Day 11 – Sunrise, Cliffs and Pizza!

Today started off at around 6:30am, or that’s what Lois told me the time was when she woke me up excitedly wanting me to come outside and see the sunrise.  As I woke from my slumber, I staggered outside to be greeted with a stunning sunrise, so we enjoyed taking some photos (the light was just perfect!) and just basked in the beauty of it, before heading back to bed for a nap.

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After we woke up for the second time and had had some breakfast, we headed out along the coastline by foot from our villa.  We were wanting to see if there was anywhere we could safely get into the sea for a swim, but also out of interest and to scout for potential drone locations.  As we left our villa, we said goodbye to one of our friendly lizards that patrols the garden, before following the ‘path’ down to the sea.

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The shores around the villa turned out to be very rocky, with an aerated appearance, meaning it was challenging scrambling due to the sharp nature of the rocks.  The views and clarity of the water were stunning though!

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You also had lovely views out over to nearby Syracuse, where we will go tomorrow.

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After walking around a small cove, we spotted a shallow piece of water that was separated from the sea by a small reef of sorts, and so I set about descending down the rock face to have a paddle, much to Lois’ despair.

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After a brief sit down, then paddle to look at some fish, I clambered back out and up along some rocks.

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By this point, we’d been out for about 90 minutes and didn’t have any water with us, so decided to head back to the villa, but made a short stop off at a small cave that we’d seen on our way out.

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Once back at the villa, we enjoyed some much needed relief in the pool, and again did some reading, had a few cold beers and generally chilled out.

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After a relaxing afternoon, we set about the task of making pizzas!  Our villa had a huge pizza oven, so it would have been rude not to put it through its paces.  Lois started off by making the base dough, proper Italian style with yeast etc.

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Once made, it was covered and left to prove.  This is the before!

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and this was it after it had risen!

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The next task was the to get the pizza oven up to temperature, which in the end took a lot longer than we thought!  So much so, that we didn’t start putting our first pizzas in until around 10:30pm.

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But wow, it was all worth the effort!  Thanks to Lois’ dough and, I’d like to think, my sauce also, we enjoyed some lovely pizzas with fresh local ingredients on the top.  Our pizzas did look tiny cooking away in the vast oven, but it was a fun thing to have done.

After stuffing ourselves with pizza, we shortly after packed up and headed off to bed after what was a thoroughly fun and rewarding day here in beautiful Sicily.