Goats, gorges and Noto

Our second enjoyable day trip was to Noto, another Baroque town in the south-east, recommended by

one and all. En route the guidebook said we went through a gorge, which had old cave dwellings in the rock. We soon recognised these, which were little holes in the rock some boarded up or with little locked doorways. It was quite picturesque and also weird.  We stopped to get out and take some pictures, as well as visit a horse that was on its own by the roadside.  Jo helped it to some grass from the other side of the fence and made a new friend. I went further down the road where I'd spotted some gorgeous goats, white in colour but with cute floppy ears - all of them had black ears except one lone goat who had brown.

A few words in the goats' direction brought them all running towards me and I soon realised there was no fence as such stopping them from getting out, and although it was obvious that they were allowed to roam freely, I couldn't help feeling that an angry goat-owner might run out at any minute and ask me to stop bothering his animals.

Before we could make our escape, a couple of men stopped who lived inside the gorge area. We asked if it was their horse/goats. The man said no, but was interested in what we were doing in Sicily, etc, and held the obligatory large parcel of cakes fresh from the patisserie, for Easter weekend. He insisted on giving us a few. One of them was a biscuit in the shape of a dove.

The rest of the day we spent in Noto, a charming town with honey-coloured buildings not unlike those of Bath. It said in the guidebook that at sunset the stone glows. Jo and I were taken with what the book called one of the nicest streets in Sicily - it was open and unspoilt and quite pretty. Jo even got to hold a cute budgie for a donation to the budgie-owner. For some reason I thought he was going to sell it to her, but of course he wasn't.

We found a church that promised a good view of the town from the top of the tower. It was worth paying two euros as the view was quite impressive and there were many swifts doing their thing around the sky.  The church had a convent attached to it and we were rather aghast at a photo of their accommodation from an earlier time - very sparse and basic looking.  I also found some baroque balcony carvings, which are characteristic of the area.

In the evening, a lovely sunset on the beach near the resort.