Catania/Trapani (Our seventh and eighth stop on our Taste of Italy tour)

The next morning we took an hour bus ride over to Catania. I wanted Katelyn to experience a street market so we went shopping for a tie. As expected it was busy and crowded and offered some interesting people watching with lots of yelling and interesting smells(some good and some bad). A definite advantage of being in a city that I was familiar with was I knew where to get food. We stopped by a favorite bar and got another delicious arancino as well as a gelato in a brioche(a lightly sweetened bread). Think of a fresh ice cream sandwich. Once again Sicily did not disappoint in the food department and also the food was cheaper. After waiting forever for the city bus and a long trip across the city we made it to our Hotel Sheraton. This hotel was extremely nice. We stayed there because the Stake Conference was being held there. We took a nice swim in the salt water pool that overlooked the sea and then grabbed an amazing pizza and got some groceries.



Sunday morning we got a surprisingly huge buffet breakfast from the hotel. Stake Conference was very exciting for me because it allowed me to see members from 4 branches that I served in. Fratello Pasqualino who is now the Branch President in Gela gave a wonderful talk on not getting discouraged with missionary work and always pushing forward and trusting in the Lord. After conference we found out that we would be able to ride back to Trapani on the bus that they had rented. We were very grateful for this because we had stressed a lot about how we were going to get back to Trapani in time for our flight home. The bus ride home was not a quiet ride like I expected. Someone had a brought a karaoke machine and members took turns singing, very loudly, old Sicilian songs. For some reason I had forgotten how loud Italians can be and how much fun they like to have. Oh did I mention that the A/C was not working either. That made it really fun especially because everyone was constantly complaining about it. Really it was not that bad. Nowhere near as bad of a bus ride as the one we had coming back from Chianti with the Swedish girls. I enjoyed it because it gave me an opportunity to talk with all of the members and to see how the missionary work was going there. Trapani was my last city so I had stronger relationships with these members than some of my other cities.





Sorella Cimino was gracious enough to let us stay at her house that evening when we got into Trapani. She made us a tuna pasta which was excellent. There food is always so good but also simple. The next morning her son picked us up and drove us to the airport which simplified things for us. The Trapani members saved us a ton of hassle and a good chunk of money. We then said goodbye to Italy and headed back to Germany. Our flight back to Germany lasted 2 1/2 hours and was cheaper than taking a 32 hour train ride.