The first stop of our Italian adventure (aside from the airport in Rome) was Catania, the second largest city in Sicily (to Palermo, which is later on our agenda).
Due to our hectic travel schedule, our time in Catania was limited to a bus tour and 30-minute stop at a coffee bar, but that was more than enough to remind us all we were very far from home. Most of all the age of the place leaps out at you in a way that Americans can't fully comprehend on our side of the Atlantic. Catania was a bustling city before Christ was born and has been ruled by Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, and Spanish all before Columbus stumbled upon the West Indies.
As I sat at a table outside the bar with my father, enjoying our first (of many) serving of Italian gelato, I needed every one of those 30 minutes to take in my surroundings.
The palm trees branched out from town squares, surrounding monuments to long-ago Sicilian heroes, and magnificent churches were always the most ornate, grand buildings around. Their white or green domes loomed large over nearly every city in Italy, and Catania is no exception.
As with almost all Sicilian cities, Catania is on the coast, and though the ocean wasn't visible, you could sense its presence in the air and the city itself. I spent some time in Greece in 2005, and was expecting Sicily to be very similar.
Geographically, I may have been close to being right, but the culture, architecture, nearly everything else was totally different. Sicily is an island conquered many times, and the result is a layered blend of a culture with influences from Greece, Rome, Persia, Spain and probably several others that my under-educated brain didn't notice.
You could even start to understand why the Mafioso-types were so distrusting of non-Sicilians (at least in the movies). For a few thousand years, nearly every group of outsiders who came to Sicily were coming there to take it over. Alas, I'm getting ahead of myself, and wouldn't learn most of what I've just said for several days yet.
After our brief but much needed respite from airports and airplanes, we were herded back onto our tour bus to depart for Taormina, a resort town high on the cliffs overlooking the Ionian Sea to the east, and with active volcano Mt. Etna looming ominously to the southwest, winter snow still visible around its peak.
We arrived at our hotel, the ATA CapoTaormina, in the late afternoon, and had an hour or two to settle in and change before dinner. The main entrance, lobby, restaurant and hotel bar were located on the top floor, with four floors of guest rooms stacked underneath, built into the side of the cliff. An elevator went below the floors with the guest rooms to a spectacular pool overlooking the sea, and further down to a private beach.
In what will surely be one of the great regrets of my lifetime, we never got enough time to enjoy the pool or the private beach. The beach closed at "more or less" 6 p.m., and the pool at "more or less" 7 p.m. In Italian, "more or less" translates to "whenever the staff feels like leaving for the day."
Although the pool was closed before we got there, the hotel was an incredible place to spend an evening. Our room had a balcony that let us walk out onto a grassy stretch of land leading up to the cliffs and spectacular views of the sea below, some rocky island outcroppings, the beaches below us.
The old city of Taormina loomed farther up the hill above us, complete with a Saracen castle at the apex, while Etna's snow-capped peak penetrated the sky line to our right. Boats cruised the waters surrounding our hotel, a few beach-goers were still out and about, and some locals were fishing off the rocks.
With the pool/beach off limits, most of us congregated on the hotel's top-level balcony for drinks before dinner. That balcony (which is also where we ate our hotel breakfasts) is definitely among the top five coolest places I've ever had a drink. The other four are probably all in Greece.
Unlike most American bars, where drinking is the main attraction, along the Mediterranean, alcohol is merely a pleasant complement to the breathtaking world around you. As I sat on that balcony, getting to know the 24 other travelers in my group and sipping a few glasses of Sicilian red wine, I almost forgot that I hadn't slept in 36 hours.
Dinner that night was served in our hotel, and was the first formal Italian meal we had.
When Italians do dinner, they don't mess around. At any dinner restaurant, you can expect an affair that lasts at least two hours and involves at least four courses, though five is more common and seven is not out of the question.
There will be an antipasti, a pasta, the main course and dessert. There will be wine and there will be conversation long into the night. No one will be in a rush to go somewhere else, and the people with which you dine are the entertainment, unless a group of wandering musicians strolls in looking for tips.
As it turns out, that was quite a pleasant change from the cacophony of television, fast food and frenzied pace that have become hallmarks of American dinners.
As pleasant as dinner was, the group was beyond the point of exhaustion by dessert, and the veal, pasta and wine could only carry us so far. We trudged back to the elevators and our rooms for a much-needed night of rest. The next day held a bus ride to the ancient city of Siracusa, and another full day of exploring and touring.
I'll get you the details of that adventure as soon as my fingers allow.
Here are some pictures from Catania:
And now from Taormina (Many of these pictures are from days 2 and 3 and will be explained later. I organized the photos by city, not by date):
