In Syracuse, a week ago, not only did he find me a doctor and negotiate a "home" visit, but he had the prescriptions filled, paid a parking fine at the post office, had our apartment owner pay a second fine in lieu of not providing us with the advertised garage space, and then negotiated a two-day parking place with the municipal police despite not having a residential parking permit .
Dosed to the eyeballs with my second round of antibiotics, plus an anti-inflammatory, a probiotic and an antacid as well as codeine if the paracetamol proved insufficient, I spent a morning in bed and a tentative afternoon negotiating the hop-on hop-off bus and staggering around Siracuse's 14th century fortifications.
Despite being sick I was still hungry. Paul found us a good restaurant for some "real" (and I mean real) Italian food, which I enjoyed. Though rustic and quirky, the restaurant had a beautiful chandelier, here glimpsed from outside through the window in the door.
After dinner we joined the flow of people streaming into the main piazza and found opera singers on a balcony serenading a huge crowd for the first night of the four month summer music festival. It was a sight to be seen.
Ancient buildings with doors open to their balconies, displaying the most spectacular interiors with magnificent chandeliers, singers and musicians on the balconies, hundreds and hundreds of people below looking up. But I didn't even have the energy to point my camera at it all. So Paul has supplied the video and photos.
And down the middle of the piazza, a very very long row of set tables complete with linen, glassware, candelabra and decorated with fresh lemons. At first we thought it must have been by invitation only, but as we walked from end to end, I think anyone who wanted to dine could have done so.
From Siracuse we ventured north, around the base of Etna, to Taormina to visit the Roman amphitheatre high on the cliffs overlooking the sea .
The fabulous Taormina theatre with Etna in the background, snow still clinging to the north face.
This is another UNESCO World heritage site.
Extremely well preserved and still in use.
To get to Cefalu, on Sicily's north coast the following day, we had to take a great circle around the base of the mountain.
Cefalu was R & R for me. I stayed on the terrace for two days and only moved from table to deck chair and back again. I gave Paul (and myself) a good fright on the first night when I collapsed after dinner and lay sprawled on the terrace steps for some time as waves of nausea washed over me. Very embarrassing, but medical assistance was avoided as Paul slowly moved me, bit by bit, up a long flight of shallow steps, across the lobby to the elevator, and down a corridor to bed.
Paul negotiated 150 steps down the rock face to the swimming platform below. I wisely stayed put atop.
Cefalu proved to be the starting point for Stage 4 of the Giro d'Italia and Paul enjoyed watching the start on the road next to the hotel - just behind the white light. I stayed put.
After two lazy days I felt a bit better and we left Sicily and travelled up the coast of the toe of Italy to this picturesque coastal town of Tropea in Calabria - the land of red onions and hot chillies.
If I told you of how we got there using sat nav, you wouldn't believe me - so I won't even try, other than to say the road was so narrow that vegetation was brushing both sides of the car; the potholes were big enough to loose a small third world country in and the mountain we climbed on such a road went to 600m. No kidding! We couldn't turn back - had to keep going forward, through flocks of sheep, annoying sheep dogs, for about 25km. It was frightening. Paul kept laughing though. Bloody stupid sat nav. Next day we bought a map and made it safely, and without incident, to Matera in Basillicata.
As I type, three helicopters are circling overhead to pick up the leaders of the free world after G7 met here in Matera today. And we are staying in a cave!
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