Oh, it felt good to wake up in Italy this morning, to a deliciously crumbly glazed croissant and Cappuccino. Our flight from Tel Aviv brought us to Catania, Sicily at half past midnight. Neither of us was able to fall asleep before 2AM, but we felt energized enough to tackle our day with no problem.
We have rented a small apartment near the airport (a little gem). At last we have a washing machine at our disposal. We had to catch a cab here last night, but this morning we walked to the terminal to rent our vehicle. We ended up with a van, that we will be driving all the way to Milan. It sits nine, and is ungodly big for the two of us and for Italian city driving, but we are saving several hundred dollars for the one-way drive, so I suppose it was worth it.
We chose Catania because of its airport location, but we were not planning to spend anytime in town. However, after watching a couple of videos, and talking with a Brit in Tel Aviv who used to live here and loved it, we decided to spend a whole day in town, and we were quite surprised at how much this small city has to offer. We did not regret making this choice.
We started by visiting the city’s sprawling market, but many stalls were already closing (it’s only open half the day).
It was soon time to eat, and immediately we were happy to have left Israel’s eateries behind. Food here is of another level. Not only it tastes good, but there are so many menu choices that we just did not encounter in the Middle East. Diane only had a first dish of pasta with shrimp and zucchini (I opted for seafood pasta), but I could not say no also to a horse steak. If you’ve never had horse meat, please don’t knock it until you try it. It’s amazing and I was excited when I saw it on the menu.
We spent the remainder of the day strolling the city’s streets, being amazed by the Baroque architecture, the iron balconies, and the Moorish/Hispanic architecture of old.
Bellini Gardens
The Elephant is the symbol of the city
The Duomo
Sicily may well be part of Italy, but in a way it is a place apart, with many commonalities with the neighboring north coast of Africa; natural, such as weather, soil, flora; and man-made - some of the architecture has Moorish influences - and there has also been a great influx of Africans in the past couple of decades.
The Bellini Theater, named after the famous opera composer (Norma), who hailed from this city.
I had never been here before, though I've wanted to visit for a long time. We are so looking forward to a week of exploring it.
Horsemeat....interesting.