My Last Day in Sicily

We have new volunteers now, the Lithuanian girls have gone and german/italian Aischa and american/italian Tim have arrived, separately. Aischa has been her for a couple of days now and for my last day when we finished cleaning the apartments we decided to skip lunch at home (lucky, because later we found out from Tim that it wasn’t ready until 3) and go to the sandy beaches that begin after the port in Catania.

Before I continue, I have a confession to make. I paid to go in the sea and O can firmly tell you that it was the worse 5€ I have ever spent, much worse than the Siracusa map! It wasn’t on my last day, but a couple of days before. Daria said she was going to the beach and would we like to come, obviously we both jumped at the idea, especially as my days were running out.
When we got the car out I was hoping that she was going to drive is somewhere beautiful and exciting but alas no, we drove the 15min walk to the Lido which is exactly like the free Solarium at Plaza Europa except her you can have an umbrella if you want. I can not believe I paid to go there! I thought we would at least get one of those plastic sun loungers for the price. And its not even as nice as going to the Solarium because very 10mins a train goes by! Poor Aischa spent the time trying to con herself that she was in the nature by balancing on a rock near the steps into the water…

Anyway, fuelled by having to pay to go in the sea, we decided to check out the sandy beaches even though nobody has said they are nice, in fact most people make a point of saying how horrible they are.

We planned to walk but Daria talked us into getting a bus, which I’m glad we did as most of the walk would have been on main roads…

The beaches are very strange, I’ve never known anything like it, we stayed on the bus to the very last one which according to the bus driver is the nicest – I suppose it was the furthest from the port and the airport which is behind most of the others. The beaches are an enormous beach that has been divided into loads of tiny beaches, portioned off with bamboo on the posh ones, wooden planks on the one we went to and others just with wire!

I wont sugar coat it, I was dissappointed. The sand wasn’t very clean, laced with cigarette butts. The water was worse though with plastic bags, cups and even a sanitary towel lapping at the shore. It was so warm, higher than my body temperature it didn’t do much to cool you off, and it was so murky. I tried swimming out to where it looked bluer from the shore but it was much the same, with the benefit of the cooler current of water.

Nevertheless, we had got there so we were going to make the most of it. We read our books in the sun and picnicked on peaches and grapes bought at a little stool at the bus station and at about 5pm we decided to walk back to Catania along the seashore. The guy behind the bar who Aischa asked of it was possible just asked ‘why?’ haha. Knowing we could get a bus from the last beach to avoid walking on the roads we set off on our journey risking being hit by ping pong balls and inflatable animals.

It took an hour and gave us an insight into all the different beaches, or shall I say beach portions. Most of them you have to pay to go to, these include little cabins, sun loungers, umbrellas,… One had a stage, another had some very unenthusiastic girls running a dance workshop to hideous music. There were potted dying palm trees and ornamental rocks. There was also barb wire and insane amounts of garbage on others. A dog beach without a single dog on it.

We got to the end and couldn’t work out were to buy tickets, you cant get them on the buses here. So when the bus came along we got in to ask, they driver just shrugged and closed the doors saying you couldn’t buy them in the restaurant (the only building there) so we took it as a free trip :) a good ending to the outing!

In the evening I packed my bag (which got through has hand luggage without any problems! :D) and then we rescued Tim from the house and had my last granite before going to the ultimate pizza place where I bought a focaccia for the next day so I wouldn’t have to but airport food. I think I’ll miss that place the most. Not only is the food excellent but the people are great too!

I almost forgot, while eating our granite at the Plaza Teatro a guy about our age, maybe a bit older, stumbled up to us with a guitar, in higgledy piggledy english he proclaimed that the world was ending, we were all going to burn and see everything burn – I thought he was going off on one about Etna who had erupted the night before, but I think it was more about society, it was very hard to follow and not to laugh. The ramble went on for dome time before he broke into italian and then into song, accompanied by the guitar. When he wandered off with 50 cents from Aischa I asked what he had said in italian and she answered that it made no more sense than the english part.