Truth be told, as great as our first week was, in Massa Lubrense … our second week was not, the first three days in Sicily.

The beyond-tepid “welcome” to the Feudogrande agriturismo hotel, the dreariness of Catania (broken up slightly by a nice lunch I wasn’t there for), the tourist-driven nightmare of Taormina, and then a shaky start to Day 4 on Italy’s big island.

We were joined by Leah’s cousin and her husband late on the day we went to Taormina (Monday), and that meant a bigger conclave to decide what the group would like to do,  on Tuesday.

I suggested a circuit around Mount Etna. It would get us into the interior a bit, away from the east coast … but the idea to go to Siracusa (Syracuse) carried the day. It is a truly ancient town, rich with history, known for its archaeological digs … and off we went, heading south on the autostrade.

The drive is not a long one, around 90 minutes. Past Catania and over a nice long stretch of recently improved autostrade complete with “luxe” tunnels through small hills. Well-lit, lots of signage, emergency phones, emergency escapes, alleged videotaping of speeders … and as we went through the series of tunnels, and wondered why the road-builders couldn’t have just gone over the top of 100-foot-high hills … I kept thinking “public works projects!”

I can’t say exactly where the countryside went from green to brown, but it was around Catania. By the time we hit the outskirts of Siracusa, the grass and wildflowers had been burned away by the sun and dried by the end of the rainy season, and it reminded me of driving on the 91 freeway through the canyon between Anaheim and Corona. A sort of dead brown not to be revived till winter rains.

Because there were six of us, we went in two cars, and we had issues right from the start. One car had the detailed Michelin map. The other had the Sicily guide book with recommendations for sites and restaurants, etc. And we got separated by miles when I took the wrong fork in the road and ended up in dried-up fields.

I wasn’t disturbed at the idea of Siracusa. There’s the college and city in New York of the same now, but as a military history guy I know it as the place where Athens’ dreams of empire went poof! with a disastrous expedition there about 415 BC. Everyone died or was sold into slavery (with Siracusa native Archimedes of “Eureka!” fame helping his home town with engines of war), Sparta won the Peloponnesian War (a bad thing for Greece) and Athens has never really made a comeback. I wanted to see where that disaster went down. Sort of the Little Big Horn of Classical Greece. Though where any of the events happened … I never was able to make out.

By the time we were in the city, we were communicating by cell (we had one of our two phones in each car, at least) and saying things like, “We’re by the old Roman theater.” “The Roman theater? That’s not on our map.” “We’re over by the canal.” “Canal? We don’t see a canal. We’re by the Greek amphitheater.” “Where’s that?”

And so on.

The other car may have found something interesting right off. The car I was driving … we went up a hill, following the “Greek amphiteater” signs … and we seemed to be headed nowhere. So we improvised and descended into the center of the city, looking for this mythical Roman theater … and got caught up in gridlocked midday Siracusa traffic. We didn’t know where we were going, anyway,  so it wasn’t like we were in a hurry.

After we drove around a wide loops of the sad, beaten-down port city, we got back on the blower and suggested we all meet up at the Greek amphitheater. At least we both had a notion where that was.

There followed numerous incidents of putting a 60-inch-wide car through 62-inch-wide holes, but nary a new scratch was put on the Fiat! Bravo!

Driving nowhere in particular, but in the direction of the hilly area where the old Greek stuff was alleged to be found … we looked up and across the street saw a sign for “ingresso” to the Teatro Greco. Hey, we seem to have found it … if not our companions.

I turned right … looking for a parking space, and thought I remembered having passed a lot just before running into the entrance … and after making a U turn, I made a left across a solid white line … and right into the paths of two motorcycle cops who were shaking their fingers at me.

Not good. I realized also that I had turned into a one-way street. So, while pulling another U, to head the correct direction … Leah said, “One of the cops is behind you.” And there he was, outside my window. I rolled it down and said … what? “Buongiorno, ” I suppose.

After a moment of “what language are we going to try to speak?” the cop asked me a question in English. “Where are you from?” And I said, “America … California” … and he said, “I was born in Brooklyn and I thought most Americans were better drivers. You did not see the solid white line in the street? You cannot cross it!”

So, I’m thinking a ticket, at the least, and maybe some sort of paper trail that we had taken the Fiat to Sicily when the contract with the car agency has a thing about “don’t take any ferries” on it — which we had done, when we crossed over to Messina.

I said, “We are trying to see the Greek amphitheater, and I thought I saw a parking lot back there.”

And then he took pity on me and decided he would give a confused tourist a break, and said, “Follow me.”

I completed the U and made a right, and there he was, pulled over to the side of the road … gesturing toward an open parking spot on the curb, not 25 feet from where he pulled me over. I paralleled-parked, and there we were.  Lots of “grazia, signore” went on … and he showed us where to buy a parking ticket as well as a ticket to the amphitheater and various other sights.

