Sicily

Writing, editing and formatting from my phone. Please excuse the results…..

My travel planning is pretty simple. I see a picture of a place that catches my eye and i go there the next time I am even remotely in the area. It a risky proposition in these days of glitzy photoshopped ad campaigns by local tourism boards but so far it has served me well.
I was supposed to meet up with an ex-pat friend from my Seattle days who landed in Sardinia. To get there, I had to ride a 3 hour ferry to the south end of Sicily and then make my way to the North end to catch a 12 hour!!! ferry to Sardinia.
For once, I thought ahead and bought the transfer from the Ferry to the next biggest town before I showed up. I just walked over to a row of vans and I was off to Catania without a minute’s wait or new town confusion. Not as much “fun” as my usual way but I must say I kind of liked it.
It was still the quiet of Sunday morning in Catania when I got off the van and started walking. I didn’t have a room yet so needed wifi to find one. I did download a map of Catania before I left and was able to find a McDonald’s so I could use their wifi. Except, the McDonald’s here have to send you a pass code to your phone to sign on. My phone doesn’t work here so no progress was made. It was time to get with the 21st century and get a working phone. I headed into town and the first telephone store I found. Bought a SIM and I was back in business.

I found a cheap room close by. Dropped my bag and headed out again. It was a chilly day but the cleat blue skies helped. Especially when I came around a corner and saw the snow covered volcano. Mt Etna.

Mt Etna is a pretty active volcano and it’s pretty common to see it erupting. Except when I am around. Just a big snowy mountain while I was here. I would have hopped a tour bus up but big and snowy do not go with my very thin puffy jacket. Instead I opted to walk around Catania and admire it from under an outdoor cafe’s heat lamp.
Catania is known for its seafood focused cuisine. I guess. It was off season and early in the week so it was pretty quiet. Nothing really caught my eye as I scanned menus of empty restaurants. I just opted for burgers and kebabs while I was there.

Mostly, I walked around Catania. As it was really off season, my experience is a bit skewed from what the photo shopping tourist board and nomad youtubers content creators offer up.

I started in Catania after a 2 hour van ride from the ferry dock. Even with the Sunday morning ferry ride and van transfer, it was still quiet as I walked the empty streets of the old city. I was disappointed by all the graffiti on the walls. Very few walls were spared as high as a Sicilian with a spray can could reach. I didn’t have a room yet and no internet to get one. I headed for a McDonalds and their reliable wifi. This time (and all thru Italy so far), they needed a phone number to text my access code to. So a cheese toast sandwich and a silly coffee later, I realized thst the time had come to enter the modern world of travel and get a working phone.

I had limited luck with it last year in France but this time I was committed. The shops were finally open and I stopped into a cell phone company and snapped a SIM card with loads of data to get me through the next few weeks. While waiting for the SIM card to register through out the network, I was able to get on the store’s WiFi and get a room. For a few days. I had seen a lot of pretty pictures of Catania with piles of delicious looking food so I wasn’t sure a few days would be enough.

It was.

Besides the graffiti, Catania just seems a little rough around the edges. It is frequently showered in volcanic ash from the frequently active Mt Etna volcano. Except when I was there. It sat silently covered in snow without even a little rumble registering on the earthquake tracking websites.

An artist had a good idea a while back and hung hundreds of umbrellas above an alley of open air cafes. People seemed to like it and more umbrellas were hung. Now they are faded, dirty and ripped and get little attention. Hopefully there is a plan to redo them before tourist season starts again but now they are just a bit sad.

All the restaurants were pretty empty. None of the menus pulled me in to drop 20€ on dinner. On night, I committed to a finding a good Sicilian meal and head out to find one. 7 miles of walking later, I found my self at a fast food burger place across the street from the hotel.

I definitely didn’t need any more days in Catania. I caught a morning train north along the seaside to a mountaintop town of Taormina. The Train stops a few feet from the Mediterranean and Taormina is not at least in cab fare distance. According to the travel info sites, it’s a 20€ cab ride to get to it from there. Honestly. It’s not far. I could see the station from Taormina. Seems like a lit of money for the effort so I walked. Google maps called out a hiking trail and I travel light so why worry.

