Week 17
Day 112
Another day, another beautiful sunrise over Noto. Even though we have had a lot of rainy days here there still seems to be a great sunrise almost every single day.
After sunrise, we worked on the blog for a bit on the balcony. We found these delightful biscotti cookies at the grocery store and we have been enjoying them for breakfast with coffee/tea.
We have cooked quiet a few meals at home because of the rain and it is a budget saver. Today was a beautiful day, so we headed out into the world to find some lunch. We landed at Arancina Planet. It is quick “fast food” Italian, where you order at the counter and take your food to your table. We tried a noodle dish and a bread thing stuffed with all the things (including fries). Both were decent.
We strolled through town after lunch. We found an antiques market as well as some prickly pears (with tongs! which gives away that you shouldn’t grab them with your hands.)
We made pizza for dinner. Not to toot our own horn but it was the best pizza that we have had the entire trip. Possibly it was the sweat equity that went into making it but it was delicious!
Day 113
Today was another lovely (non-rainy) day. We enjoyed the balcony and continued reading books from the bookshelf here at the AirBnb. We are trying to soak up all the real books while we are here, before it is time to go back to kindle.
We made fusilli carbonara and enjoyed a bottle of Sicily wine for dinner.
Day 114
Today started clear enough but then the clouds started to roll in. We ended up playing a lot of scrabble while it rained. We also made better friends with the neighborhood cat (dubbed Spider Cat for his rooftop strolls) as he tried to get inside.
Day 115
Today we were ready to be productive. We were also ready for a treat and Cafe Sicilia was calling our names.
Cameron had already printed all of our voting documents including ballots and ‘envelopes’. Unfortunately the shop he printed at didn’t have real envelopes so it was printed on paper that we folded into envelope shapes. Arts and crafts time…A lot of tape and a little frustration later and our ballots were ready to be mailed.
As a reward we headed to Cafe Sicilia. We ate granita and brioche and accidentally ordered almond milk (latte means milk in Italian) rather than an almond milk coffee. The almond milk was fantastic though so it was a happy accident.
We spotted Spider Cat chasing birds along the rooftops. Check out the picture below.
For dinner we ordered pizza from Speedy Pizza, which we had heard was really good. We ordered the Popeye and the Boscaiola, as well as an arancini. Arancini is basically meat sauce balled up in rice and fried. Both of our reactions were, “hmmm, interesting” but it wasn’t bad. Cam was perplexed when ordering as they understood his pronunciation of Boscaiola perfectly, but when he said Popeye, it took three tries before they corrected him saying the spinach covered pizza was pronounced ‘papi’.
Day 116
Today we finally put our ballots in the mail! November 6th feels like a long time away but the Italian post is notoriously slow.
We meandered around Noto. There was an old school car race through the city streets that we happened to see. It was random but fun.
We also went back to Cafe Sicilia to try the cannoli. Mmmmhh, they were beyond delicious.
Day 117
More rain today meant scrabble tournament all day! We are enjoying having scrabble available while we are here. We made food at home (pasta pomodoro, chicken cordon bleu, and salads) because we are also enjoying this full working kitchen. Overall a pretty boring day but we enjoyed it with each other.
Day 118
So the rain continues. Katie googled and October is the wettest month in Sicily. We keep managing to find the rainy season in places that we didn’t know had rainy seasons. Cam ventured out to get us take out from a restaurant named Efesto, a place with BBQ ribs. REAL BBQ!!! Not great BBQ, but still, we hadn’t had BBQ sauce on anything since leaving Texas as abroad BBQ means grilled. Nostalgia alone rocketed this towards the top of Cam’s list.
Day 119
The rain stopped for today. The clouds didn’t go away but we chanced it and went meandering around town. Even with the clouds there were quite a few tour groups around the main street of Noto. We explored some churches that we hadn’t gone into yet. We also enjoyed a little bit more Cafe Sicilia.
Hopefully our last week in Noto is a little bit dryer!
Keeping Up With Cam and Katie 