Taormina and Home

We woke up to clear blue skies on our last morning in Sicily. I am glad the weather cooperated on our final day because we were able to get the full benefit of the amazing views.

We had a late night yesterday (I am writing this on Sunday), so today will be a day of trip recovery and many, many loads of laundry to remove various gelato stains. Our flight landed at 9:45pm and then we had a 40 minute drive home from Gatwick. We added in a grocery store stop so that we wouldn’t have to leave the house today unless we wanted to. It still makes me laugh that the Tesco’s (It is really “Tesco,” but British people call it Tescos – I am not sure if it is possessive or not because there is no Mr/Ms Tesco) has a giant “open 24 hours” sign on the building, but it’s only open from 10am-4pm on Sundays. Surprisingly, we are not having Italian food for dinner tonight. The kids requested one of their favorite Indian meals with lots of vegetables.

Last night was “Fall Back” in the UK, so we also get an extra hour today, and we need it.

I really like having a pedometer on my phone because I always used to wonder how much we walked on trips, and now I know. This trip we walked a grand total of 81 miles.

A final view of Mt Etna. I don’t know when we’ll next see a volcano, so I took lots of pictures today. Good thing we got out when we did because the clouds rolled in later in the day.

The main Taormina shopping street.

Down a side alley. As is normal in these hill towns, the main streets are usually level and the side streets go up or down.

More Mt Etna with a cactus this time.

Here we are in the remains of the town’s ancient theatre which was built by the Greeks but also has later additions by the Romans. This is the 2nd largest Greek Theater, after Siracusa, in Italy or North Africa and it dates from the 3rd century bc.

Not too shabby a view from here. It is odd that the walls behind the stage would completely hide the view if they were complete.

A view of the hills above Taormina from the theatre. We encountered numerous bands of roving German tourists today.

More views of the hills.

From the top corner of the theatre. Mt Etna is in the process of being hidden by clouds.

The columns are held up by supports that were added in the late 19th century during a partial restoration.

Remains of a Roman floor.

Some nice stairs we walked down as we headed to the town’s garden. The signs are advertising all the drinks available at the tourist bar on the left.

A nice side-street with lots of mopeds.

The above is the British lady who started this odd garden. She moved here because she liked Italy so much, and she ended up marrying a local and never returned to England. She transformed Taormina quite a bit and it then became a sort of Monte Carlo aristocratic-gambling mecca later on. And now it attracts lots of tourists, some of whom have lots of money and stay in amazing five star hotels which we goggle at as we scurry by.

She placed the garden on a bit of land that jutted out just below the town. Here is the view she suffered with while planting the garden.

She sounded like an odd character. She built these structures, that she called “beehives,” everywhere around the garden and used them to watch birds.

This is the largest beehive. We couldn’t go in because it was closed for repairs. We also met a beat-up earless cat here–only J had the stomach to pet it, but it was appreciative.

A pond.

I have no idea what kind of tree this is. I was disappointed that there was no sign identifying the tree, because it’s a new one to me.

The tree had these huge lily-like flowers followed by a fruit that looks like an olive. Florence brought a lot of species not native to Italy into her garden.

Another neat street.

More of the main shopping street.

The clouds are coming back in. To the left is an area with a large viewing platform to take in the view. The right side is lined with restaurants that are likely quite expensive.

A church covered with flowers for an afternoon wedding.

The final picture of the trip. This is Porta Catania, the gate for the side of town we stayed in. There is a similar gate, Porta Messina, on the other end of town. Our hotel was just inside this gate on the left side.

Mt Etna and surroundings

Today we did a tour of Mt Etna and its surroundings. I found a tour that you can book for just your own group so you aren’t on a giant bus and so you have freedom to plan what you’d like to do.

The weather was much better today. We had some rain, but it was just short bursts, and none of the constant deluge of yesterday.

We were just informed of an issue when it comes to getting to the airport tomorrow for our flight home. Apparently the public transportation workers were on strike all day today, and they may continue tomorrow. We may have to take a taxi to the airport instead.

This is a view of Mt Etna from Taormina before we left this morning. Yesterday’s pouring rain ended up as snow on the top of the mountain.

