I dropped Pedro off at the dealership.
Francesco, a very handsome young man, took down some details. Passport photographed, address in Sicily, home address, telephone number, email address and then National Insurance number. Luckily I managed to find that on my phone because he absolutely could not proceed without it.
On the way back I found a market. A proper one. Fabulous vegetables. And fish. Everything looked amazing. Even the celery. And all very cheap. You could live well here. I saw some pears. Very small. The trader told me he only sold by the kilo. Okay I said. The price was a euro fifty.
I stuck to the lungomare. Some nice buildings with even better views. All a little down at heel in that relaxed Italian fashion.
This little place was once the most important town in the whole of Magna Graecia. Even the Romans paid their dues. Until Hannibal and his Carthaginians showed up and they changed their allegiance.
Back in Ortigia I spent some time in Piazza del Duomo. What a square! It is something to behold. Beautiful, elegant, a knockout. And up there to rival San Marco. It has a human scale and a perfection of colour that makes that lonely Venetian piazza look stiff and cold by comparison. And that’s from a massive Venice fanboy.
The cathedral itself has a massive Baroque facade.
Just inside the portico a pair of very fine Solomonic columns.
But inside it has a kind of homeliness and rustic rough stonework of the original Acropolis. You can see the massive doric columns that were infilled with stone blocks after an earthquake weakened the structure. It’s a very impressive building.
And in a side chapel, the bones of S. Benedict.
Round the corner was the Archimedes Museum. One for the kids really with lots of hands-on stuff. But informative.
He truly was amazing. His bath moment. His machines for flinging stone blocks and mirrors for burning ships. Pulley systems that let a single man winch a trireme onto a dry dock. 3.142. And of course his screw.
I read a quote by Plutarch that summed it up. And Plutarch was no slouch neither.
Outside and round a corner, a motorcyclist carrying his helmet. It was Brendan! Amazing! He was just leaving for Catania.
We sat down for a natter and I told him all about Pedro. He’d seen the Tesla incident too and it unnerved him how close the cars and trucks followed behind. We swapped numbers and wished each other safe travels.
‘Maybe see you in Palermo.’ he said as he got on his bike.