Within a minute of this, we saw other members of our party. They had parked on the other side of the park, made their way through and found us, somehow … and there we were. Just like we planned it.

The park … disappointing. Again, almost no signage. We didn’t have a guide, and with nothing to read we moved along to six or seven sites and guessed what they were about. “The agora, maybe?” Turns out it was a temple and we were looking at the sacrifice area. Hmm.

The amphitheater was rundown and weather-beaten but looked as if it must have been impressive. Again, the Italians were planning to use it for modern productions, including one that night.  The most curious things were the fairly large excavated holes above the theater. We thought they looked a lot like family tombs. Were they? Still don’t know.

The coolest part were several enormous caves (photo, above) left behind by Greek workmen who had quarried rock out of the cliffs. The sound inside the biggest was interesting, a sort of whispering of wind that sounded a bit like people talking. One of the caves was known as that of Dionisio, but I think it was a guy, not a god, and we read later that prisoners had been kept in those caves.

Anyway, it was 20 euros each to see nothing very recognizable,  and a lot of up- and downhill walking on an increasingly warmer day … and our enthusiasm for “old stuff” seemed to evaporate in unison. After a feeble attempt to locate the “tomb of Archimedes” on the map, and failing, we divided into two groups — those headed back to the hotel in Fiumefreddo and those who were going off to find lunch.

The second group never did find lunch; it was already too late in the afternoon, and clunky Siracusa was already shutting down; the people in that car had sandwiches at one of the truck stops along the road. Yes. In Italy. But good sandwiches, they said.

We went straight back, after stopping at one of those neat roadside cemeteries where all the headstones are of a uniform size. Turns out it was a British War Graves Commission cemetery, just outside Siracusa city limits, with about 1,000 gravestones to mark the final resting places of men killed during the July 1943 invasion of Sicily.

The place was immaculate, reminding me of historian John Keegan’s assertion that British War Graves Commission sites are often of “heart-rending beauty.” Yes.

I later thought of a stop we made about 16 months before,  at a similar British military cemetery in Hong Kong. Same deal. Kept up. No weeds here, and Brits dying far from home.

I was surprised by the age of many of the men who died. Almost all of them were in their later 20s, and several were in their 30s. Perhaps an indication of how stretched British manpower was, four years into World War II.

Some of the markers had inscriptions on them. I couldn’t decide which was sadder — the “soldier known only to God” ones … or the homey little ones like, “Too far from home to come and see, but we will always think of thee.”

We signed the visitors book and drove back.

So, pretty much a bunch of nothing. We had now been from one end of the east coast to nearly the other, and seen little and done nothing particularly significant or rewarding or interesting.

So, everybody went off to snooze.

At 7:30, we had a decision to make: Where to eat dinner.

By now, we have given up on eating here at the hotel. The food is sumptuous but subpar, often arriving less than hot and tasting as if it very well might be left over from the previous day’s banquet. (They do a booming banquet biz here; their few hotel guests probably don’t much matter to them.)

Leah felt pressure to redeem herself as the primary trip planner, and checked on any Michelin-recommended restaurant in the area … and found a restaurant in a town called Randazzo, about 20 miles directly inland from the town we were in, and we made a call … and there we went. In two cars again.

It was 8:30 and getting dark, and the road which looked nice and straight on the map proved to be yet another siege of hairpin turns and constant downshifting. We needed almost an hour to go those 20 miles and it was perfectly dark out there in the foothill countryside and might still be looking around Randazzo (“75 percent destroyed by the Allies in World War II”) had not Leah spotted the Veneziano ristorante about a mile short of town. We had directions that seemed tricky, so could this really be the place? Well, of course, it was. How many Veneziano ristorantes can there by in Randazzo, population 10,000?

We then had a dining experience that did much to redeem our time in Sicily.

The restaurant focuses on what that part of Sicily — on the north slope of Mount Etna, about 2,500 feet above sea level — does best: beef, pasta, cheap but good, mild red wine and local produce, particularly mushrooms and pistachios.

We ordered about 10 “primi” and “secundi” plates, and tasted each other’s things. The mushroom soup was outstanding. As were the bowtie pasta in pistachio cream sauce and a mushroom carpaccio, and an antipasto that included pecorino cheese with red pepper jam, fried ricotta balls, prosciutto and more mushrooms of various shapes and sizes.

At the end, we had a wonderful lemone gelato that had perhaps a bit of milk in it? Very tart and sweet at the same time, and nice and cold on a warm night.

It was a slow, lengthy meal in a wonderful setting, with good service and earthy, honest flavors, and everyone felt much better about our choices. Or this one, anyway.

We made the drive back down the hill, passing hill towns such as Linguaglosso and Piemonte — which seemed far more interesting and thriving than the poor little coastal towns we had been frequenting. Who knew? We didn’t.

A nice ending to the day, and the temporary end,anyway, of our “what’s up with Sicily?” follies.