Day Trip! Mount Etna, Isola Bella and Taormina

We had our first day off, yeeey!
Daria took us all up to Etna, the largest active volcano in Europe, currently 3,329 m tall. It is practically continuously active, but hasn’t destroyed any of the many surrounding villages since the 30s.

How to Get in the Sea for Free in Catania and a Foot Update

I haven’t actually paid to go in the sea.

I wont.

But the other volunteers have which os why I have named this post so.

Mediterranean Sea at Last with a Not So Nice Ending

So, this was written on July the 27th:
Yesterday we finally had the opportunity to go to the beach! I say ‘finally’ even though it was only our second full day because I had envisioned getting off the plane and jumping straight in the sea. I should have done more research than “Catania is a city by the sea, excellent!” Turns out its mostly a port, no Barcelona style beach on my door step after all. So much for swimming everyday before brealfast! Its not all bad though, there are ways of getting on the sea from here, only they all involve getting public transport from what I’ve heard.

Anyway, lets get back to the good news!

Life in Oostende

In Belgium dutch and french are spoken, so there tends to be a mixture of both scattered around. We are in the dutch half but french still filters in, so Oostende is also spelt with one ‘o’ but its such a novelty starting a word with two I much prefer it!

On our very first day we had a good walk around the seaside city but I never got around to writing about it. Too busy reading in my spare time. I finished The Great Gatsby and devoured Cross by James Patterson shortly after, which I found here, now I have discovered youtube is full of audiobooks which makes painting much more fun but has also seeped into spare time. Leaving very little for actual writing.

So, Oostende hey? Well, David is very pleased to be back in civilisation. He can pop out the door for biscuits again! I do miss the contact with nature but its lovely being by the sea again, even if its cold, windy and one can’t stay out for long!

The city was badly damaged by the war and as a result there aren’t many old buildings left but we picked up a map for a trail of the nicest ones. It made a nice walk taking us around quite a bit of the centre and its surrounding area, giving us a sense of our where abouts.

Its a funny place, full of hotels and other big buildings and blocks of flats, with beautiful traditional buildings squeezed in between. Sometimes you just catch one unexpectadly…

The bright red thing is part of a huge installation by a Belgian artist.

But there are other streets that are almost intact which are like wandering into a new town.

I find them so elegant, so tall and thin with their elaborate roofs and balconies. I’ve done a couple of line drawings of them and hope to get some more done. Maybe I’ll even post them on here ;)

Sometimes its hard to tell when one ends and another begins. Can a house really be that thin?!

They also seem to get away with any colour!

Its refreshing being by the sea again, the other day we caught some good weather and made the most of it by sunbathing.
In our coats.

Another high light of our walks through Oostende has to be pressing our faces agains every patisserie we come across. And there are many. The Belgians like their sweets!
In fact they have sweet stuff for breakfast. And I’m not talking about gacky cerials. More along the lines of freshly baked bread and a wide selection of spreads. At home we have white chocolate spread, nutella, dark chocolate and orange “fondant” spread, chocolate sprinkles for toast and a variety of jams. As if thats not special already, on Sunday we have a selection of pastries too :)
Back to the cakes though…

So far we have only tried one, a sort of extra custardy rice pudding-y tart, or flan? It was good, but the pastry is a bit different, lighter and less buttery, a little sickly – it didn’t have the crisp crumbliness of british pastry. But the filling was yummy!
The selection of bread is crazy too, I never know which to choose!

Speaking of shopping, yesterday I volunteered to go shopping for lunch and dinner seeing as I was cooking. David and I had been into the supermarkets a couple of times and it seemed pretty straight forward, after the Czech Republic everything seems much easier!
And it was. I didn’t buy liquid yoghurt instead of milk for example.
But it must have taken me about 40mins and I only had a basket! Sure I got distracted here and there. Like in the waffle isle!! Can there even be that much difference between them?! According to Jorick they are all gross so we haven’t attempted them when there are fresh ones being made everywhere outside.

Or in the spread section where we discovered they have made a spread out of lotus speculoo biscuits, imagine if there was a digestive biscuit spread? Apparently this came about because so many people would dip the biscuit in coffee and then spread it on their bread or make sandwiches out of them! The guy who came up with the idea claimed he was tired of the biscuits falling out of the sandwhich.
Now there are chocolate versions (of course) and crunchy and extra crunchy (maybe some people miss the biscuits falling out?) among others.
As for the lotus speculoo, it doesn’t stop there, you can get big ones and mini ones, you can get ice cream and cake! Did I mention they are my favourite biscuits?! I can’t wait to try the icecream!!

I was also baffled by the amount of different creams which I had no idea how to distinguish, except from the cooking ones (there was a pot on the carton) and the normal ones (strawberries). What were all the others?! And they were so expensive too! I went for a strawberry carton, even through it was for curry, and it seemed just fine :)

That night, last night, influenced by the wonderful parcel I got from mum and my brother which included curry spices, I made a feast of dahl, butter chicken, pea and cauliflower curry, naan and rice. Mmm-mm! I had been craving curry for so long!

And the family? Well, we are very much settled in now. The dad has come back from Thailand and we have met the eldest sister too, they are both the most down to earth and seem to pull the family together in easy conversations over dinner and lots of laughs!
She is studying geography and is in her last year of her degree. She has this enthusiasm and love for life which you can’t help joining in with. I can converse quite easily with her and we cooked together for her friends who were very friendly too. The rest of the family went out except Eurick and we all had a nice time eating and chatting away. Oh and she likes the Cat Empire!

Overall I feel much more part of day to day life and at ease with the family which is what is most important to me. Its kind of the point of Workaway.
We have a big gallery open event this weekend so for the next few days there will be lots of cleaning and art moving I should think…