Our favorite resort town in Italy,is Siracusa. Our friend and guide 'Lucia' has booked us into 'The Grand Hotel', on the waterfront, on the island of Ortiga. our mission here is to do some cooking lessons, understand the old town better and to see what is for sale in apartments here.
It is very hot, 42 degrees today. We have dinner on the hotel terrace watching the sun go down over the harbour.
Monday 30th. We have a swim at MB's favorite rock beach. For summer they have built a large scaffold platform with steps into the water. During the day there are lots of people using this artificial beach.
Our cooking class starts with meeting our teacher 'Alessia', with Lucia at the market.
Alessia explains the ingredients she will use. Fish (Spatola), a long thin eel like silver fish that we would not normally look at to buy. Next, celery, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, watermelon, bread and fresh yellow ( durum wheat ) flour.
We then head off to Alessia's apartment. Lucia is our translator although Alessia does speak some English, she works better in Italian. What fun we have learning new fish recipes. Also, how to make our own fresh tagliatelle and 'caponata' a very Sicilian vegetable dish, ( recipe to follow). At the kitchen table we all eat the class food for lunch.
The afternoon is spent house hunting. We have arranged several appointments with agents and owners but there are so many for sale signs around we stand in the streets and call agents on the signs for 'Vendisi'. By the end of the day we realize there are so many cheap renovation opportunities, but in reality we decide renovation would be a nightmare.
We find a very good apartment occupied by a couple that have lived there since 1983. It has great sea views and good accommodation, bigger than we expected.
Because of our large lunch and the heat, we don't feel like eating much even at 8.30 pm. However, we had booked what is reputed to be Ortiga's best restaurant 'Don Carmelo'. The food is good but not up to the standard of our teacher Alessia's lunch. We could not see how it is number one.
Tuesday. We meet Lucia and Alessia at the market. Today is anchovies, ravioli filled with fresh ricotta cheese, orange salad and tomato salad.
At the market we run into a few old acquaintances, our girlfriend from the beautiful deli, and the ricotta cheese merchant. Everyone is so friendly.
Back at Alessia's apartment our time fly's with preparing and cooking lunch. We learn how to prepare the anchovies stuffed with orange herbal breadcrumb mix. We make fresh ravioli and stuff it with fresh ricotta. Again a wonderful lunch.
Alessia tells us she wants to move to her farm. She invites us to join her there when we return in September.
In the pm we visit more apartments.
We have dinner with Lucia and her boyfriend Vincenzo at a very good restaurant 'Kalliope'. Enzo is a journalist with a love for politics. We enjoyed an interesting discussion on the Italian political situation. It seems to us the Italians are going to be reluctant to move into the faster world of today.
Wednesday, a morning of house hunting again. We can't beat the apartment we saw on Monday, by the sea in via De tolomei, for size and quality. We visit the apartment for the second time. All the agents say the prices are 'flexible'. Also the agents charge 3% for the buyer and 3 % for the seller, MB cannot believe they can charge this amount. They say they need to do this as they don't do many transactions, we say they should just work harder!
JB and Mick