right i did about seven takes of that intro in italian and my pronunciation gets worse with
every single take so we're just gonna leave it there and um yeah welcome to sicily it's
my first time here and i'm so excited to show you around we just got to the local marina we are
staying near syracuse so it's a lovely historic part of the island um and today we're gonna yeah
cruise around it we need to go in that boat first which is going to take us to that boat over there
look at this
as a first introduction to sicily the boat tour organized by cv villas who we were staying with
was perfect not only did we get to admire the island from a new perspective we also got pretty
well acquainted with some of sicily's best dishes there was some local white wine sun-dried tomatoes
black olives and cow's cheese my personal favorite the camponata it's so good i know
aubergine parmigiana and gambera rosso red prawns if you'd like to learn more about sicilian cuisine
you can check out this post on my instagram where i talk about five of the best local dishes
hello hello just got back from the boat which can only mean one thing it means i'm absolutely
exhausted no obviously i don't mean that but sometimes doing nothing especially when you're
in a hot country can be quite tiring and um in order to relax because that obviously is
exactly what i need right now we're gonna go to aham which is actually inside of the villa
so i'm gonna have some hot tea um get in the steam room and just just relax um but before i do that
i need to introduce you to someone this is my new best friend
no where are you going you just said we're friends that's amazing traitor never mind
my best friend hates me all the more reason to go have a little sit down and think about my choices
all right let's continue with the relaxation i'm running myself a bubble bath the entire purpose of
this trip is to recharge a bit it's been a really long two years this is my first international trip
and look i mean woe is me i didn't get to travel a lot of people had a far worse two
years than i have hot um yeah i don't want to complain too much but when traveling and your
work as somebody who works in the travel industry becomes a part of your identity then losing that
is sad and it can take a toll on your self-confidence your ego and
it is an odd experience it must be really hard to take me seriously wearing this mask
but but i think i'm making some valid points let's have a look at this
leave it on for 15 to 20 minutes i'm gonna get in the bath and i'm gonna watch the third season
of sex education i don't know if any of you have been watching but i absolutely love it it's such
a good series i had just washed my hair and i've got to dry it but before i do let me tell you a
little more about dinner we are having it here at the villa which is really exciting because
the villa has a private chef so whenever you rent one of these villas through cv villas
they offer you a chef free of charge you pay for the ingredients they pay for the chef especially
here in sicily that is a pretty good deal the food here is amazing i had some capanata on the
boat today that i cannot stop thinking about so hopefully dinner is going to be just as good as
lunch you guys i'm so relieved i dressed up because otherwise i would be dragging
the evening down let me show you where we're having dinner tonight
good morning we are going on a little school trip today we're going to hello cool kids in the back
we're going to um
had been listed as world heritage by unesco in 2005 we need a good reason to list a
site and the reason here was that since the first human settlement on the island which dates back
to the bronze age i mean 21st century bc to now ortiz was never ever abandoned that's the temple
of apollo old is the one in town oldest one in the region and oldest one in south italy welcome
to syracuse before we get into the history of it i wanted to give you a little bit of a real life
check that out anyway that reality check i was talking about when you look at people's lives
online and this is true of content creators but it's also true for everyone you see the glorified
reality right um well here is the actual reality i got ill i got i got a cold about two days ago
and this entire trip i post for pictures and then i have to blow my nose for about like 13 minutes
um i'm just full of snot i'm absolutely disgusting but that is obviously not what you're going to
see online is it um so yeah just um a little reality check about um what what travel really
looks like it's never it's well very rarely is it glamorous even on a luxury holiday like this one
this street is where i shot this picture i think that means
road of the crucifix because there's a church behind it
but i could be wrong with that yeah tell me how clever i am i finally stopped sniffling it is a
glorious feeling and i think it's syracuse healing me to be honest this place is absolutely gorgeous
this is lauren by the way i've probably introduced her already but just in case um this is her handle
and um yeah i'm absolutely loving it there's so much history it's such a multicultural place we
just came from the jewish quarter which used to have a substantial jewish population back in the
15th century um now there are no more jewish citizens there but a lot of people from abroad
come to admire the synagogue the architecture and i mean for good reason let me flip the camera
i know this is a stupid stereotype but there is a huge huge sicilian wedding to my left and i do
feel a tiny bit like i'm in the godfather which was actually filmed in sicily not
exactly in the places that we're visiting but near enough near enough look at this
it's so good so now i'm inside the building in front of which the wedding was taking place
and i'm gonna show you the interior is absolutely gorgeous there's this lovely stained glass
up at the top and it's casting the most beautiful colourful shadows i'm gonna flip it now
the cathedral has a long history a temple stood on this site as early as the 5th century bc
the temple of athena mentioned by both plato and cicero in their works the cathedral was rebuilt
after the 1693 sicily earthquake during which two-thirds of the entire population of nearby
catania were killed it was designated as a unesco world heritage site in 2005.
