Post for 23 June 12-13

I keep forgetting to mention fun techy bit. If you’d like to see my current location and recent days, it’s at http://share.garmin.com/cyclewriter . Be sure to click the “View All Tracks” button and zoom out to see all of Italy.

Back to June 12 and 13, I returned to Catania on June 12. It’s kind of a gritty city, but since it’s the first place I got to know in Sicily, it felt like seeing a slightly familiar friend, with a lot of personality. I wanted to relax with this “friend” for a while, but my priority was getting train tickets to Salerno, a town a bit south of the Amalfi Coast.

This was another case where taking a train was better than cycling because the Amalfi Coast is supposed to be amazing, and the space between there and Catania is less so. When I talked to a clerk at the train station, in Catania, she gave me a few options when I could leave. One of them would have allowed me to rush back to my AirBnB, pack, get my bike, and rush back to the train station to catch the train. I didn’t feel like rushing, so I bought a ticket for the next day. That also gave me a relaxed day to roam around Catania. Here are pictures from that day, many pictures have captions.

On June 13, taking the train had a fun surprise, which starts with some geography. As you might remember, Sicily is an island off Italy. Italy is in the shape of a boot, and Catania is an island about a dozen miles off the toe of the boot. I wasn’t sure how the train would cross the water. The answer surprised me. The train rolled onto a ferry, and the ferry took the train and passengers across. The train only had 3 or 4 cars, but still, it’s pretty wild being on a train that rolls onto a boat.