This is the first section of an old lava field that we came to.

This is the entrance to a lava cave.

This cave was large enough that you could go inside. The guide kept warning us about our heads because the lava was really sharp and would take the top of your head off. He had a previous visitor end up with three stitches.

A view up the hillside above the cave.

This plant, which looks an awful lot like Scotch Broom, is the first plant that returns to the mountain after an eruption.

After an exciting drive up the mountain dodging tour buses and crazy drivers, our guide decided it was time to put chains on.

Yesterday was the first snow of the year, so there were many drivers up here completely unprepared for the snow, and cars were stopping all over the place, including in the middle of the road. It was just like Seattle.

The kids got busy making the first (maybe only?) snowballs of the year.

We now have the chains on and we continue up.

This is Crateri Silvestri, which erupted in the 1890’s. Etna has craters at the top which sometimes erupt, but also has various faults that have developed all over the island, including surprisingly close to villages. When the lava flows it generally goes 1-2km/hr, so people can get away, but it will travel very far, sometimes to the sea.

The view from the top of the side of the crater. We were only wearing sweaters and raincoats, and it was very cold and the wind was whipping. The wind was blowing so hard that it was pushing us around. This weather was quite a change from the 80 degrees we were just experiencing earlier in the week.

Another view into the crater.

A view of the snow from the car. This is all from overnight.

We stopped so the driver could take the chains off the car, and we spent time walking in the ash. We were surprised that walking in ash actually feels and sounds a bit like walking in snow.

The next stop was to the house of a family who keeps bees and sells products made from honey. We are only doing carryon luggage, so no honey for us. It was really good, though.

I only took this picture because it’s my proof that we stopped in a town called Linguaglossa. The name of the town is interesting because the first part of the name is Italian and the second part is Greek. We also saw street names of Arabic origin. Everyone wanted to claim Sicily.

A view down the valley to our next destination, Castiglione.

Here is the main church in town. The black stone used in building the church is volcanic. The tour guide said this church is rarely open. The old town is slowly crumbling and it is very expensive to fix these old buildings, especially with earthquake risks.

This is a fort that was built here by the Arabs in 750 bc.

A church that was next to the fort.

The fort with more of the surrounding buildings.

A view down towards the “new” part of town.

We had to stop to admire the Italian cats.

A view down into the valley. The pointy hill, just to the right of center, has a castle ruin on it. The castles all had line-of-sight and would signal messages if there were an attack.

The driver took us to this ruined Byzantine church called Cuba Santa Domenica. I don’t know much about it, but it is was built between the 7th and 9th century. This was one of several times when the driver spoke bitterly about Arab invaders stripping gold from the churches when they left—as though it were yesterday, not a thousand years ago.

People are not allowed in, so I just stuck my phone through the gate and got this picture.

The back.

From the back and up the hill towards Castiglione.

The driver stopped at this “nature park” to see if we would like to see it. We liked the waterfall, but the area has been turned into a Disneyland type place with an elevator down to the river, eating establishments all over and a cheesy cartoon character on the signs. We prefer our nature natural. It was also about $65 just to enter. The free view was very nice.

A modern interpretation of the Nike statue that was supposedly placed here by the Greeks to show where they first landed here in about 756 bc. We are in a town called Giardini-Naxos.

A view towards Taoromina. Taormina is the long, skinny town about 1/3 down from the top of the mountain to the right of center.

Right behind the statue of Nike are these lava flows from a Mt Etna eruption 4,000 years ago.

A view down from near Taormina. This is Isola Bella.

A view a bit to the right of the one above. I was trying to get the color of the water.

A view to the left. The distant land at the top of the picture is mainland Italy.

The peninsula is the town of Giardini-Naxos.

Since it wasn’t raining, we decided to walk around the town of Taormina after our tour. We happened upon this busily decorated house.

There are a lot of these neat, narrow little streets that go off from the main street.

The Piazza del Duomo.

The Duomo today, without the rain.

The inside of the Duomo.

This is the church right near our hotel. I don’t know if it’s still used as a church because it was full of modern art, and not things one would expect to be in a church that was being used.

A view up the hillside by our hotel. The castle like thing is a former palace built in the 15th century.

