Syracuse, Sicily

Syracuse is a superb town to visit by yacht and is one of the Medierraneans best natural harbours. Its town quay, which is grand on any scale, was until recently free of charge to use. Even now you only get charged 10 Euro per night to stay here, bit of a bargin where most wharves/quays/marinas in this area are 40-60 Euro’s a night. It’s kind of odd though, as the charge is not made for using the quay, but for “refuse collection”. Everyday a couple of guys turn up and ask for 10 Euro for refuse collection. If you have no rubbish, they still smile, shrug their shoulders and say, that’s fine…you still need to give us 10 Euro…weird and I smell the mafia involvement for sure!

We spent our first evening cruising the town, visiting the incredible plazas, wandering the small streets and admiring the buildings and architecture. It’s a very pretty town, surrounded by the sea on two sides and full of leafy, colourful boulevards. There are funky bars and restaurants everywhere and at night the streets were buzzing.  In addition to soaking up the town we visited the Archimedes Techno park….Before he was killed by the romans, Archimedes lived in Syracusse and worked for the king. hence the park.  It was a fun day out and they had working scale replicas of everything from the  Archimedes screw through to his scorpion killing machine. The stuff he was inventing 2300 years ago was pretty incredible, he was an ingenious fella. The kids loved it and I even managed to get a few of them to do an assignment on Archimedes after the visit Great to see them so interested in science or was it the killing machines and war…mmm well I’d like to think it was science!