The Never Ending Journey

 Thursday morning a quick peek out of the front door revealed a sky that was just too heavy to remain in place.  I’m convinced it is a special event that Nature lays on whenever ships are disgorging their cargo of flightless pigeons into the streets.  As was Costa Lines with its contingent of 6500 passengers, all scrambling to buy defective umbrellas and paper thin plastic ponchos from the various street vendors on Via Roma and the routes to the Churches, fountains and streets surrounding the Four Corners- ( Cuatro Conti) Grabbing an umbrella we bussed it to the Porta Felipe, the eastern gates of the old city where we planned to visit a well known Puppet Museum. Arriving, just before it’s opening time of 10am we sheltered under a meagre awning while the rain began. By the time the doors opened, the light shower was a major downpour which could be hears rattling the roof tiles. With puppet displays covering much of the known world, it proved to be an interesting way of kil...

Tonight, (Wednesday) the Heavens decided to upon up for several hours, so our dinner tonight consists of cheese and crackers for me while Susanna enjoys a Noodles in a Cup Ramen and whatever else we had in the hotel fridge. After almost a month of pasta, pasta, pasta, I can’t really complain.  Today we spent much of the morning suitcase hunting to replace the one Susanna brought, which now has a broken handle and a cracked wheel assembly. Included in the hunt was a walk through the fish and produce market where we found ourselves somewhat shocked at the variety and just plain strangeness of some of the offerings. Various sizes of squid and octopus were on display as well as, I could be mistaken, fish intestines. Living in the Caribbean many years ago I recall them being cooked into a stew which, allegedly, improved virility. We picked up some grapes and a couple of pomegranates for snacks.   Other than stopping for a lunch of fried baccala ( salt cod) and squid, with actual ro...

  MORTE Photos to be uploaded later- internet issues prevent them from loading With our train not scheduled until 2:15 we checked out of our lodgings but left our luggage there while we explored. The castle at the south end of the island was open and featured a somewhat abstract art display. From there we returned to the Piazza of the Duomo to discover that an adjacent church was finally open after being closed the previous days. On displays were replicas of and tributes of the Caravaggio painting we had seen earlier. Picking up our luggage we arrived at the station in plenty of time for our train trip to Catania airport. Exiting the train there we discovered that our connection to Palermo had been cancelled as had all future trips that day. With no one there to explain the situation we were debating our options when a bus showed up as a replacement. The original 3 hour trip dragged out to 4+ hours as we detoured into various small stations em route to drop off and pick up passenge...

              Currently no photos due to internet issues at our B&B The train ride between Catania Centrale and Syracuse took around 75 minutes for the 70km trip, largely due to scheduled stops along the way. The route meandered along the coast for part of the trip passing industrial plants and some Esso facilities which seemed to be in the business of making rotten eggs.  The station in Syracuse was a good km from our destination but the 15€ price for a 5 minute cab ride was enough of a deterrent that we decided to hoof it.  A fairly straight route led us over the pedestrian bridge into Ortigia, the small island off Siracusa and it was another 500 meters before we found our B&B. Casa VerbaVolant was on the main tourist drag through the town and the owner was waiting at the door when we arrived. It turns out he and his wife own a publishing company so the entire building is like a museum to publishing. Ancient typewriters in every roo...

 The return trip to Catania was much faster than the outbound trip. We had tickets for the 11:15 bus, however we tried to see if they would also work for the 10:45 but the driver first refused, then when I suggested I would just buy another pair of tickets, he reconsidered and let us on.        Arriving shortly after noon, we set off in search of lunch, Chinese food to be specific. With Google listing 3 we chose the one with the slightly better review! Il Mondo was a well worn but reasonably clean attempt at Cantonese fishes, or their Sicilian equivalent- Chinese “spaghetti” , fried rice and sizzling platter dishes seemed to take centre stage. We selected a seafood chow main, a squid and veg. hotplate and a plate of lightly fried vegetables in a light batter. Dishes were on the small side, but sufficient for lunch.  Returning to our B&B we received our room assignment- same room. After a quick change we set out to join the throng wandering its way along...