The weather was much better tonight for our walk around town while trying to find dinner.

I put a daytime picture of this church in the blog yesterday, but it was open tonight when we went by. The church is called Al Cuore Immacolato di Maria.

Here is the inside.

We happened upon a protected Roman floor that is from the beginning of the 2nd Century AD.

More nighttime walking.

Another part of the main street.

To Taormina

Today we tried Sicily’s other mode of public transportation and rode the train from Siracusa to Taormina. The train ride took two hours and dropped us off at lower Taormina, so we took a taxi to the upper town where our hotel is. In a picture below, you will see clearly why we didn’t walk even, though our travel book claimed that it was possible.

Our weather lucky-streak ended today at about 1pm, when the rain poured down and the wind picked up. It was bad enough that even us hardy NW people went inside.

As of 9:45pm, it has been pouring for about 8 hours and there are puddles everywhere. While we were eating our excellent dinner at Da Nino, we watched the lightning. On our way home, we got to listen to the thunder which accompanied the lightning.

Both buses and trains will take you from Sicily to Rome. I understand the bus, but I do wonder how they put a train on a ferry.

Mt Etna. We thought it looked so big from the train, but it looks tiny in the picture.

It doesn’t look like monsoon season is about to arrive in this picture.

The main Duomo in town. A welcome break from the Baroque stuff in Noto.

Another church, but I don’t know which one. It looks nice in front of the hills. The hills are quite high but in the picture you can’t tell.

This looks like a church, but the sign in front said it was a library.

We’d never been to the southern part of Italy before, and there are tons of tropical plants here I hadn’t expected to see.

That building at the very bottom is the train station. I think it’s clear why walking up here with a wheelie bag and a backpack was not going to happen.

A view the other direction.

And the final direction. There is blue sky out there, so I don’t know why it won’t come over where we are.

The main pedestrian street.

This is a church called Santa Caterina.

The interior with a nice wooden ceiling. Those columns are pretty Baroque though.

Roman ruins under the church floor.

More of the main shopping street.

A very narrow alley… probably two feet wide.

The main shopping street is really nice. It is a fancy shopping street, so we didn’t go into any stores, but the buildings are nice. The main street has many smaller streets that go off it to one side that are less crowded. If it ever stops raining, we will have to look at those.

I was trying to capture just how much rain was gushing down the street as we were walking home from dinner. It had better get it out of its system overnight.

Noto Day Trip

Today we did a day trip to Noto, a town about 40 minutes south of Siracusa. We splurged a bit and hired a taxi to take us to Noto and pick us up at the end of the day. Our guide book made it sound like the bus was an option to take to Noto, but the front desk person at our hotel convinced us not to do that because the last bus leaves from Noto at 3pm, and that’s too early to leave. Towns in Sicily all shut up tight from about 1pm-3pm, so if you get somewhere at 11, leaving by three is not ideal.

Our taxi driver was scary, as he was a huge believer in tailgating. Our favorite part of his driving was his philosophy of the seatbelt. His van had an alarm that would go off when his seatbelt was not buckled in, so in order to stop the horrendous beeping, he plugged the passenger seatbelt in instead of his so that he wouldn’t have to wear that needless belt while driving. When he noticed a police car on the road, he pulled out the driver side seatbelt and hooked it over an nearby armrest. As soon as he passed the police car, he got rid of the nuisance seatbelt.

Noto was leveled in 1693 and was rebuilt as one big mass of baroque churches with a few shops in-between. We were joking that there must be a church for every person who lives here. That may be an exaggeration, but I do wonder if this place has the highest per capita number of churches. I don’t see how they can all be supported by the small number of people in this town.

Noto made for a good day trip from Siracusa.

Outside of the church of San Francisco d’Assisi all’Immacolata

The first of the many churches we saw. Noto is the hilliest town we have been to in Sicily so far.

The inside.

Outside of church of San Nicolo

This is the most impressive of the churches in town. None of us are fans of this Baroque style, but it’s pretty fancy and impressive.

Inside of the church. The dome and ceiling caved in and was rebuilt in 2007, so the artwork on the ceiling is all new. Doesn’t really match the age and style of the church.

The doors are impressive with all the carving.

