Day 4, Siracusa

On our bus leaving Taormina, we saw two cruise ships calling Taormina.

Maurizio told a joke on the bus

Our local guide Rosa, 44 years young and already a grandmother.
Her parents and brother are still living in Connecticut.

The largest Greek theater in Sicily, carved out of a marble mountain by slaves during 3rd century BC.
.

Rosa was all animated.

The stage, it is still used to perform Greek classic (tragedy).

School children visiting the Greek theater.  They yelled "Hello" to us.

Inside this quarry is called "Dionysius's ear".  Rosa pointed out that this "Dionysius"
 refers to the Siracusan tyrant, not to the Greek god of wine which spells Dionysus.

The ruin of a small Roman amphitheater.

Siracusa's Duomo on Ortygia island.

Inside the Duomo, one can see it was originally built as a Greek temple.

Ortygia, we had lunch at the 2nd restaurant in the background by the water.

Back in Taormina, we went to La Piazzetta for our second dine-around dinner. 

We ordered 4 different appetizers to share. They were
Caprese salad (mozzarella cheese with tomato), spaghetti with tomato sauce and basil,
pasta e mollica (Macaroni with bread crumbs), and Risotto with fennel.
This was 1/4 of every appetizer placed on a person's plate.

We also ordered four different entrees to share.
Sauté mussels in white wine sauce,
Swordfish Messinese style (potato, capers, olives, garlic and tomato sauce)
Meatballs wrapped in lemon leaves, and
Veal escalope pizzaiola style.
The light yellow liquid in the glasses were undiluted lemon juice. We asked the wait staff
to trade our included wine for lemon juice, then we added water and sugar to it.