4/12 Our day started out with Jim getting up early and heading out for a stroll around the city. He was out in time to see the fish mongers and farmers setting up shop in the central market area. From there he headed over to the sea wall and caught the sun lighting up the East side of town.

The most disappointing sight for him was seeing that a big cruise ship had docked overnight meaning we’ll have a lot of tourists running about the town today. And yes, they were here, creating people jams as groups walked by with their little Walkmen telling them about the city! As I write though the ship has left so it ought to be quiet tonight.

Early morning walk through the market to make sure the boys were setting everything up and then took off to find the bakery for a fresh loaf of bread and a cup of coffee with our morning pastry.

Walked into the bakery and savored the fresh smells of bread baking, pure heaven! On the way back to the outdoor market, we stopped for coffee and a pastry which consisted of a warm donut stuffed with pistachio creme – holy cow was that good.

Once fortified, we ventured over to the market to get some fruit and a couple of veggies to enjoy later tonight.

Here it is noon and time to find a restaurant for our pranzo (lunch) before taking our afternoon walk when all the shops are closed and many of the folks are not out and about.

We found a nice restaurant overlooking the water and they had a display of a salad and an entrée sitting on one of the tables. It was exactly what we were looking for so we sat down and ordered it for lunch. An orange and fennel salad topped with a few olives, olive oil and crushed red pepper. Wonderful!

Then we had a plate of mixed fried seafood. Nobody fries fish like the Italians – so light, tasty and not greasy. We split both entree’s and we were stuffed. Time to walk off our meal so another hour or so of walking and we were done for the afternoon.

I can’t say we are not getting our exercise – we’ve been walking probably 6 or so hours a day just not at the same time. That’s enough for us and it leaves us a little time to shop or people watch. That’s always interesting.

Something I found very interesting was all the locals who have dogs – on leashes – walking them everywhere and the dogs look healthy, loved and well cared for which really made me feel good. There are two types of dogs that seem to be most popular – Pits and the little “what I call Fashionista pups” they are the tiny pocket pups that are either on their jeweled leashes or tucked into their human’s arms. Being a dog lover, I found this really nice and it just makes me smile. The humans love to show off their pups so they look at you and smile especially if they see you smiling at their pups. Great way to meet people. No photos of the dogs – I’d have to ask permission for that so maybe one day. All the dogs we saw were very well behaved – now isn’t that nice 🙂

A few cats roaming around and they seem to be fairly healthy so they are probably getting fed by some folks. They seem to roam free – no laws for them I guess!

Other photos from our walks in Ortigia this afternoon.

About the time we finished our little antipasto “supper,” it was almost official sunset so we headed out to watch the sun go down. And maybe check on a few shops. Made the sunset but said to heck with more walking around. It was getting chilly, we’d walked almost nine miles and decided to finish up the blog, read a little and then hit the hay.

Enough for today – hope you are all enjoying our blog.