December 1, 2016 - From Catatonic to Catania

The catatonic part was yesterday. The water was so rough that is was hard to do anything but lie there. The wind was Force 8 or 9. I don't know what that means, but it sounds pretty bad. The swells were 12 to 16 feet.   Needless to say, our planned stop in Katakolon was canceled. It was not safe to get in, and if we did get in, we would not be able to travel at the fast speed that would be necessary to reach Sicily on schedule. So we skipped Katakolon and steamed westward at 11 or 12 knots through the bounding main. The ship was really rolling, but fortunately it was not pitching too much. It was cold, too. Some people said they saw snow. Ken and others saw a waterspout.  We went to the show, which was another good show by the singer, Phillip Browne. Ken left abruptly during the show. It just suddenly hit him. He skipped dinner. I went to dinner and had a strawberry smoothie, a roll, and a scoop of ice cream. The dining room was much emptier than normal. After two nights and one day of rough water, the captain promises smooth sailing the rest of the way to Rome. Let's hope so. Waking up this morning to calm water was nice. We soon arrived at Catania, overlooked by a snow-capped Mt. Etna, thanks to yesterday's bad weather. We have already been to Mt. Etna and Taormina, so we went with a half-day tour of Catania. This is not a major tourist destination, so there really isn't that much to see here. We boarded our bus and met our guide, Giovanna. While we drove to the Cathedral area she filled us in on Sicily's history. By now it was starting to sound familiar. Pre-historic Sikels, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Vandals, Visigoths, Swabian (Germans), Saracens, Aragonese (Spaniards), Italians, and a few others. Like everywhere else in this region, Catania was destroyed by a major earthquake - in this case, it was in 1693. It was also destroyed many other times by natural disasters, pirates, invasions, and Allied bombing in WWII. This tour could have been called the Lava Tour. Giovanna faithfully pointed out everything built from lava and every visible outcropping of lava. Aa. Aa. We drove past a few beautiful marble statues lacking heads - I have no idea why - and arrived at a bus station. We got out and walked to the Cathedral of St. Agatha. One of 6 cathedrals of St. Agatha here. She is their patron saint and about half the women are named Agatha. It was not a particularly impressive cathedral. It had a small bit that was Norman. The rest was destroyed in the Great Earthquake and rebuilt after 1693. It was a busy place. There was another busload from our ship, two or three large groups of school children, an over-amplified childrens' choir being vigorously conducted by a very stereotypical choir leader, some Italian naval officers with swords and sashes and dress suits, some elderly war veterans wearing numerous battle ribbons, a bunch of firemen in full gear with helmets under their arms, some altar boys perhaps, and some women carrying baskets of uncooked food. In the midst of all this commotion Giovanna was trying to explain things to us about St. Agatha and the crown donated by Richard the Lion-hearted and you really couldn't hear or see anything. Only in Italy. We did get to see the tomb of Bellini inside the cathedral. He was a famous Sicilian composer and the inventor of a drink. One hour and fifteen minutes into the tour we arrived at the point where we were supposed to go to the bathroom, and Giovanna was going to see that we went to the bathroom even if the other bus had arrived there 10 seconds before us. We must stick to our schedule. After the 20-minute bathroom break we went outside the bathroom building and stood there while Giovanna enlightened us about the history of the University. It occurs to me that we could have done this part while Bus 1 was using the bathrooms and then gone in to use the bathrooms and still be finished at the same time. We walked back to the Cathedral square and listened to Giovanna answer passenger questions for 5 minutes. Then we were told that we had 30-minutes of free time and should be back in 25-minutes. It was fun walking around through the local market. There was a lot of purple cauliflower, which was very pretty. Giovanna said the color was caused by - can you guess? - lava! We saw several other vegetables which were not familiar to us. We also stopped at a little bakery to try some cookies. For whatever reason, the symbol of Catania is an elephant, and they are all over the town hall area. We went inside to see a fresco which was very hard to see, and even harder to photograph, because it was in a locked and darkened room. It was Julius Caesar visiting Egypt. Very unusual to see a non-religious fresco. The symbol of Sicily is even weirder. It is a creepy Medusa head with three legs. What would Freud say? After milling around at our post free-time rendezvous point for 20 minutes we trooped back to the bus and began the driving portion of our tour. This consisted of being in a traffic jam and looking at more lava. Eventually we got to a point where we could see a Norman castle. See it, not visit it. Guess what it was made out of? Lava! Guess what kind of rock it was built on? Lava! This whole tour felt like a desperate effort to come up with some interesting tour-worthy things in a place that just isn't that special. We asked if we could be dropped off in the town rather than take the bus back to the port. They dropped us off on one of the main streets and we walked back to the tourist information office to get a map and find out where we could get some pizza. The signorina immediately recommended a place called "7+" and marked it on the map for us. It looked like a pretty long walk and I said something and she said no, it was only 5 minutes away, maybe 4. She must have seen my Brooks Ariel shoes and taken me for some kind of a fast runner. SO, 30 minutes later we arrived at the sot marked on the map and there was no restaurant there. We asked at a coffee stand and they directed us to walk one block, turn right, and walk two or three block, but they didn't know if it would be open for lunch. It was open and we had a nice lunch but not outstanding. We had one of their award-winning combinations: fresh tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, "Philadelphia", arugula, ground pistachios, and "speck" (meat).   After dinner we had another chance to see "Do You Wanna Dance?" We love this show, but we were tired so we decided to skip it.