i'm just repeating what i'm hearing this is a dry moscato wine and it is
great it looks like apple juice that's my expert opinion
i am not acting right now this is fantastic
i feel like
hello i have just done a full outfit change because i am what is commonly known as
an absolute loser so i am ready for more insta pics but sorry that was really loud
in the background but hopefully you can hear me um this behind me is the archaeological park of
nepalese which means new town not to be confused with naples which is a town in southern italy
as well and one interesting fact less historic more more contemporary is that harrison ford is
real loud harrison ford is going to be filming a movie here the difference between the greeks and
the romans especially in this culture when they represented the woman she was perfect she was
very thin very well proportioned tall and very perfect each part of the body was perfect and very
proportioned the romans had no they they never idealized the human beings they represented the
human being the way they were really sometimes the lady were not really thinner not really
sometimes a big plum but because they were sensual sexy i'm gonna make a generalization now but hear
me out i feel like every single italian tour guide that's quite specific that i've ever come across
is so incredible so elegant so poised i am slightly in love with our current tour guide
and what she just explained to us is the history of this tree so this tree i mean look at it
judging by its size it dates back to when the bourbons were here in sicily and what's really
interesting is that italy at that time was much smaller than it is today it started somewhere
around naples and went all the way down south the south was the prosperous bid nowadays when
you visit italy you quickly realize that that is no longer the case of the industry all of the
money-making activity is primarily concentrated in the north and this is the reason why when
there were all these first ships of italians going over to the states a lot of them were from sicily
and the south which was progressively getting poorer and poorer and we had a recommendation
for a film from our tour guide i always tell my guests to see the movie a legend of the 1900s
that's a movie about the first ship going to new york because syracuse is part of the ancient roman
empire it has a pretty wild and long history and we got to see some part of it today number one
is archimedes tomb archimedes wasn't actually buried in there which was discovered fairly
recently but it's still an interesting historical site and number two we saw
the spot where prometheus apparently had and this is a bit graphic had his liver trumped out
by an eagle according to ancient lore he is the one who gave fire to humans and the other gods
weren't too pleased with it because it made us a little too powerful and so they decided to punish
him and the punishment as i mentioned earlier was chaining him to a rock which was here in syracuse
and um i don't know why i'm smiling so much because it's very gruesome having an eagle
eat his liver every single day and then have the liver grow back so he could be punished all over
good news the amphitheater is super cool bad news
this again but look if you want to travel the world you need to embrace discomfort otherwise
you're just gonna have a bad time and uh yeah it's part of the fun of it when you when you look back
on these trips you're not gonna remember being hot you're gonna remember that kick-ass amphitheater
we got back to the about five minutes ago i went into my room grabbed some water put on
a swimsuit and i'm gonna go take a dip because um well let's just say you're lucky you don't
have smell-o-vision it has been a hot day um tmi it's just casually waiting for me
okay yoga starts in 10 minutes so i need to go change
it's just so tough it's just so incredibly tough oh look at the sky
after yoga we had dinner at our villa prepared by the amazing in-house chef
this is probably my favorite dish of the entire state pasta ala norma
a vegetarian dish with golden fried aubergine tomato sauce and basil
the next morning we woke up early to do some outdoor yoga you probably can't tell from
these carefully curated clips but my lord i am so bad at yoga i was an absolute mess
but i managed to have fun despite the intense embarrassment we spent the day lounging around
the villa eating reading and even doing some walking meditation something i'd never done before
the idea is to make tonight some homemade pasta the phoenicians before
then greeks romans normans arabs spanish french all these people arab roman greek they've left
many incredible things monuments
our menu for the day started with cavatelli small pasta shells
served with fried courgettes and artichokes the chef taught us how
to clean and trim artichokes before starting on the pasta 250 grams of semolina flour and
125 grams of water
not sure you got that i just got complimented on my cooking pie in italian
i was very very proud of that compliment but i may also have conveniently deleted
the bit where i was told i was cleaning the artichokes completely wrong so always
remember what people post online isn't the full truth our second dish was invaltini panati or
breaded meat rolls which you can see me making here you create a filling of cheese bread crumbs
spring onions and capers and then wrap it inside thin slices of meat it's absolutely delicious
recognized
what's coming next is
no matter work
just got back from dinner which was fantastic but also a bit sad because we are leaving tomorrow
and i've really really enjoyed this trip i've enjoyed everyone i've met and i have also
enjoyed being here and not having to pack because that's what i'm gonna do now if i look at my nose
all of this needs to go in here so we're gonna make that happen now
when you're packing always roll your clothes it takes up way less space and also
if you can use packing cubes and really there's no reason why you couldn't so just use them
they are amazing these i wanted to link below because they are compression
packing cubes which means they take up even less space than regular ones
i don't know it is our final morning and as you can see the weather has turned a bit it's
a bit damp it was stormy all night but maybe that was gonna make leaving a tiny bit easier
um
right it's time to leave i'll show you one final spin of the room
boom thank you room
number 10. a quick thank you to cv villas for hosting us on this trip
they have villas all over the world including greece italy morocco sri lanka and the caribbean
thank you for watching i bring out new videos every friday see you then