MAY DAY, MAY DAY, MAY DAY!

      But first: I owe it to Catania to mention that this morning, a street cleaner drove by our hotel, so at least one street, however briefly, was clean. I should also mention that our colds are better, though far from gone.

      Massimo, our faithful Catanian driver, took us to the train station to catch the 10:45 to Syracuse. Sebastiano met us and took us for a hair-raising ride to our hotel. One bicyclist barely survived our trip, not to mention pedestrians and other motorists. (We actually hit the bicyclist but he kept going! Yikes!)

      Out hotel, the Royal Maniace, is right on the water, and our room has not one, but two balconies overlooking the ocean and a small public beach. A few brave souls celebrated May Day by taking the plunge.  As for Bob . . . He's always talked about having a room that overlooks the ocean so that he can hear the waves lapping at the shore as he goes to sleep. Tonight, he should enjoy just that, and meanwhile, he has a lovely view. 

      After settling in for not one, but THREE whole nights at one place, we wandered around town for a couple of hours.

      A history of Syracuse might begin with its first tyrant, Gelon, who chose it because of its harbor, and because part of it, Ortigia, where we're staying, is an island that had its own fresh-water spring and could be separately fortified. When he died in 478 BCE, he was head of perhaps the most powerful city state in Europe. For the next 2500 years, the city was fought-over, captured, freed, ransacked, and rebuilt. In addition to us, it attracted many illustrious visitors including “Eureka” Archimedes, Plato, Cicero, St. Paul, St. Lucy (a home-grown martyr), Caravaggio, and Lord Horatio Nelson.

      The oldest building on the island, the Temple of Apollo, is now a ruin, but a couple of columns and a pediment remain. Built in the 6^th Century BCE, it's amazing that anything survives. Equally amazing is how, without cranes and flatbed trucks, columns of that size could have been erected here, not to mention how the stones they support could have been hoisted on top of them.

      Today, Ortigia is a jumble of narrow streets and beautiful squares, the main one being, of course, the Piazza del Duomo. The Duomo itself must have

just been cleaned, because it fairly glowed in the afternoon sun. For two Euros a head, we popped in for a look-around, and I was surprised at how handsome the interior was. I like the simplicity of Norman architecture, and this resembled that. Along each side were massive, ancient columns—who knows what building they may have come from—but apparently, there were four columns, visible from the outside of the building, that came from a 1500-

year-old temple built by none other than Gelon. Whoever was responsible for the cathedral's interior, the resulting arches and columns were impressive and well worth a couple of Euros to see.

      Naptime now, to treat the cold, and tonight, another Sicilian dinner with Sicilian wine. Sweet dreams.