3. Made It

Friday, Oct 11th.  We made it.  We arrived in Catania, Sicily, about 11:30 this morning.  Took a taxi to our B&B.  It's located on one of the main roads downtown and right on the waterfront.  Here is a shot out the window in the dining area.

That's the Ionian Sea which is part of the Mediterranean you're looking at.  After washing our faces and freshening up a bit (at this point we had been up for 26 hours) we took a walk down to the train station to buy our tickets for the train to Milazzo which we will be taking tomorrow.  Here is the train station:

Out in front of the train station there was a large ornate fountain showing Persephone being kidnapped by Hades.

The story goes that Hades, who was king of the underworld, kidnapped and raped Persephone and then married her making her queen of the underworld.  Supposedly Persephone was living in Sicily at the time. Persephone was the daughter of Demeter who was goddess of nature and instead of doing her job she went in search of Persephone.  Things got bad and so Zeus made Hades return Persephone to her mother.  However, Persephone had eaten some food while in the underworld and so she has to return to Hades every year.  While she is gone Demeter mourns and that's why there is a winter.  Sicily is sometimes referred to as Persephone's Island.

We then walked to the central area in Catania, the Piazza Duomo.  Here is located the main church in Catania called the Duomo  which is the Italian word for cathedral, and here it is.

Also in the Piazza Duomo is a fountain "u Liotru" or "Fontana dell'Elefante" which has become the symbol of Catania.  It shows an elephant carrying an obelisk on its back.  This dates from 1736.  Supposedly, there was a nobleman named Heliodourus in Catania that wanted to become the bishop and when he couldn't, he became a sorcerer instead and carved the elephant and would then ride it on his fantastic journeys.  Another version of the story gives him the ability to turn himself into an elephant.  The Sicilian name u Liotru is a phonetic change of Heliodorus, supposedly.

We had an early dinner at a Cafe Duomo in the Piazza.  Pat, Chris and Neal had a pizza, I had spaghetti with clams.  The pizza wasn't Sicilian style, it was a regular thickness crust.

Tomorrow morning we leave for Lipari.