Putting Together an Opinion of Catania

I’m normally quite good at making quick opinions of cities, I either like them or I don’t, but Catania has been difficult.
Maybe its because I crippled myself on the second day (sea urchin) leading to much of the sight seeing being laced with pain or because I haven’t really been in a travelling state of mind – I feel very ready to head back to ‘normal’ life after nearly a year of living out of a 35L backpack.

Its quite a beautiful city, full of baroque architecture and more churches than one could count.

Set between the sea and Etna, the volcano, its certainly an amazing place. But its not a seaside city. Thats definitely my major problem with Catania, although its built on the sea, there is the train line and huge amounts of cement in between you and the water. I don’t understand why they didn’t give it even the littlest promenade. Its a real shame.

From the sky! Good bye Catania and Sicily

It has lots of good little things too. Like this kiosk which is just off Piazza Stesicoro that sells delicious non alcoholic drinks all made to order, the local favourite is mandarino e limon, I think its sweet mandarin juice with fresh lemon juice and sparkling water. They are super refreshing and cheap too! 1€ for a plastic cup.

The delicious ice cream place in Piazza Teatro is also a big winner, with fantastic ice cream and granite! Although it seems a boring choice when faced with the options they have, you must try the strawberry flavour, its the best I have ever tried, just like eating a mouthful of strawberries and cream!
Also, the servings are enormous! They use a spatula instead of a scoop! And you get frowned at if you only have one flavour.

I love the ambience in the evenings, lots of the roads in the centre are cut off and restaurants put all their tables outside on the streets.

One evening there was a kind of arts and crafts fair, all the galleries opened their doors and studios alike. In the car park lots of little stalls were put up where I bought my necklace made from polished lava beads that have been coloured white.

Mad false sweets made out of silicone

Mini street art exhibition

What I really did like about Catania was although its a city, it feels like a village, or at most a town. Every morning there are huge markets (and there are always fruit stalls all over the place), the fish market near Plaza Duomo is said to be the best in Europe by Richstein, having read that I was expecting something similar to the Bocadillo in Barcelona with all the fish beautifully presented, but it wasn’t, then again I went at about 11am so it had been going for quite a long time already. But perhaps Richstein was referring more to the quality and freshness… Above the fish market you can find meat, fruit and vegetable stalls too, alongside another kiosk, which wasn’t quite as good as the other…

Just look at the size of the watermelons!

At the other end of Via Etnea, where it intersects with Via Umberto you can find everything from bed linen, cooking pots, to dresses for nights out!
This one really reminded me of the markets in Portugal, its total organised chaos with sellers yelling prices over the mountains of cloths and shaking towels at you as you walk by.
I don’t know why there are any supermarkets in Catania at all!

One problem I have with Catania, with everywhere I have seen in Sicily is the lack of trees! I know this dates back to when Rome was in charge and Sicily cut down all the trees to make way for grain production – speaking of which Daria was telling me that recently they have been cultivating the old grains again as opposed to just wheat but that its actually illegal to grow them, at the moment she said its tolerated because they aren’t making much money and its all small producers.

Back to the trees, we went to the one park in Catania and bought lunch in a near by cafe. I tried the traditional canolo for dessert which was pretty delicious but massive!

The park was disappointing though, just a handful of fancy trimmed bushes, a leaving breathing calendar and clock! I wonder if they replant the day of the date every morning or if it was a total coincidence that we were there on the same day… And the rest was statues and cement path ways really with a handful of trees in between.

I shall end this post with some delicious little cakes we ate on David’s last day :) they were mostly custard based and really delicous, especially the wild strawberry one!

Although its a beautiful, vibrant city, I wouldn’t want to live there. I’m not sure I would go back, if I did I would definitely like to get out of the centre more and see more of were the real people live. I don’t feel like I made the most of my stay there and thats probably weighing down my opinion of the place. I would really like to go to Sicily again though, I want to see other sides of the island!