Outside of Campanile di San Carlo

Many of the churches in town have towers you can climb to see the views, and this is the one we chose to climb.

Partway up our climb to the top, we were able to stop here and see a view of the interior of the church.

View over houses.

View towards the town’s bigger buildings.

Here is the exciting staircase that we used for both going up and down. Good thing there weren’t many people here when we were using these stairs. Note the rope going down the middle – that is what you hold on to.

These baroque decorations are quite something. Liberace would have loved this organ.

One of the attractions of this town was that our guidebook told us that the top two best gelato places in the WORLD are here. This is one of them, but the book said it was second best. We only got a small gelato to share here (nut and chocolate) because the guidebook told us the best thing to get here is the granita. We have had granita twice before in Sicily but this place was far superior to the other two we had. Two of us got coffee flavor, one almond and one mulberry. I got the mulberry and it was really good and not too sweet. The coffee flavor was essentially espresso mixed with ice and the two who had it (J&C) had sleeping problems last night. We had never had the coffee flavor before, so we didn’t realize it would have such a caffeine punch. The coffee was really good, but they will choose differently next time.

Back to the gelato. The gelato flavors here were good (nut was the best), but we all agreed that it wouldn’t be the second best in the world for us. We were disappointed that gelato shop with supposedly the best in the world never opened today. That was bad luck because we may never know if we missed the best gelato in the world or not.

The whole town is this brown stone color.

From the bottom of the staircase. The stairs were really worn and smooth, so it made me wonder if they are really slippery when it rains.

There are many palazzos in town that you can tour, and we chose to see Palazzo Nicolaci. We have seen so many fancy English houses by now that it takes a lot to impress us with fanciness. This was interesting to see, but we didn’t find it so fancy aside from one room.

This house is famous for its ornate balconies. Each balcony is decorated with different carvings, and this one has griffins.

Each of the rooms here had different tile floors. This one has to be the most hideous floor that I have ever seen.

This one is the room that was impressive, not that is was attractive, but the amount of painting done in here was something. The painter really put their all into it, painting the ceiling, fake wallpaper, fake curtains, etc.

A view from a balcony in the house. The church ahead is the tower we climbed up this morning.

More view.

Another example of the detailed painting they did. This is the top of the wall and ceiling in one of the rooms. This detail went around the entire room.

Chiesa di Montenegrine

The interior of this church was interesting because they had a display of costumes each neighborhood area of Noto wears for various festivals.

The main street of Noto.

A view of two churches.

Almost all of the buildings here have ornate designs all over the outside.

The sun starting to set on the Duomo.

The gate leading onto the town’s main street.

Syracusa Day 2

Day two in Syracusa brought us Roman and Greek ruins and more walking around the old town. We have lost the heat tolerance we built up in SE Asia, and we were all really hot today. It felt like the mid 80s with a bit of humidity and blasting sun. We will need to remember what this feels like when we are back in the chilly damp of England.

First stop this morning was to the town’s daily market. So jealous of people here who can have these tomatoes and olives everyday. And look at the cheese…

Various produce stalls.

More tomatoes and tons of eggplant. This is also the town’s fish market, but I didn’t take any pictures of that. There was a giant dead swordfish and various other formerly-living things that had flies swarming all over them. There are a lot of flies in Sicily. We have also all fallen victim to mosquitoes.

A view of the harbor. We are walking over one of two bridges that lead onto the island.

We are now in the large Archeological parks that includes both Greek and Roman ruins. This is a ruin of a small colosseum. It is amazing that Romans built colosseums that looked virtually identical wherever they went.

The remains of a Greek Temple of Ierone II and it was built in 466 BC.

The remains of a Greek Theatre.

We even found some Greek lettering in places. We were wondering if this really was original since it can still be seen so clearly.

There are lots of natural springs here, and this one was at the top of the Greek Theatre.

The kids have been doing lots of lizard spotting.

This is the rock quarry the Greeks and Romans used. It is now filled with fruit trees.

A bit blurry, but this is a friend we made at the park. There are a lot of stray cats here, but most are skittish. This one sat on our various laps, purred very loudly, and accepted lots of petting. We wanted to take it home, but we didn’t.

