Our Sicilian Workaway

I cannot commend the website workaway enough, it has made our travels possible!
Since discovering it back in Septemberb or so we have been trying to get a workaway in Sicily.

It hasn’t been easy, but we finally sorted one and booked our tickets and here we are! I’m sure you want to know how we have been getting along…

We are staying in the most amazing house in Catania, the second biggest city on the island, literally right in the centre. I don’t know how old this place is but its old. It has high arching ceilings painted with frescos for godsake!

Our host, Daria, owns and singlehandedly runs tourist apartments just down the road, so that is what we are here to help with. It involves mostly cleaning them, very very well, which is pretty hard at times as the building is old and dust seems to create itself and then multiply in front of your eyes! Neverthless, we are getting the hang of it and can now do an apartment in an hour and a half or so, depending on how it has been left that is…

As with our previous workaways five hours a day is expected, sometimes we do more though.

We normally start around nine, eat breakfast and try to get to the apartments by ten so we can have time in the afternoon to explore. But that doesn’t always work out, our host can be quite unorganised at times (she is constantly so busy its no wonder!) so we can stand around for quite along time waiting for her to decide what we are to do that day, which is quite annoying.

Lunch, ahh lunch is amazing! Daria is a fabulous cook! She makes all sorts of traditional Sicilian food, mostly fish which is all caught here in Catania, or at least landed in the huge port. Surprisingly we have only had pasta once so far! I’ve learnt how to make some pretty mean meatballs, now I just need to work out a veggie version… :)

Lunch is a big affair here, it can take a couple of hours, between making it and eating it, sometimes there is more than one course, Italians like to use separate plates for things that elsewhere you would probably just eat all together which is quite entertaining. After the mains we have big plates of watermelon and I know you shouldn’t eat fruit after a meal, especially a big one, but it just tastes fantastic here, its impossible to say no! Afterwards we clean the kitchen and by then it can be five so there isn’t much time left to do things which is a shame…