Modica and Europe's end

Polly: Next day saw us go for a day trip to Modica. This Baroque town is without doubt the most beautiful place I have ever been. The fact that it was warm and sunny added to the magic. I just don't understand why I haven't heard of this place before - why don't people mention it in the same breath as Pompeii or Sorrento?
Within an hour I had plans for Tim and I running a little B&B, Thomas and Ellen chattering away in Italian, and all of our friends coming to visit and marvel at the amazing place we lived. Found just the place in a Real Estate window late in the afternoon....

The town is on a steep hill in 2 parts; Modica Alta and Modica Bassa, each with their own Cathedral. Four hundred steps separate the two cathedrals, and my legs can still feel every one of them. But the views were amazing, and by early afternoon I had filled my camera's memory card. And my head's.







Modica is known for its chocolate, and there were more chocolate shops than coffee shops. Of course we had to truly experience the culture of the town, so despite our inner protestations, into a choccolateria we went. The local product is very dark and has a grainy texture, as if eating pure, coarsely ground cocoa beans. This is due to the special cooking process, which ensures that the beans are not cooked. It is called cold chocolate and the process is strictly regulated in the town to ensure quality control of one of their tourism staples. The chilli chocolate was a highlight.


Tim: The churches were beautiful and quite different in decoration, one being decorated with wonderful azure highlights and the other being much simpler. It was also the first time that I had the inside of a church explained to me by a Catholic, so I got to appropriate some of the details and symbolism that I might otherwise have missed.



It was getting on towards siesta time here and the shops - those that had bothered to open on this Sunday - were closing up. The siesta was being observed with fanaticism; it was proving very hard to find a place to buy lunch and the main street, at the bottom of the ravine where we had parked the car, was nearly empty. But we caught a place that served delicious savoury pastries before we began the long drive out of the ravine.


Although we were both tired and afraid of driving in the dark we decided to take a detour to the most southerly town in Europe. All part of the adventure. It wasn't all that easy to get to - at least not on the the road we chose - and we spent time on a bad dirt road and parked as farmers loaded a little tractor on a truck. The roads were mainly unsullied by signage, but we got there. One of the amazing sites was an abandoned four storey hotel built in the grand style of a castle, with towers and crenellations, a wide terrace overlooking the sea and a swimming pool filled with broken chairs and stagnant water. It would have been so beautiful before ...what? Before you found you had to get here on farm tracks? It was a perfect folly, I think. I found a way in and had a poke round before the falling light made us push on, to the town's most southerly point, its fishing harbour; we watched the end of the day at the end of Europe.