Catania, Sicily, part 2

As we headed north through the city in search of a restroom, I told my sister the story of how I discovered Nossa Familia espresso bar in Portland. The story is that I was in search of a restroom in Northwest Portland and decided to find a coffee house for that purpose. A little googling led me to the highly recommended Nossa Familia, and I walked in with enthusiasm, only to find that it had no tables and no restroom. I ordered a coffee anyway, and it turned out to be the best cup of coffee ever and that's how I found my favorite coffee place.

So, I told this story to Kathryn as we were using Pee.place to find the nearest public restroom. We followed the map on my phone to the Greco Roman Theater where there was supposedly a public w/c, but when we walked in and inquired, the women at the ticket booth seemed a little perplexed by the idea. They asked (in Italian--there's much less English available here than in the other cities we've been to this trip) if we were buying admission. How Kathryn and I looked at each other, and looked at the bit of Roman ruins that we could see from the entrance, and I said, "This might be another favorite coffee shop situation. I think we should do it."

And that's how we spent the next 1 1/2 hours exploring this fascinating, relatively recent archeological excavation. Houses had been built on top of the ruins throughout history, so the excavation was like decluttering on a grand scale, figuring out what was worth keeping and what had to go. Kept: parts of an 18th century house, walls from a 17th century house, Roman theater, Greek base structure, and artifacts found in the excavation of the site.Read more