The Orecchio of Dionisio. This is another rock quarry that goes deep into the hillside and echoes really well. When we first walked in, someone was singing Italian opera. B got into the act by crowing like a rooster. We pretended that he wasn’t with us.

The Grotta dei Cordari.

An impressively large ficus tree.

The doorway with the triangular portico is believed to be the Tomb of Archimedes. Maybe.

One of the ports around the peninsula.

This building reminded us of the way some buildings look in Venice.

I had read about this man in my trip research. He makes the sandwiches specifically for each customer and seems to have a great time doing it. We were not the only ones who had heard about him, so we stood for a long time in line.

We are now in the front of the line and he is starting on our two sandwiches. The sandwiches are made on baguette type bread, and they are huge, so we each had half of one and it was plenty. We asked for him to make ours without carne or pesce, so we got lots of cheese.

Here is the final result of the sandwich that B and I shared. The other sandwich ended up with red pepper cheese, which B did not want. The rest of us just ended up with whatever but none of us really cared because both were going to be good. These were excellent sandwiches that also came with a good experience.

We ate these at a table by a seltz stall. Seltz is a sort of Sicilian soda and comes in various flavors. We got “green orange” and “red orange.”

After resting a bit in our hotel, we went out again to see the last bit of the peninsula that we hadn’t yet seen. We were able to walk down on the beach here and admire up close just how clear the water is here.

Sunset.

A giant ficus in a garden in town.

Syracusa

We have made it to Syracusa mostly unscathed. The trains on Sicily don’t run frequently, and the guidebooks tell you to take a bus between the major cities, so we did. It was a two mile walk between our hotel and the bus station, which would have been fine except that the sidewalks are really narrow, so much so that it is hard to keep your carryon suitcase on it. Add in other people on the sidewalk and the heavy traffic and you have an exciting walk on your hands. We found the bus station and got tickets for a bus leaving in 2m, which was great except there were at least five different locations where buses were standing.

We made it to the bus and we even got seats. We were remembering our last Italian bus ride where we went for an hour between Sirmione and Verona and had to stand the entire way. We had read that the bus ride wouldn’t be particularly scenic as northern Syracusa is mostly oil refineries, and it was not the greatest. We did see some dramatic rock hills and lots of tropical flowers, so that was nice.

I cannot figure out how to photograph these narrow passages so that they look as good in photos as they do in real life.

Syracusa made an immediate positive impression on us, even before we saw the ocean. It is much more scenic than Catania, and looks much more like the way we think Italian cities should be. I would imagine that most Italian cities really look like Catania, but there is more money from tourists in the heavily travelled cities like this one so the upkeep is better.

Syracusa has two parts: Ortigya is the old part that is off the island on a peninsula, and that’s where we are staying. Many of the tourist sites are in the newer part of town, so we will venture out there some, too.

I hope whoever took this picture doesn’t mind me inserting it into this post, but this picture does a good job of showing the peninsula bit we are staying on.

Here is the ocean. We knew enough not to eat in any of these restaurants. J actually looked up reviews for one and it had 122 reviews and a 2 star total rating. Some reviews have a sort of even spread of ratings, but this one was pretty much everyone agreeing on the two star rating. We would rather look at the view for free and eat good food elsewhere. Today was a perfect example, too–we walked two blocks off the water and had a really good lunch for 20% less than these restaurants were charging. Our restaurant also had two more stars in its review.

This is a fresh water spring right next to the ocean called Fonte Aretusa, named after Aretusa, a handmaiden of Artemis who was transformed into a spring to protect her from the river good Alpheus. It has lots of fish and waterfowl down there.

A view.

This is along the coast and I was trying to capture the amazing color of the water.

Down a narrow street with the ocean.

A residential street.

Trying again to capture how scenic these narrow little streets are.

The Duomo. This is dedicated to Saint Lucia, who was from Syracuse. J knows her from Swedish holidays, but she is a Mediterranean saint.

One end of the Duomo piazza.

The other end of the Duomo piazza. This piazza is right up there as one of the nicest we have seen.

The inside of the Duomo.

