Day 44 (Lecce)

Today is 73 and partly sunny. Staying in an apartment is nice except everyone seems to have unattended dogs that start barking at 8am. Fortunately I was about to get up anyway. If it’s not barking it’s car honking. Why did we leave our Executive Suite?!

We spent most of the morning planning our last week in Sicily. I scheduled a 6.5 hr train ride tomorrow at 1:00 pm. Lori reserved a room in Messina, Sicily where our train ride ends. After that our plan is to travel up the southern coast to Taormina, Mt. Etna, and Catania. Then we are planning to cut across to Cefalu and then end in Palermo. We are not sure how many days at each spot but we do know that we will be flying out of Palermo to Amsterdam to Detroit and end in Midland, Michigan in a week or so.

We found a pub that was about 2 blocks from our house with really good ratings. It said that it was open until 3pm but when we arrived we found that they were closed. We find that quite often. We think it is due to the time of year and not many tourists. So back to old town we went. We found an Irish Pub and were excited for some fish and chips. Nope, it is an Italian, Irish Pub with all Italian food. There was Horse meat on the menu which I considered but the waitress discouraged. We ordered a combo style plate for 2 people and it was pretty good.

So much for a relaxing day. We ended venturing a little further into old town and found another entrance gate. These are big elaborate stone arches. There are supposed to be 4 of them around this part of town. We revisited the Roman Forum which I am just fascinated with these structures and what they were for. It looked like they did tours based on the modern ramps, signage inside the arena and a ticket booth. When we inquired they told us that they don’t do tours inside the arena. Hmm, do we point out the obvious or let it go. We chose the later. Sometimes it is like walking on egg shells over here if you look American.

After a few hours we started looking for a place to eat. Unfortunately most businesses close between 3pm and 7:30pm so if you’re accustomed to eating at 5-6pm you are out of luck. We did find a pizza place that was opening at 5:30. We were 30 min early but they whipped up some pizzas for us anyway.

We carried our pizza’s through a large park on the way back to our apartment. The inside of this park, while carrying pizzas, was the first time that I felt unsafe. We passed by a group of young men and could only understand one word of what they were saying and it was PIZZA! The rest I filled in with my imagination and waited for an attack. Lori felt the same way. There was no way this pizza was going anywhere except with us! We were hungry and desperate! That must have shown on our faces because there was no advance. Ultimately it was probably all in our starving minds.

We made it back, had some pizza and watched TV. Tomorrow is a travel day with a 6.5hr train ride after a 1.5hr drive to the station.