Petersontravels

On our second full day in Noto we jumped in our rental car and headed a half hour south to Vendicari Nature Reserve, established in 1984 and a spot well know for wildlife and a couple of historic buildings.  As you enter the reserve there is a map showing you the extent of where you can hike.  It’s quite a large area!

This cat was making himself quite comfortable right at the entrance.  I had read stories about people illegitimately trying to charge for parking here but we saw none of that.

As you reach the shoreline you can see the former tuna processing plant on the left and the Tower of Vendicari on the right.  More on these in a bit.

On the beach are thousands and thousands of sponges that have washed up.  They were everywhere throughout the reserve.

After a walk of maybe a half mile you reach some blinds where you can watch the wildlife, in this case flamingos who are nesting here on their way south to Africa.  Very cool!

There are directional signs in various locations along the paths.

Another half mile later we were walking amongst the ruins of the former tuna processing plant known as a Tonnara.  This plant was built in the 18th century and fished for tuna and mackerel that were returning through the inland waterways to the open sea after mating season.

You can see the ovens that were used to cook the fish.  At one point they shifted from preserving in salt to canning.  The plant was operational up until 1943 with the WWII allied landings in Sicily created a poor economy that left the plant financially unsustainable.

The views along the coast here are excellent!

This building on the waters edge is called Torre Sveva, also known as the Tower of Vendicari.  It’s a watch tower built in 1464, and was built to defend the commercial port and warehouses from frequent raids by pirates.

Here is another view.  The tower was incorporated in the 16th century into a broader coastal warning system by the Kingdom of Sicily, using fire and smoke signals to alert neighboring watch towers of approaching threats.  We saw something remarkable similar in Ireland (although those towers were much smaller).  It remained in military use until 1867.

Another view of the tuna plant as the sun came out and made for awesome photos!

One more artistic shot of the plant.  Very cool spot!

On the way back towards the car we saw more Flamingos!  They are in a lagoon that used to be a salt pan up until 1951.  The building in the background was used by the workers who harvested the salt.

We then drove south about 10 minutes to the cute little fishing village of Marzamemi.

There are excellent views from the breakwater you can walk out onto.

Deserving of a selfie!

We stopped short of this pretty spot of the village to have lunch, and really wish we had kept walking because this square is so cute!  This is Piazza Regina Margherita, with the Church of Saint Francis of Paola in the background.

Saint Francis is the patron saint of seafarers.  The church is spartan but fitting for a fishing village.

This is known as Isola Piccola, is a private island with a house in the middle of the harbor that was historically owned by a prominent local family.  Apparently it is still used by the family seasonally.

On our final night in Noto we had dinner at a Michelin Star restaurant that was literally right across the street from our hotel.  This photo is from our balcony.

As Michelin Stars go, this was a pretty damned good meal.  We’ve had some hits and misses over the years, but this was a hit!  Here is the Amuse-Bouche before the meal even starts.

During the meal we had this excellent red wine called Scampato, which translates to “escaped” or “survived”.  That’s because the wine comes  from the island of Lipari (just off the north coast of Sicily) which famously survived the 19th century phylloxera epidemic.  The vines here are 100 to 150 years old and are located in an ancient volcanic crater.  Love the story, love the wine!!

I loved these “peanuts” which were a dessert item.  They really look like peanuts!!

Ok, the best part of the meal is this Michelin Star restaurant was playing Pink Floyd at a relatively high volume for the entire night!  Not just the hits, but somewhat obscure songs like “Dogs” from the album “Animals”, my favorite Pink Floyd album!  It was so cool!  Pink Floyd is the chef’s favorite band and he plays it in the restaurant every night, so you better like them if you want to eat here!

Coming up next we drive to Ortigia, a gorgeous island adjacent to the large city of Syracuse, and explore some incredible Greek ruins!  The next post may be a few days away, as we fly home tomorrow morning at 6 AM.  At least I’m only a week behind!

We decided to stay in Noto for three nights, as there are some sights we wanted to see to the south along the coast.  On our first day we booked another two hour “Tours by Locals” to get the highlights of the town.  Our guide met us at our hotel in upper Noto and I was surprised that a few of the sights she wanted us to see were very close to our hotel.  First up is The Church of Santissimo Crocifisso, a Baroque church built in 1715.  The second tier of the church remains partially incomplete, lacking a roof (as well as a bell on the left side it appears).

Inside the church our guide showed us this statue of Saint Benedict the Moor, one of Sicily’s most beloved saints, who is widely regarded across the island.  He was born in 1526 to Christian parents who were descendants of enslaved Africans brought to Sicily.  His dark complexion earned him the name “The Moor”.  Although he was illiterate and served primarily as a cook he was well known for his wisdom, piety and reputation for miracles.

