Friday. We spent yesterday in Noto so that I could keep being productive with work so today is our travel day to get up to Palermo – our one real solid sightseeing event during our time on Sicily. We are pretty excited to get to see the capital.
We were up very early this morning so that we could make the early bus leaving Noto and heading to Siracusa. We could have taken the train but the bus was faster and more convenient. We did the train last time, so we are switching it up.
We hit a lot of traffic problems in Avola and were stuck there for a long time. The bus was stuck in traffic for so long that people started to get off of the bus and start walking!
We got to Siracusa and had very little time before our train from Siracusa to Catania was going to leave. Dominica worked on getting our train tickets while the girls and I went to look for the train and get ready to get on assuming that Dominica was able to get our tickets. It is a good thing that we did, because we were waiting by the train doors and clearly waiting for the train and for Dominica a conductor called up to the front and told the train that they needed to wait as Dominica was running from the station to the train which required going to the end of the tracks and around the end and to our train. It was a near thing.
The ride from Siracusa to Catania was an easy one. And there we made the transfer to the cross-Sicily train that goes through the middle of the island. This one our one chance to really get to see the interior. It was a beautiful trip and quite interesting. Sicily is so mountainous.
We loved the ride, but it was a lot of time on the train. While we were riding the train, a group of girls sitting near us spilled a bottle of acetone on the train and we all thought that we were going to pass out from it.
It was a long day of travel to get from Noto to Siracusa to Catania to Palermo and then to walk through the city and find our apartment. It was dark when we finally arrived in the city and we had quite a long way to get to the apartment pulling out luggage.
After our long walk we found the apartment on a back street. We got in and the owner and his daughter showed us around. It’s a very small apartment but really nice, we like it a lot. It’s a small one room downstairs and single upstairs bedroom with multiple beds. Works great for us. The bathroom and shower are really cool and the girls love it. It’s a stone shower built under the stairs with LED lights in it. A great use of space and the nicest shower we’ve yet seen in Italy.
We had no Internet tonight. There was enough Internet access for us to get connected, but not enough for us to get email or anything. So we are working from our mobile phones only. This is a major contributor to me falling behind and beginning months of not being caught up with SGL because I was already a little bit behind and when we got to Palermo I was expecting to have an awesome weekend of fast, big city Internet where I would get to catch up on a lot of things and instead was offline for the weekend.
It was decently late when we got in. So after settling in, unpacking, checking out the Internet and needing dinner we were pretty much spent. Our hosts told us that there was good pizza right next door so we went down there and got pizza which turned out to be amazing.
We needed some supplies so I went out for a walk and explored the city and bit. I eventually found a shop in the Arabic Tunisian district that was open and I was able to get the food and stuff that we needed. So we are set for the night. Tomorrow we will get out and see the city all weekend. Very excited to be exploring Dominica’s family’s home city.
Very comfortable sleeping tonight. We love this little apartment. An apartment like this would be perfect for us when living abroad. No unnecessary extra space.