Catania, Sicily

Good train trip until the last hours, any eight our train trip will wear on anyone. It is always hard to arrive in a new city at night. Mandi is excellent at getting directions but sometimes even with the best directions you get lost. Especially, when street signs are not easy to find, there is not a street sign or there is a huge celebration in the town. We landed ourselves in the middle or actually the beginning of the Catania celebration that brings around 10,000 people a year and the town CLOSES down. Yea=o/ We are just lucky like that. Since we cannot find our hostel we call and of course the receptionist only speaks Italian and makes an effort to tell us directions in the best broken English/Italian she can, I even try Spanish but (Hahaha) we are so lost in the dark. Eventually, we find our hostel and it is close to the center of the celebration, yea? Maybe not. This celebration last four days and each afternoon and night there is something big going on for example fireworks, cannon fire, bands and massive amounts of people well into  the night. Also, since it is a city or Sicilian holiday most business are closed when they want like in Spain with the siesta but worse. Sun again! So we decided the next day to find the ocean, you would think that would be an easy thing but with roads closed, big crowds, celebration down almost every avenue and tall buildings it is a little harder than you realize. After several wrong turns WE MAKE IT! And it is water…and it is windy and cold. But we found it. We make our way back to the hostel it is an easier walk. We then decide to venture into the celebration and find lots of people dress up in white and about to have a parade with their icons they are celebrating, it took eight men to carry the platforms (I think there were five) holding  the icons and they looked like it was still heavy. Then guess what happened, it started to rain. I can only smile inside thinking how much Texas needs rain and I need sunshine but it is just not going to happen. Well, we get a coffee and wait for the rain to pass because we do not have umbrellas or rain coats. Once the rain passes we make our way back to the hostel and guess what…pack to go back to Rome.

Back in  Rome
It was easier to find the train station to leave and then here we go back to Rome for a day to get to our next destination.  Once in Rome  Mandi took us right to the hostel since we had been there before, we did not stay in the previous hostel. It was nice to be back in the city we both loved. We looked at a couple places we did not get to the previous visit and it was a leisurely day. Then we were off again to Pisa.