Day 7 4/11 --Tense

Internet access not good. Day 6 pictures are subsequently added.
We left the farm and headed for our next destination -- Modica. This town has an amazing location in a gorge and two hills. The city has a lower section and a part high up. Since we didn’t know which part was the historical center, we erroneously got to the high part. It turned out that the city center was at the bottom of the gorge so we had to drive all the way down. At some point, we must have taken a wrong turn onto something called “via panoramica”. The view was absolutely spectacular and the GPS encouraged us to go forward so we did. Admiring the view and going forward, we found ourselves on a very narrow street. There was no way out and the steep hilly street got so narrow it closed both side view mirrors. The GPS was still saying to continue. At some point the street got so narrow that we thought the small Fiat would get wedged between the two walls. There was no way to turn around and go back and it seemed impossible to go forward. There was maybe one inch or less clearance on each side between the walls and the car. Needless to say the passenger side got scraped. We stopped and looked for some locals to find out how we could extricate the car. After much discussion (in Italian) they told us to keep going forward and after a few meters the road got wider and we could get through to a normal road and down to the city center. We were completely traumatized, though. It is a good thing we opted for full coverage. Modica is a beautiful city. It reminded us a bit of Guanajuato in Mexico, except that it’s all in sandy hues and Guanajuato is very colorful.
From Modica, we continued to Noto, another lovely historical (Baroque) town. Unfortunately we got there at a dead hour (2 pm) when everything is closed, all the churches, even the tourist information. We walked and walked and then decided to finally get close to the sea…
We ended up at a modern summer resort hotel on the beach – except they told us the beach is closed until May 5. The place is basically dead. But a good place to unwind from the day’s excitement.