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Sicily… The Land of my Ancestors!
Since Jess and I didn’t have class on Thursday or Friday we decided to take a little trip to Catania, Sicily. Our goal was to have an adventurous weekend and so we started it off by taking an overnight train that left Rome on Wednesday night. The train ride really wasn’t that bad except that the person Jess had to sit next had bad body odor and that while the two of us were reading our cabin mates just decided to shut the lights off. So much for studying. We both instead ended up going to sleep of course with all of our valuables in our purses that we were sleeping on.
We arrived in Catania around 8 in the morning and walked to our hostel. The people working there were really nice and had us check in and chill in the lobby for an hour until they could put us in a room. After an hour we dropped our stuff off in our room and headed for the beach. The journey there was quite the adventure. We didn’t know exactly where we were suppose to go the guy at the hostel just gave us a general direction and told us we would see it. Well we started walking and ended up in a port. We continued walking through the port which was full of guys who kept on looking at us. They knew we were lost but none of them tried to steer us in the right direction. We continued walking until we came to a building said travel information on it. We went in there but the people working didn’t talk to us they just kept on working so we left and continued on the road we were on. We then saw a sign for the Coast Guard and there was a ticket window nearby so we stopped there to ask how to get to the beach. The guy pointed and told us to keep going in that direction. Up until this point there were two guys in jumpsuits that happened to stop at all the same buildings as us which we thought was odd. So we continued on down the road and once again they headed the same direction as us except this part of the port was a little more secluded. At that point we started getting a little concerned so we kept changing the pace we were walking at. No matter what pace we were going though they always stayed the same distance behind us. We finally came to an area where a military man was standing outside that spoke English and we asked him for directions. At this point the two guys who had been following us chatted with people there for a bit and then one of them turned to us and said, “Ciao” like we had been friends this whole time when really those guys had been making us anxious. The military guy told us to go on the left path and keep walking.
We thought we found it when we saw water and sand but the “beach” was covered in garbage and had tents and vans of people living there. We decided not to stop and kept on walking because that could not be the beach. At last in the distance we spotted a beach with people laying out on it. We had to drudge through this little river to get across to the side the beach was on. After we walked about half of a mile we arrived at the area of the beach were other people were. The almost hour long trek was worth it. It was so nice to lay out, relax, and soak up the sun. As an added bonus on our journey I saw a jellyfish for the first time in my life that was washed up on the shore. Eventually, clouds started blocking our sun so we decided to head back to our hostel but to venture out and find a new route back instead of going through the creepy port.
We walked along the made road which was slightly less creepy and along the way we decided to stop at a bar to start sampling some Sicilian pastries. Here we ordered a cannoli and a baba. The cannoli was amazing! Definitely the best one I had ever had. The baba was not something I would order again. The cake part of was saturated with the rum it had been soaked it which made the cake soggy and the rum overpowered any other flavors present.
We continued on our way back to the hostel noting how many times we were honked at or stared at by guys along the way. I felt like I was in a freak show or something almost the entire time I was in Sicily because no matter how we were dressed or what we were doing people would still stair or make creepy noises at us.
We returned to the hostel and took a shower and started reading some packets for school. We met 3 of our roommates who all seemed super nice and we chatted with each of them for a while. One guy was from Boston, one was originally from the Netherlands but had moved to London, and the third was from Japan. After a while we started getting hungry so we asked the lady at reception to recommend a place to eat and some places for us to buy some good pastries. She told us some places to go and areas which we should try to avoid especially at night (naturally this was the area we had walked through on our return trip home from the beach). We could not find the place she recommended but we did see a dog that had recently had puppies and they were so adorable. Nothing else was really open for dinner yet so we ended up just eating at a bar. We split an order of French fries and each had a Margherita pizza with a non-alcoholic cocktail. The food was really good but we couldn’t finish it so we stuck it in a bag to give to all the stray dogs we had seen.
On the way back to the hostel we stopped at the bakery she had recommended, Tobbacco. We got another cannoli and a cassata to go. We brought them back to our hostel and ate them while we continued doing some studying. The cannoli was not as good as it had been at the first place L It was not very flavorful and the cream was kind of runny so we were both a little disappointed. The cassata was not what I had expected it to be. It was good but it was almost too sugary for me which is really hard to do because I love my sweets. We were going to go out with Jess’s friend but he ended up having to work a double shift so he couldn’t meet up with us so we decided to just stay in and continue studying. At one point we took a study break to go get some café.
The couple at the hostel gave us some places that would be open that late. We went to the one the guy had strongly recommended called Lino’s. The man had told us if we went there we needed to get this drink that had chocolate on the bottom, then espresso, then milk, and topped off with more chocolate. We both bought one and they were phenomenal. Then we each bought a cappuccino to go. We headed back to the hostel and I worked on more homework until around 2 am. Then I went to bed.
We had to get up at 7 am so we could catch the bus to Mt. Etna by 8:15. Before we left though we had to organize all of our stuff and check out of the hostel. We were able to store out bags there still though which was helpful. We arrived at the bus place at 7:55 and a man highly recommended if we could that we go back and get gym shoes. We decided we probably should make the trip back so we power walked it back to our hostel and then back to the bus. We both took a nap on the bus.
When we arrived at the top of the Etna we realized we had both made a big mistake. Having been at the beach the day before we were both looking forward to a nice sunny day and had not stopped think about how cold it would be at a higher elevation. We must of looked like the biggest idiots every as we scurried to the souvenir shops to buy sweatshirts and sweatpants. We looked like the biggest tourists ever we had on matching sweatpants and Jess had an Italia sweatshirt and I had a Sicilia sweatshirt. Our stupidity astonished us and we had a good chuckle about it all day long. We decided to not take the cable car to the top because it was going to cost us almost 30 euro each so instead we chilled at cafes all day reading and walking around to all the souvenir shops which we ended up doing at least 4 times. It was too cold for us to hike as we had planned on doing so the trip was pretty uneventful but still fun. Surprise, Surprise we slept on the bus ride back down to Catania. Then we returned to our hostel grabbed our bags and headed to the station to catch our 11 hour train back to Rome.
Overall, I really enjoyed travelling to Sicily because it was nice to see where my ancestors were from although they were from Palermo not Catania but still it was somewhat close. I really enjoyed sampling the pastries especially the cannoli at the first place that was o amazing. In the end Jess and I had wanted an adventurous trip and we definitely ended up with one.
