Travel Tuesdays: Catania, Sicily, Italy

Good morning! And welcome to Travel Tuesdays! Today I'm sharing my third and final post about Sicily... I mean, unless I go there again someday and have some amazing adventures worth sharing. ;)

So the last couple of weeks I shared about a trip I took where we stopped off in Taormina and Mt. Etna. This week's story is actually from another trip I took to Sicily.

My brother is in the Navy and is constantly traveling all over the world. One time while I was living in Malta, he had a 24-hour stopover in Catania, Sicily, so we decided to meet up.

Neither of us had ever been to Catania before, so I looked it up to find a suitable landmark where we could meet. We settled on an elephant statue in the town square.

I took the ferry to the south of the island and then the bus up the east coast to Catania. My brother had some adventures of his own trying to get from the base to the city center by taxi without knowing Italian.

On the road to Catania...

The entrance into the city, with the mountains in the background

When I arrived in the square I spotted the statue and started walking toward it, but I couldn't see my brother. Then he waved from a nearby cafe where he was drinking a tiny cup of espresso. We gave each other a hug and I sat down with him.

I don't have a picture of the elephant statue, but this is a church in the same square.

"You like espresso?" I asked him.

"Yeah, I asked for a coffee and this is what they gave me," he said.

"Ah, when you want what we call a coffee in America, you have to say 'americano,' " I told him.

"Oh yeah, the guy said that, but I thought he was talking about me!"

I put my camera close to the espresso cup to make it look bigger ;)

After coffee we decided to just wander around the city. Here are some of the things we saw:

Here's a view of Mt. Etna from the city. My brother later climbed the mountain on another trip to Sicily.

After we had wandered for a while and gotten some gelato, we decided to take a short bus tour. Here are some pictures from the bus:

A little castle on the hill there...

And then the moon was rising and it was time for me to be heading back south.

We said goodbye and I caught a bus back to Pozzalo. Unfortunately, even though there were beautiful sunsets to enjoy, I spent the whole trip worrying I wouldn't make it back to the port before the ferry sailed!

I got more and more worried as the time ticked away. When the bus finally stopped, I asked the driver how to get to the port, and after hesitating a moment, he was like, I'll just take you there. I was so freaking grateful, not only to him, but to everyone else on the bus who took the detour with me, because it would have been really far to run.

It was such a sweet sight to see the ferry still waiting!

Thanks for joining me on my adventures. :) Have you ever been to Sicily? Where have your latest adventures been?