It really doesn’t seem that far on the map, but it took nearly five hours on the train to get from Agrigento to Catania, on Sicily’s east coast. Catania, like most of Sicily’s cities was originally a Greek city, going all the way back to the 8th century BC. The first thing I noticed while walking to my hotel, however, was the remains of the 2nd century Roman theatre. Most of it is buried underneath the modern buildings, but this little bit is poking up right in the middle of Piazza Stesicoro. It wasn’t mentioned in any of my research so I wasn’t even expecting it.

The theatre that I was expecting was the older Greek theatre and Odeon. It sits right in the middle of a neighborhood in the historic district.

They’ve done some work on it, but even without that the theatre seems really well preserved. The small Odeon right next to it is a bit more worse for wear, but still cool to see.

Catania has it’s share of graffiti as well. Here’s some positive Sicilian artwork I found that’s worthy of a picture.

The main reason I came to Catania is to see the very very active volcano, Mt Etna. We’ll get to that in a bit, but first I visited Catania’s 13th century castle, Castello Ursino. It appears to sit in an odd spot right in the middle of town. That’s because it was originally built to defend the city on a prominent seaside cliff, but in 1669, a monumental eruption from Mt Etna filled in the coastline to the south, land locking the castle.

Today Castello Ursino houses the Civic Museum and provides some pretty views of naughty Mt Etna.

Walking around an historic Italian city is never complete without a look at the cathedral. Cattedrale di Sant’Agata really isn’t super impressive compared to some others I’ve seen, but it makes a pretty center to the pedestrianized historic center of Catania. And it has a fountain featuring a Roman era elephant statue carved out of lava.

Cattedrale di Sant’Agata also let’s you climb up to the roof for some different views of Mt Etna and part of the city. Mt Etna sort of looms over everything here if you haven’t picked up on that yet.

As I mentioned earlier, Mt Etna was my main reason for coming here, specifically, to hike it. They don’t let you go all the way to the top because it is an active volcano and therefore, dangerous. They do let you go quite far though. The plan was, take a bus from Catania to the base, ride the cable car part way up, then hike roughly a mile and a half to the highest point that they allow. Sounds fun right? Instead, the cable car wasn’t operating because it was too windy, so I rode up in this monster machine in the pic below.

After that I started hiking in the slushy snow. It was cold and it was windy. I was prepared for the cold, but not that wind. The higher up I went, the more intense the wind got, to the point where I couldn’t even stand up, let alone walk.

Along with the intense wind came the blowing ice hitting me like shotgun blasts. It was so painful! I was simultaneously laughing and screaming, “Owww!!!” And absolutely nowhere to take cover. I made it about three quarters of the way, then took a quick selfie and surrendered. Mt Etna one, Matty zero.

After attempting and failing to conquer Mt Etna, I took a really pleasant day trip north to Taormina.

Beautiful cliffside Taormina has been around a long time, but it’s heyday was in the 9th century when it was the Byzantine capital. Today it’s just a peaceful seaside town with a very dramatically perched, 3rd century BC Greek theatre.

Taormina turned out to be a really cool getaway. There’s amazing views out over the sea, even from the main square, Piazza IX Aprile, the Greek Theatre, a little Odeon tucked tightly in between a bunch of buildings, good food, and… gelato! Yum!

My tour through Sicily has been kind of fast paced, but now it’s time to say goodbye to this unique island. Tomorrow I get to spend an entire day on a bus. Yay! I’m only about half way through this Italian adventure, though, so there’s lots more to look forward to…