Catania: I can take to dreaming like a fish in the sea

I've finally arrived in Bologna, my monthlong home as I try to get all my prep work for the coming year of teaching (and directing, and who knows what-all else) done ... so maybe it's time this blog at least caught up to what country I'm in, if not my actual current geography. To that end, after the jump... Catania! Sicily! Trying to remember things that happened three weeks ago in an era of brain mush and heat stroke!

So:  having written previously about my arrival in Catania, let's talk a little more about this spot! It's a fairly common arrival point in Sicily, just down the coast from Taormina and up the coast from Siracusa. It has a bit of a reputation as a place where you arrive to the airport and either rent a car or hop a bus to Taormina or Siracusa and mostly avoid Catania itself. That's kinda dumb, in my opinion, as it's a pretty cool (smallish) city! Full disclosure: I didn't get to Taormina (I tend to not be into places where "resort" keeps popping up in descriptions) and, well, I'll get to Siracusa.

Do we think it's "cool" that depending on the time of day, weather, and angle, you can see a volcano from the city? We don't think it's un-cool! Do we?!? DO WE!??!?

 

Anyhow: Catania has, for the most part, a pretty lovely historic core, with a long pedestrianized main drag and huge central square, and a fish market that has, I'm told, become the center of its touristic industry. "People come here to visit Etna, and to visit the fish market," and honestly, while I'm a bit spoiled by having visited some fish markets in Japan, it's a really good one! That's largely down to the fact that a whole section of it is set aside for fishermen, as opposed to fishmongers, meaning you have dudes setting up shop with whatever catch they brought in that day, and then in another part of the market, you have fishmongers offering a more curated selection with more sleek presentation. That market is surrounded by some stalls offering fruits and vegetables, pistachios from Etna, prepared foods, and a host of odds and ends. There's a much less for-the-gram market deeper into the city, which I found rather perfect for produce, but the seafood (and general flair) of the main market is pretty undeniable.

Apologies to anybody who hates photos of tuna or Italian men photographed from above! MARKETS ARE COMPLICATED PLACES

 

It's also set up by an underpass that I walked through every day to get to and from my guesthouse, which is maybe the one reason I have a bit of a "hmm, Catania was nice, but..." qualm. If you do visit here, I may recommend not picking lodgings where you are always walking through an area where fish were being sold in the sun all morning, although I did appreciate the daily reminder that I had not lost my sense of smell.

There's a university in town, and I've come to learn that I really love that as an ingredient in smaller cities in Europe. It means there's generally some energy and creativity, usually some interesting street art or graffiti, and lots of nightlife. I am not A Clubber (no, really!) but aperitivo hours are infinitely more charming, fun, and economical when you have a lot of intense grad students and undergrads all laughing and being extravagant with each other. I'll fondly remember a night spent drinking dry vermouth and snacking at the corner of a superb little spot named, appropriately, Vermut.

Above photo, below: artist's depiction of the author drinking vermouth and watching people have Fun

 

Anyhow - three days here was lovely, with a good market tour to get oriented to the city and re-acclimated to the nuances of Italian market shopping, lots of wandering, and a bit of work-style productivity. I was starting to wonder whether I should have given Siracusa more time, but having spent one day there (for Republic Day, a massive national holiday, when it was mystifyingly impossible to find lodgings basically anywhere) I feel good about Catania. 

Not to write off Siracusa entirely, I should say that it was great to catch a bit of theatre - they perform Greek tragedies in the ancient Greek theatre up in the archaeological sites, and while the production was sort of numbingly tryhard and over-produced, the setting was undeniable and it was: cool to watch Agamemnon as the sun sank below the horizon! It's also extremely picturesque (at least in Ortigia, the historic old city/island quarter) and any place with stalls where you can say "Un Selz, per favore" and get a fizzy lemon drink with salt to replenish you from the day's heat is not a "garbage dump," no matter what your friends tell you.

Siracusa does have impressive archaeological sites, but on the heels of Athens I wasn't particularly hankering for that; it does have gorgeous seaside elegance and polish, which I liked fine after three days of rotten-fish-stink walks home; but it also feels, or felt to me at least, a little closer to the Kotor (Montenegro)s of the world, there to serve visitors rather than the people who live there. Yeah, that's probably Ortigia rather than Siracusa's mainland modern city, but you sort of have to pick a lane, as opposed to Catania, where you get that glorious sense of living in history and modernity all at once. As somebody who likes travel as a way of adopting new ways of being and experimenting with cultural habits, I'm always going to be drawn toward the messier and more complicated bits rather than the polished spots that want to meet me where I'm at. Make me (slightly) uncomfortable (and then squeeze me and tell me I'm pretty), cities of the world! (This advice holds for other contexts as well!! INQUIRE WITHIN!!!)

OK but to be fair there is some very cute and great corners of Siracusa also. No shade to Siracusa!

If I seem a little muted about Catania, that's because when I got to Palermo I fell head-over-heels in love, but that is a story for later this or next week, because FIRST we have to go to the HILLS, where it was a Hundred DEGREES (fahrenheit) and I didn't want to DIE because it was still NICE! Up next: PAT TAKES A BUS INSTEAD OF THE GLORIOUS TRAIN. HE SURVIVES, BUT WILL HE EVER BE INNOCENT AGAIN.

"Pat, if you had to describe Catania in one word and image, what would that word and image be?"