed in 1996 causing extensive damage. It has been rebuilt now and it was hard for me to tell what was rebuilt and what was part of the original structure, so kudos to the restoration team.
The main street in the old town is quite monumental with very large and interesting buildings stretching for maybe 500 meters. The town has been used in the past for movies, and the posters of the movies filmed in Noto were featured as street art. The buildings lining the street are also done in Sicilian Rococo which is why Noto is a world heritage site.
We would have liked to have given Noto some more time, but we were feeling under time pressure. So after about an hour of walking the main street we decided to push on to our next destination.
Our next spot was Marzamemi which we had selected because we wanted to experience fine dining. We usually go for street food or moderate priced restaurants, but today we decided to go upscale. We picked a place that was Michelin rated that had been owned by a niece of the last queen of Italy. It was our first experience with a Michelin rated restaurant.
Marzamemi is famous for its tuna, so I leaned heavily towards tuna. Our appetizer was seasoned raw tuna and it was quite good. I went with a tuna and artichoke pasta dish, and Ton had a mixed fish of the day. The service and presentation of the food was very good, and the ingredients were all fresh and first class. Overall we enjoyed our special meal, and though it was more than we usually spend, it was in line with what we would spend at home for a restaurant meal.
We now had to run from the coast up into the hills of the Val di Noto for our last stop of the day in Modica. Ton was really looking to visiting Modica after she read about the chocolate from the city. Her way of selling Modica to me was by telling me a story from WWII where an American pilot who parachuted from his damaged plane was hanging from a tree after he got snagged in it coming down. A local girl from Modica saw him and he offered her a Hershey bar if she helped him. She left with the Hershey bar, but instead of returning with help, she returned with a bar of Modica chocolate for him, because it was so superior to the Hershey bar.
The climb up to the old town was again pretty steep, but since we had just finished a big lunch, we had plenty of energy to pull it off. The town was quite striking with houses perched on steep hills all around the old town. It reminded me of Porto in Portugal which also had a section of town built on extremely steep hills.
We stopped in one of the chocolate stores. Ton bought a chocolate granita that was delicious, and I had a lemon granita which was also quite good. A granita is a kind of like a slushee but nicer, made of ice, sugar, and a flavor such as chocolate, lemon, coffee, …you get the picture. Ton read that it is sometimes served for breakfast in Sicily.
In the end we bought about 15 chocolate bars as gifts for our friends at home. We will see how many of them actually make it back to Oregon.
It was getting near dark and we had about 120 kilometers to cover to get back to the campground. We were doing pretty good until we got near Catania and ran head long into the evening rush hour. It turns out rush hour is later in Italy, we assume because of the siesta, it was going full tilt at 7pm. The last 20 kilometers were bumper to bumper cars, with every traffic circle being an absolute free for all. But we made it back unscathed, but tired.
