On to Sicily

We are about to leave the English-speaking world and enter into an entirely different experience. Most of the people in Malta speak English, the Maltese language is a mixture of Italian and Arabic - a hold over from Moorish rule we suppose. We are now leaving Malta and taking an evening ferry to Sicily. We had no idea when we woke up what adventures the day would bring but we were about to find out.

After having breakfast at our hotel we packed the suitcases and stored them with the receptionist. We decided to take the bus into Paola, the city where the Hypogeum was located. Apparently there is another site in Paola which is worth seeing. These are called the Taxien Temples. We spent about an hour reading all the info and touring the site. Marija asked that I take a photo of a rather unusually dressed couple. What do you think? Tim promised that he would never buy pants like that. We also walked through a very interesting graveyard and then took the trusty bus back to Marsaxlokk. We were hungry so found a restaurant that would make us a full English breakfast. We hung around until our driver was scheduled to arrive. He drove us to the ferry where we boarded at about 5:00 p.m. Tim had purchased first-class seats which meant that our luggage was tagged VIP and we had seats on the upper floor. However, people on the cruise had the same plans but were originally taking an earlier ferry. They rescheduled the ferry so we could visit on the trip over so we went downstairs and talked with them. They were from Toronto and had been doing puzzles with Marija.

When we arrived at Pazzano in the south of Sicily we were met by a driver holding up a sign which said “TIMOTHY”. He deposited our luggage in a lovely Mercedes Benz and drove on the Autostrada to Catania - at 140 - 160 km for much of the trip! We arrived in Catania and spent over an hour trying to find our accommodation. In the evenings many of the streets are claimed by the restaurants as they put out table and vehicles cannot get down many of the streets. We drove around and around, he had to back out of a couple of situations and was getting quite frustrated. We both had the location on our GPS but he just could not get there. He kept stopping people and asking if they lived in Catania but most didn’t. Finally, he talked to two young men who had heard of the Palazzu Stidda. The driver said that we would need to walk to it and he promptly took our bags out of the trunk and said good-bye!!! It was dark, we had no idea where we were but these two young men said they would take us there and they offered to pull our bags. (This could have gone very badly.) They took us right to the gate and we thanked them and gave them a tip.

Tim used the code to get us in the gate, then he used another code to get us in the front door. Then we located the door keys and hauled our suitcases upstairs. We then went to the restaurant under our window to have dinner. We were in and we were safe!!!

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