Sicily Day 7 Syracuse (Home of St. Lucy, kind of....but a biblical city)

Today we drove the longest left of our road trip. First we drove an hour south to Syracuse to visit the tomb of St. Lucy. Online had a lot of confusing information about her, and sadly there was just a bunch of stuff dedicated to her with a huge relic, the rest of her is in Venice. Somehow they steal all the good relics and keep them for themselves…..grrrrrr. Upon arrival we enjoyed the beautiful scenes of the port and over looked the former Greek port that would have welcomed St. Paul himself as cited in the Acts of the Apostles. From here we made our way to the Duomo for a visit to St. Lucy and the local piazza. It was a fascinating walk, first passing the Temple of Apollo in Syracuse, which was dated several hundred years B.C. Upon arriving at the cathedral we saw similar history. It was built on an old Greek temple that was built around 500 B.C. and over from the 1300 on it was consistently added to.

We walked around the island area of Syracuse soaking in a little more shopping, the prices and selection were better and different here. We enjoyed some simple street food of rice balls with fish, some pastries, a complimentary espresso with locally roasted coffee. A shop that was due to open tomorrow, kindly gave us an espresso even though they were opened. Truly great hospitality everywhere. Monica bought more purses, which she found a great deal on. I bought a hand made leather pouch, designed for cigarettes,, but I bought it for my holy cards, since it was being hand made in front of us. We saw a couple more ancient sites and from here we began our journey to Porto Empedocle.

It was a decent drive, but challenging for me through many high hilly areas, and rough road country side. Thankfully I had minimal driving in the dark which is very challenging for me in windy areas with altitude. Upon arriving here we found the port town to be cute, and we weren’t exactly sure about it as it did seem desolate. I chose this as a overnight stop due to the owner of PJ’s pizza in Brick, N.J. His family is from here and I thought it would be a nice gesture to share this leg of the journey with him. In all my travels I try to connect those back home with my pilgrimage in some capacity, especially when I print holy cards, touch them to a holy site of relics and bring them back. Besides the great family meals which were the best, this was our best food experience so far of the trip, it was a very unique culinary experience which would normally run in the hundreds in any big city in the U.S.A., but in Porto Empedocle it was 96 Euro, 25 of which was a bottle of wine. il Salmorigilio was amazing from start to finish. The 5 chefs were on staff, and because it was off season, we along with another patron who seemed to be reviewing them had a great experience with this art filled food. You will see all the pictures of our day and meal here.

Along the coast of Syracuse, Sicily