Did I mention that Taormina is a mountaintop town? I think so but it deserves mentioning again. Because I was reminded of it every 20 feet or so. It was a grinder and the warm sunny day didn’t help.
It was a pretty hike up through the ripening citrus trees with expanding views of the Mediterranean coast. Even with beads of sweat burning my eyes, it was pretty good.
I finally made it to the top with hours to spare before my room would be ready. So I hiked around some (a lot) more.
Taormina does live up to its tourism board’s hype. It is a pretty place with loads of history dating back to the Roman’s and even Greeks before. In the past couple centuries, it has turned into a vacation resort for the well healed and artistic folks. Of which I am neither.
As with most stops on this trip, it is off season so it was pretty quiet. Almost a ghost town. I had my main street hotel to myself at a budget trqveler rate and restaurants to myself.
Other than walking around the mountain looking at stuff, there wasn’t much to do. Watching the sunset on Mt Etna and the Mediterranean coasts each night, I could see the lights of the little seaside towns turn on and thought “I should go there”. They were in the wrong direction from where I was going but it was a good sign to move along. Taormina is nice and I think it definitely deserves a visit. I would have rather stayed at the beach and day tripped in on the local bus and relaxed in a beachside restaurant at night.
I did have one issue that was quickly resolved. I went ro a nice pizza restaurant. Empty except for 2 other guys. Good pizza. 15€ for a pizza and a bottle of water. The bill was 30€. I mentioned it and it was quickly fixed with a cash correction but I wonder.
I caught the first train out of Taormina via the hiking trail I came in on. A pretty sunrise walk.
The train went up around the corner of Sicily and then over to Palermo. I was in a bit of a hurry now because I finally figured out my Ferry schedule and there is only one per week.
I hadnt been overly impressed with Sicily so far. I wanted some time in Palermo before I had to leave. Maybe there was something there that would impress me.
Let me tell you. Peas in my lukewarm Lasagna do not impress me. I got a room at the far end of the city from the train station. So I got a good view walking through its entertainment district. Lots of bars and cafes along a long pedestrian only street. They were all full of  people on their lunch break as I walked past. I had a few hours to kill before checkin so I wanted lunch. McDonalds was packed with still skinny school kids so I went next door to a less crowded burger place. So less crowded that I think I woke the counter lady up when I walked in. My kind of place.
I finally got checked in and got a 30 minute welcome to Palermo talk from the check in clerk. If it would have gone any longer, I would
Have thought I had walked into a timeshare scam.
He was just being helpful marking out places to see on the map. I dropped my bags in the room, put the map in my pocket and never looked at it again.
I just went for a long walk back through town over to the Marina and back again. It is kind of an old town with a modern city built in it. The narrow cobblestone side streets are lined with pretty stucco’d attached houses. The main streets have a lot of non descript 60’s Era looking office buildings.
I think it is more of a foodie town. Like any single guy, I’ll start with desert. There is a church with a bakery in it called  Il Segreti Del Chiostro. They must be attached somehow because the Father, Son and Holy Ghost all must have a hand in making these things. I was going to have 2 just to confirm mine wasn’t a fluke. But I came to my senses before finishing that this much rich sweet creamy goodness with chocolate sprinkles was enough for one day. I haven’t had another because only the devil could make a better one.
That canolli kept me going all day but come dinner time, I set out on my nightly search for sustenance. The main goal was to not go to McDonald’s but something quintessentially Italian would be nice. I ended up on another aimless miles long walk uninspired by pasta restaurant after pasta restaurant. I finally broke down and took a seat in a divey looking sidewalk table restaurant and ordered lasagna. I do like a good Lasagna. This however wasn’t either. It was hot on the outside and barely lukewarm on the inside. And to ice this cake. It had a layer of peas. A layer of F’ing peas! Sounds lime something Jamie Oliver would do and think it is a brilliant twist on an old dish. I hate peas and spent the next 1/2 hour picking them out. I probably looked like some poorly dressed autistic old man who doesn’t like his food touching. Definitely a food Rollercoaster ride that day. 
On my final day, I hopped a train to the other side of Sicily to see some Ancient Greek ruins mostly because I saw a good picture of them somewhere. I didn’t know much beyond the picture but lucked out. It was well worth the effort to get there. A couple hours on the train. A couple miles walk to the front gate. A couple miles walking along the path to see all the ruins before reversing the effort a few hours later.
The first thing that struck me was climbing the hill up to the ruins. I double checked my ticket and it definitely said I was in the Valley of Temples. It’s actually on a ridge overlooking the Mediterranean so extra points for confusing marketing. And let’s not forget these are Greek ruins in Italy. Pretty fun stuff. I don’t know how much of the original is still standing. There are great piles of rounded and square stones still on the ground so I suspect there might be some creative license on how it might have looked originally. An impressive sight regardless of how or when these were built.
My last night in Sicily and I didn’t want to leave with that Pea Lasagna as my only food memory. So I headed out again on what should have been an easy effort to eat something that wasn’t vile. 
In Greek mythology. Zeus is regarded as the sender of thunder and lightning, rain, and winds. I must have done something really offensive at the Greek ruins, because Zeus was throwing it all at me that night.
In the lulls of rain, I darted from restaurant menu to restaurant menu looking for something to eat. I hopped into a big plastic tent just as the next deluge rolled in. So dinner here.
It was just an old lady and her son working  and me. Besides hostess duty, the old lady was pushing a broom against the saggibg tent roof to push off the accumulating rain.
I ordered a pistachio cream pasta thinking I would be better able to separate out the peas. I was relieved to find no peas were harmed in the making of this dish. Plus it was really good. Definitely a good dinner so take that Zeus.
It was still a stormy night so I just went back to the room to get a good night sleep before my early departure on the 12 hour ferry to Sardinia.

 

PS. I have Sicily pictures at Trippinwithdon.com/photography