Wednesday 21st September

We were up around 7.30 a.m. for our breakfast at 8.30.a.m. Breakfast was a simple meal with cappuccino and although unordered espresso coffee!! I suppose it is not allowed to start the day without an espresso, even though the ‘cappuccino before 11 a.m. and espresso ever after was always the rule I was taught. Anyway, it was an enjoyable meal. Repacking the car we set off for Sicily. It was at this point, that the gas gauge turned yellow and we realized that we were getting very low on gas. We were in the countryside and gas stations were not so plentiful. With relief we found one, only to be told that they had no gasoline that day!! We asked someone for directions to a gas station and received the usual rather vague directions which MAC’s rudimentary Italian interpreted. We set off and after several wrong turns we found an Esso station and with great relief filled the tank. We then resolved not to let the tank get much below half full before refueling.

We were soon on A2 heading south towards Reggio Calabria and the boarding point for the ferry to Messina. Other than a couple of stops for fuel and coffee, the journey of 400 or so kilometers was otherwise uneventful. We arrived at Villa San Giovanni which is where multiple ferries leave for Sicily. Ominously, there were very black clouds over the island. We tried to get tickets for one ferry did not succeed  and were turned away so went to the next ferry, called BluFerries who were more accommodating. We had to wait half an hour for the next ferry but the boarding was very quick and easy and we were soon under way across the Straits of Messina. 

We arrived at the Porto Storico Tremestieri, which is south of the main part of the city of Messina which gave us a ‘leg up’ on our trip further south to Catania. The sea journey took about 45 minutes and we arrived in Sicily in a violent downpour with lightning and the roads under water!! Was this an omen? We set off south towards Catania. The address of our AirBnB was Via Riccardo da Lentini. Unbeknownst to us the car GPS system had entered Viale Riccardo da Lentini (what a difference two letters make!!), and we arrived where the GPS had taken us. After furious phone calls, texts, WhatsApp messages, etc. we found out that we were entirely in the wrong place and had to drive nearly an hour back up the road we had just come down! Then finding the  real Via Riccardo da Lentini involved navigating some incredibly narrow and congested streets which MAC managed with some angst and with the help of locals who maneuvered us around impossible corners, nearly knocking over restaurant tables!! After making a couple of circuits around the area we found the location and parked in a spot guided by a local who for 2 euro would ‘watch our car’. OK so at this point we had little option but to ‘go with the flow’. MAC met the young lady who had, sadly had to wait for a long time for our delayed arrival. We soon unloaded some of our cases and trekked up the two sets of stairs to our cosy apartment right in the center of Catania. In Italy, there is an unexpected adventure around every corner!!

At this point it may be interesting to have some facts about Sicily

From Wikipedia:

"Sicily (Italian: Sicilia [siˈtʃiːlja]; Sicilian: Sicilia [sɪˈʃiːlja]) is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 20 regions of Italy. The Strait of Messina divides it from the region of Calabria in Southern Italy. It is one of the five Italian autonomous regions and is officially referred to as Regione Siciliana. The region has 5 million inhabitants. Its capital city is Palermo.

Sicily is in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe, from which it is separated by the narrow Strait of Messina. Its most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, the tallest active volcano in Europe,^[5] and one of the most active in the world, currently 3,357 m (11,014 ft) high. The island has a typical Mediterranean climate.

The earliest archaeological evidence of human activity on the island dates from as early as 12,000 BC. By around 750 BC, Sicily had three Phoenician and a dozen Greek colonies and it was later the site of the Sicilian Wars and the Punic Wars. After the end of the Roman province of Sicilia with the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, Sicily was ruled during the Early Middle Ages by the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantine Empire, and the Emirate of Sicily. The Norman conquest of southern Italy led to the creation of the County of Sicily in 1071, that was succeeded by Kingdom of Sicily, a state that existed from 1130 until 1816. Later, it was unified under the House of Bourbon with the Kingdom of Naples as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The island became part of Italy in 1860 following the Expedition of the Thousand, a revolt led by Giuseppe Garibaldi during the Italian unification, and a plebiscite. Sicily was given special status as an autonomous region on 15 May 1946, 18 days before the Italian institutional referendum of 1946.

Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature, cuisine, and architecture."

I do not think we had any idea that the history of Sicily was so rich and varied.

It being late we decided to eat soon and a nearby restaurant called Da Antonio was recommended by our host. It was said to be for locals and not tourists although the majority of the tables were, in fact, occupied by non-Italians but that did not distract from the fact that the food and wine were very good. At the next table was a lone young lady and we fell into conversation with her to learn that she was living in Germany but hailed from New York and was Burmese. We talked about our experience when we visited Burma in 2014. One piece of advise she offered us was to get an Italian SIM card as, apparently, the GPS works much better with a local SIM card than a US one. This might have avoided our recent re-routing!

Then it was back to the AirBnB and to bed after a long and exciting day!