The front wall of the Duomo. The Duomo was built was built in 7th century over a Greek Temple, the Temple of Athena. The columns were repurposed from the Greek Temple. Then the outside was updated with Islamic touches, and finally a gigantic Baroque facade was added.

I had read that sunset made these buildings look pretty amazing. When we came out of the Duomo, the sun was starting to set and the buildings did look pretty nice.

The remains of The Temple of Apollo, which is dated as being from the 6th Century BC.

The side of the Temple of Apollo.

This is a view of the public swimming platform. The kids were too chicken to swim in the ocean. To be fair, the waves are pretty strong here. J ventured down some steel stairs and got a Mediterranean bathing experience from the knees down.

Evidence of the strong waves.

We stood here for a while trying to get a picture of the heights the water would go when a wave crashed onto this rock. How did the ocean know I was taking a picture and work so effectively to make sure I didn’t capture the really high spray? What I did get is okay, but the big ones are much higher.

A view back towards the town.

One of the buildings in the Duomo piazza lit up at night.

Catania

We arrived in Sicily last night in the dark, so we were interested to see what it would look like in the daylight. We were surprised to find that Catania reminds us more of Barcelona than it does of Northern Italy. Definitely a working city which happens to have a ton of Baroque palazzi and churches.

We left a country that was fully into fall and arrived in a country that still thinks it’s summer. It was about 80 today and full sunshine, so our Vitamin D supplies have been replenished.

This is a view from the balcony off of our room. That blue in the distance is the ocean.

This is a view of the buildings we see. The ocean is about a 15 minute walk from where we are staying.

This is the pizza place not far from our hotel where we had dinner last night. The place was absolutely packed at 9:15 when I took this picture. The pizza was pretty good, but the crust was thicker than I expected, being that this is Italian pizza. We need to do more research to see if this is how Sicilian pizza is or if this thick-crust stuff was an anomaly.

This is the same restaurant this morning. There would be no way anyone would ever know that there was a restaurant here.

This sign is right inside of our hotel’s main door. Crime seems to be an issue here, so they have this subtle sign to prevent burglary.

This is Chiesa San Francesco Borgia.

Like everything in this town, the church is decorated to within an inch of its life.

The street outside of the church.

Neither our guidebook nor our internet research told us that crime was a problem here, but the woman at the hotel told me to take off my necklace, and she marked an area on the map “no,” which means do not go there. We are not sure why, but we did not go there.

Chiesa Della Badia di Saint Agata. The road is really narrow here, so I had trouble getting a picture with the entire church in it.

Another understated Baroque interior.

We went to the Sunday morning flea market. We decided that grandmas around Europe collect similar things and they all sell whatever they find in their attics at these types of sales. I have gotten a couple of nice copper pots at flea markets, but not today.

More walking around town. We happened on this piazza with fancier-than-normal graffiti and lots of laundry.

This is in the same piazza as the picture above.

Fruit and vegetable stand. I wish I had this in my neighborhood.

Teatro Bellini. On Saturday night this place was packed with Italian teenagers, hanging out in packs and looking too young for the clothes they were wearing. On Sunday it was quiet, and most storefronts were shut.

A picturesque street.

Ruins of a Roman Ampitheatre. The buildings all around it were built on top of it. The building above in the middle is a church.

If there is a Roman ruin, there has to be a cat on it. Surprisingly, we only saw two cats.

The interior of the church above.

These sheets looked so familiar to me that I wonder if I had them.

Another scenic piazza, Piazza del’ Universita. We stopped and had water at the place on the corner.

This building is called the Siculorum Gymnasium.

Another neat building. I also liked the lampposts in front of this one.

Another Roman ruin. This one is Anfiteatro Romano.

Someone must have been really disappointed to get all the way home only to find that they had left their orthopedic shoes behind. If only we had room in our suitcases…

Yes, a picture of food. C got this restaurant’s Pasta alla Norma, which our guidebook said was the best version in all of Sicily. It was very good. It is a tomato and eggplant pasta and the dish arrived in a mound shape with a layer of eggplant all around it so that you couldn’t see the pasta. J, C, and D all got the same pasta shape, which we had never had before, but different sauces. The pasta looked like long, thick tubes with a small hole down the middle of it. It was really good.

A typical looking street.