This reliquary supposedly holds his remains, and was removed from the ruins of the former church where he was interned before the 1693 earthquake.

Another item that survived the 1693 earthquake was this lion that used to sit outside the original church.  They finally brought this one (and it’s twin) indoors after it suffered centuries of erosion.

The last item in this church is quite bizarre!  This is a statue of Saint Lucy, who has quite the back story.  She was supposed to marry a wealthy pagan nobleman but she rejected him.  He denounced her as a Christian and she was tortured to the point she gouged her own eyes out (note the statue still has eyes?).  Forget the math.

As you can see, she is holding a plate with her eyes upon it.  WTF??  We would see this depiction of her numerous times in Noto and elsewhere, always holding her eyes on a plate like it’s the “Blue Plate Special”.

The church actually sits on a beautiful square where old men congregate each day to tell the same old stories for hours on end before they go home to have lunch.  After lunch they repeat the same thing.  We saw groups of old men sitting around chatting pretty much everywhere in Noto!

As we started walking west towards lower Noto our guide pointed out this building that is the local prison.  Our hotel is just a block away!  This prison building was HUGE!  Not entirely sure how useful the guardhouse was on the corner.

Our guide took us into a government building and had the staff let us out onto their balcony for these views.  This is the benefit of Tours By Locals!

This is the view towards the Mediterranean coast, where we were headed the next day.

We then made our way down to lower Noto, with plenty of steps from this spot.

This is the same staircase from the prior photo, with a Pop Art treatment.  Noto dresses up the town with annual artworks, and this was the latest theme.  It’s been a few months since the installation, and you could see it was falling apart in various spots.

We arrived on the main street of Noto, “Corso Emanuele”, and headed east towards the edge of the historic center.  In the photo below is the official entrance to the city, once known as Porta Ferdinandea, built in 1838 to honor the visit of King Ferdinand II of Bourbon (Spain).

It was renamed to Porta Reale after Italian unification in 1860.  It is also called Porta Nazionale (the National Gate).

The Church of Saint Francis d’Assisi is famous (infamous perhaps) from the HBO show “White Lotus” (Season 2).  If you’ve watched the show this is the church where two of the characters walk down the stairs, one walks off to use the ATM, and the other one has a very odd experience of men aggressively staring and ogling her.  It was very strange to us, as the character isn’t even hot….so what the hell?

It wasn’t until we were here that we realized it was an homage to an old 1960 Italian movie called “L’Avventura” where this scene was shot at the same exact spot.

Our guide pointed out the former entrance to the Church of Santa Chiara, and asked us to guess as to why it had no obvious easy access?  I guessed correctly that at one point the street was actually at the same level as the entrance!  To make improvements within the historic center they lowered the level of the street, thus leaving this church hanging.  They ended up giving the church a new side entrance, but kept the doors here as a memory of what once was.

Here is the interior of the same church.

At the back of the church is this viewing area for the nuns, similar to something we saw in Ragusa.  This was to allow the nuns to view service without being seen, as they had a strict vow of silence and isolation.

The nuns even have a private spot near the altar to take communion.  The translation of the Latin text here is “Come and Eat”.

This is Noto’s WWI  memorial to those from Noto who died in the war..  Directly behind the statue is a memorial to the WWII soldiers.

The evening we arrived in Noto I took a photo of the Fountain of Hercules, which I’m going to show again here but zoomed in.  This statue, which dates from 1756-1757,  originally had him holding a club over a lion he had killed.  In 1838 the local authorities decided to change the statue and replace the club and dead lion with the more “harmless” shield bearing Noto’s coat of arms (which means overly sensitive people have been around a long time, even in Italy!)

Our guide pointed out that the lions paw still exists in Hercules crotch.  Interesting tidbit of info we would not have seen otherwise (particularly since I don’t focus on men’s crotches, even on statues).

I’m showing another photo from my prior post to give the next few some context.  This is the Noto Cathedral, the main attraction in Noto.

This is the interior of the cathedral, which we visited after our guided tour was over.

Beautiful modern artwork adorns the altar area.  While this church was completed in 1776, the dome and most of the roof collapsed in 1996 due to damage from an earthquake in 1990.

This photo shows the current dome and altar.

Here  is a photo from 1996 after the dome and roof collapsed.  It’s amazing to me that we didn’t have color photography in 1996??  I could only find black and white photos.  Maybe it’s a Sicily thing?

One last photo, this really cute doggie named Pipi we met when we stopped for gelato.  We really miss our dog Corky!  By the way, the gelato at “Gelateria L’Artigianala Noto”, very close to the Fountain of Hercules, is excellent!

Coming up next we drive south to the coast to visit Vendicari Nature Reserve and the little fishing village of Marzamemi.