SOUTH TO SICILY AND BEYOND - I’m getting really long winded again and If I don’t speed up my posts, I will be home long before I get done with the posting. So, I’m going to make another attempt to speed up my writing. After a good night’s sleep, we continued down through Italy heading to Villa San Giovanni. That is the departure point for the Ferry taking us to Messina, Italy on the island of Sicily. There is no physical connection from mainland Italy to Sicily, there are only ferries. The countryside leading down through Southern Italy is mountains mixed with valleys, so there are lots of tunnel/bridge combinations where there is a tunnel, then you exit the tunnel onto a high elevation bridge, which leads to you the next tunnel. Italian drivers are pretty aggressive, but even more so the farther south you get. I must say, I am a much better driver of a manual transmission this year and have no problem matching their aggressiveness. The town of Villa San Giovanni is a little bit in disrepair, and the ferry terminal would never pass any kind of inspection in the US… but it works. The couple of ferry companies that operate from there to Sicily transport a lot of traffic, and they do it efficiently. It’s 35 euro each way for a 20 minute trip, which is a bit steep in my book, but they have a bit of a monopoly. The weather got better and better as we got south and by the time we reached Sicily it was 75-80 degrees. The ferry crossing was good… now if you are looking for a nice, freshly painted ship with pristine bathrooms, this isn’t your boat. But, we stood out on the deck in the beautiful weather, soaked up the sun and took in the beautiful landscape on both sides. I had no idea of what to expect in Sicily, but what I found was very aggressive drivers and poorly marked streets. We had our GPS, which had shaken my trust after the mountain incident… but it took us right through Messina and onto the roadway leading to Catania. It is an arid, but picturesque landscape there. It is very mountainous as we counted over 30 tunnels before we got to Catania. Mount Etna, an active volcano, is the largest land feature of Sicily and it is a majestic sight. The next tournament was in Catania and we were headed to our hotel first, then to the bowling center. Catania is a very old town that sprawls out over hills and down to the Mediterranean. It has modern buildings, but much of the hills are old neighborhoods with steep, narrow, winding streets. We had a basic hotel that was up in the hills about 5 miles from the bowling center. That sounds close with a car, but it was anything but. Our navigation didn’t seem to know which streets were closed off and which were one way, so the first day or two was interesting. The bowling center was right across the street from the water very close to the historic center of the town. The people that ran the tournament did an excellent job. I learned that Italians are very avid bowling fans. Ronnie Russell and Brian Valenta were there representing Brunswick. On top of that, there was a surprise appearance by Amletto Monticelli. I knew Brian from several years ago when his team won Junior World Team Challenge. He was in both Norway and Catania and it was fun to hang out with him and get to know him better. He is a really nice guy and dedicated to being a competitor in this sport. Tanner didn’t do as well as he would have liked to, but did make the cut to the finals. He missed a few spares and had a few carry issues and in the end had a couple of off games that cost him. The last couple of days we were there, we were able to explore the historic parts of the city. There is a very nice cathedral there and several other centuries old churches. When the tournament was over everyone was invited to a great place for food and wine. It was a wine bar owned by the tournament organizer’s cousin. Amazing food and we enjoyed it with our friends from the Netherlands, Lisann Breeshoten and Jeroen Van Geel. We will see them again in Florence in a couple of weeks. Overall, our time in Catania was very nice. The weather was amazing, the food was good (including gelato), the people were very nice… really couldn’t ask for more. From Catania, we had 2 weeks of time before we needed to be in Florence, so we had lots of options as to where we could go. I decided we didn’t want to leave the warmer weather, so we headed East, taking the ferry back to the mainland of Italy and driving to a city on the eastern coast of Italy called Brandsini. I booked us on an overnight ferry from there to Patra, Greece. The ferry took off at 10pm and arrived at 1:30pm the following day. It saved A LOT of driving and border crossings (more on border crossings in a future post). This ship was not a luxury liner. The customers were predominantly Greek and Italian truck drivers. They had the cars board from the back of the boat and drive up a long, steep ramp so narrow I had to fold the car mirrors in so I wouldn’t lose them. When we came out on top of the ramp we were on an outdoor deck and we had to back our car into a tiny slot with other cars and vans jammed in. Many people were sleeping in their cars. I decided to spring for a stateroom. Again, not luxurious, but it was clean and the beds were comfortable. The water on the Adriatic Sea was almost glassy. As we left the port at Brandisi, a nearly full moon was high in the sky with lots of stars. Standing on the upper deck of that ship as we left sight of shore was pretty cool. We settled in for the night and had a very smooth crossing. At 3am the boat docked at another port and about 90% of the people got off. When we got up in the morning, there were only about 30 people left on the boat. We were making our way through the Peloponnese islands as we approached Patra. Patra is another ancient city, but now is mostly concrete apartments built sometime in the previous 30 or so years and somewhat in disrepair. We got off the ferry and went through customs without a hitch… gotta love the EU with no border checks for full member states. It was about a 2 hour drive from Patra to Athens. We passed through Carinth and noticed a huge, long, deep, straight canal as drove over it. More on that later. Our GPS worked flawlessly and took us right to our hotel in the middle of a city with 5 million residents. It is a sprawling city covering the hills for as far as you can see. We barely got a glimpse of the Acropolis as we came into the city. Our hotel was nice, but the A/C was terrible and if you left the window open we would get mosquitoes. The next segment will be about Greece and our next destination. I will give you a clue to our next destination… It rhymes with Albuquerque.
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 22:18:08 +0000