There are quite a few buildings here that need a lot of work. This one has that “shabby-chic” look to it.

This is Castle Ursino, which has an interesting story. This 13th century castle was on the waterfront until an earthquake in the late 17th century changed the landscape enough that the castle became an inland one. A bunch of lava came out of Mt Etna, and that extended the coast outwards.

We walked around the entire castle, and we discovered that the grounds around the castle are used for boys to play. There was one group of boys setting off firecrackers and another group of boys having bicycle races up and down the sidewalk. There was also a boy who looked to be around seven driving a gas-powered ATV type vehicle all through the boys riding their bikes. It’s a wonder any of them make it to adulthood. B and C were taken aback.

An unknown fountain we passed while on our nighttime walk. They do a good job here lighting up all the buildings (and fountains) at night.

We had really good pizza for dinner tonight, which was quite a relief after last night. We read rave review of this place but we were still concerned it would have a thick crust like last night’s pizza. Happily, tonight’s pizza was the thin crust kind that we expect to find here. C got gorgonzola pizza (boy was it strong), B got 4 cheese pizza (he loves 4 cheese in either the pasta or pizza form), J got scamorza, nuts and porcini pizza, and C got a pizza with mushrooms, pistachio, and pistachio cream. I wish we had gone to this place last night because then we could have eaten here twice. Good thing we walked 10 miles today though.

Hatchlands Park

We have done many a National Trust property in our time in England, and this one surprised us because it was so crowded. We had trouble parking and the house was so packed that it was hard to get through the crowd, which, as usual, leaned heavily toward the elderly.

This house is still lived in, so we were unable to take any pictures inside. The family was hosting an event, which meant we could not see the dining room. Instead, the family had opened the usually-closed music room and they had a quartet in there playing in honor of CPE Bach. That was nice especially since this house is famous for having “Europe’s largest collection of keyboard instruments associated with famous composers including JC Bach, Chopin, Elgar and Bizet.” There were lots of keyboard instruments (pianoforte, harpsichord, etc.) here with fancy wood carvings. They also had the piano that Chopin actually used to compose his music, so they say it’s the only place you can really hear how he meant his music to sound.

Here is the “family home.” Looks like a lot more than a family home to me. The grounds are enormous.

The side of the house looking towards the stables.

We are now on a walk of the grounds. The weather was very considerate, and the rain held off until we got home.

This is a view towards the Surrey Hills.

B thought this log looked like a giant squid. He then proposed a mass transit system based on flying squids (?).

Yet another walk that took us right through a cow pasture. This one was a bit more exciting in that the cows do not usually have horns in the fields that we walk through.

We were a bit wary about getting to close to horned animals, and we got especially nervous when the cow closer to us suddenly made a groaning noise and started walking towards us. Luckily we were right near a gate, so we quickly went out, after a moment of tension as the children fumbled with the gate latch. We are still not sure if the cow was coming after us, or if it wanted petting.

This is what the cow did when we got to the other side of the fence. I am no cow psychologist, but it didn’t seem angry and it stood there watching for a long time. J did scratch its head, with ambiguous results.

More cows in the pasture. These cows didn’t care about us at all.

Canterbury, Chilham, Faversham

C was very generous and shared her cold germs with every member of the family. We were very sniffly and coughy in the car, but we did get out.

One of our favorite areas of England is Kent, and we found ourselves over there again today. This time we decided to see a few things in Canterbury that we hadn’t seen before and then we saw Chilham and Faversham while we were in the area.

The weather was icky and rainy this morning, but the weather people promised that the weather would clear up by the early afternoon. Turned out, thankfully, that the weather people were correct.

This is St Martin’s Church, the oldest church in continuous use in the English-speaking world.

The inside is fairly plain.

The bricks along the bottom of both side are Roman, probably from the 4th century.

The rear of the church. This is an American tour group and we, as usual, did our part to bring down the average age. This time we were so outnumbered that we weren’t able to bring the average down much.

Our next stop was St Augustine’s Abbey. Augustine started building the first church here in 597 AD. A larger abbey was built here in 1072 but Henry VIII shut it down and built a palace here in the 16th century. A monk worked to save the site in the 19th century and preserve what was left.

