Syracuse

Before making our way to catch up with Hairy and Ben for our train trip to Syracuse, we decided to check out Catania’s beach. The walk towards the beach gave us a pretty brutal introduction to the less appealing side of Catania. There was a very obvious divide between the nicer parts of the city and the dodgier areas. Even along the main streets, there was rubbish scattered around, but as we got closer to the beach, the amount of garbage littering the roads became genuinely shocking. I think this has been a recurring theme throughout our travels. A lot of the places we’ve visited have both really nice areas and some seriously dirty ones. It’s often just a matter of figuring out where those boundaries are and avoiding them.

Unfortunately, we hadn’t figured that out yet.

The walk towards the beach definitely lowered my expectations. Jack was completely put off by it, while I was slightly less surprised having already been warned about the amount of rubbish you can encounter in parts of Italy and Europe. By the time we were getting close to the beach, we were expecting it to be a complete mess. Then, to put the cherry on top, a small fire had broken out and was blocking the path towards the beach. At that point, whatever motivation we had left to actually see the beach disappeared. We decided to head towards the train station instead and make our way to Syracuse. Even that turned into an adventure, though. Roadworks meant we had to run across highways, jump on buses and generally fuck around trying to get ourselves moving in the right direction. Eventually, we made it to the station - just in time to see the train arrive.

After the interesting start to the day, we finally caught up with Hairy and Ben and made our way to Syracuse. We only really got to experience the old town, but it was incredible. It would have been interesting to see how the rest of the city compared, but there were so many cool places within the old town alone that we decided there was little point venturing further out.

The town immediately changed the mood from our morning. As we entered, we were greeted by ancient ruins, followed by tiny streets lined with enormous cream-coloured buildings. Every few metres seemed to reveal another little restaurant, café or historical building tucked away between the streets.

The food was also fucking incredible. I finally got to try my first proper arancini ball, and “unbelievable” is probably the best way I can describe it. I haven’t found one that comes close since. We wandered through the old town towards the coast before eventually finding a secluded little cove. It was still reasonably busy, but compared with the chaos of the city, it was the perfect place to settle in.

We parked ourselves there for a few hours and continued recovering from the night before. Eventually, we started feeling human again and decided it was time for a spritz and some food. We found a little bar overlooking the clear Mediterranean water and decided to stay there for a few drinks before worrying about dinner. The amount of good-looking food around the area made choosing a restaurant surprisingly difficult. There were so many options that we eventually ran out of time to be picky and just sat down somewhere.

By this point, we were already partly pissed, so naturally, we decided to grab a few drinks for the train ride home. When we arrived at the station, there was a single carriage sitting there. It was completely banged up and covered in graffiti, and we joked that there was no way that could possibly be our train. Once we figured out which platform we were supposed to be on, we quickly discovered that it was, in fact, our train. And it was completely fucking packed.

There was nowhere to sit, so we ended up sitting on the floor of a dingy, graffiti-covered carriage for almost an hour. It was certainly an interesting way to finish the day, but eventually we made it back. Not exactly the most glamorous train journey, but after the rest of the day, it somehow felt pretty fitting.Read more