A view over the ruins. The church in the middle above is the famous Canterbury Cathedral. We went inside of it the last time we were here.

This is what remains from the church that stood here in 597 AD.

The grave of St Augustine who died in 605 AD.

After all the walking in the rain, we needed a cup of tea. We stopped in the crooked tea room and sat right behind the front window and watched all the people stop to look in and admire the traditional British treats they had displayed. J tried an Eccles cake for the first time.

A Canterbury street.

As promised, the weather finally improved. We are now in Chilham and this is St Mary’s Church.

This church has nice beams in the ceiling and nice windows.

We came to Chilham because the guide book told us that it was very cute and had lots of old houses from the 14th and 15th centuries. It was very cute, but it was also tiny. This little street is about a quarter of it. It wasn’t large, but it made for a nice stop. The tea shop here was quite popular.

Here is another little bit of the town.

Another cute section.

A house on the edge of town.

When we left Chilham to go to Faversham, the Garmin lady gave us two choices on how to get there. Oddly both routes gave us the same time to the destination, but one was on larger roads and one on the smaller. In the interest of better scenery, we chose the smaller. The Garmin lady did not tell us that the road would be this small. Thank goodness we never met another car. I have no idea Garmin finds these roads, but I know that the Garmin lady laughs inside when we actually take them.

Now we are in Faversham. The weather looked scary, but it didn’t rain again.

A neat section of buildings.

More Faversham. Faversham was a hit because we finally found C a new dresser, or Chest of Drawers as they call them over here. The dresser is mostly mahogany and has four drawers, just like she wanted. It took us over a year to find, but we finally did.

We are still in Faversham, but we are now in the area down by the river.

This is the Cambria, built in the area in 1906. It has recently been restored, and is now being used for teaching.

This ship is here because it was used as part of the rescue of soldiers from Dunkirk. The ship is not large, but the sign told us it carried up to 200 soldiers!

A view down the river. More nice English clouds.

There is a little “seaside” feeling down here by the river. There were a few shops here, but I was not able to get the coffee I wanted for the drive home.

Claremont Landscape Gardens

C has a cold, so she wanted an easy day today. The weather was a huge improvement over yesterday, and we had to get out. We chose Claremont Gardens because it isn’t far from our house and it wasn’t too big of a time commitment.

The National Trust pamphlet tells us that the gardens were once a “Duke’s retreat and a playground for princesses.”

Looking towards the Amphitheatre.  This is an earthworks built as semicircular ridges on a hill, and looks like it is meant to be seen from above.  Lots of little kids running up and down, include one running around with his trousers around his ankles.

The boar statue.

The peacock statue.

The bear statue.

The three animals are here to represent the Duke of Newcastle’s coat of arms, but everyone already knew that.  We met a cat soon after this, which is always a treat for C.

This is called Belvedere Tower, but I don’t know why.

We climbed up to the top of the tower. A guide at the top told us that you can see Windsor Castle from here on a clear day. We were not able to see that, but we were able to see Terminal 5 of Heathrow Airport.

This is from the other side of the tower. I mostly took this picture because of the clouds.  The foliage is quite happy and the view isn’t great as a result.

This final view of the tower is towards London. We were only able to see Wembley Stadium, but not the promised Canary Wharf. The main problem was that there are still too many leaves on the trees to see much of a view.  That green blob in the tree to the left is mistletoe, which likes to grow everywhere.

A view of the pond.  This pond is artificial, and is actually an expanded version.   A major road (Portsmouth Road) ran along the edge and the Duke moved it.  Must be nice to be the Duke.

On the way to this point we saw a “ha ha”, which is sort of like a scenic ditch.

There is a grotto here, but we weren’t allowed inside.

Another view of the lake.

After our garden visit, we went to a nearby farm store to get some local produce. We got some local apples and cider as well as some Napa cabbage which isn’t so easy to find here. They also had a large American section with some nasty food, but they did have this Masa – the same kind I use at home to make tortillas. That’s pretty exciting. I wasn’t able to find the big dried peppers I have been looking for to use to make proper enchilada sauce. The search continues, but Mexican food seems to becoming more readily available, even in the time we have been here.