Farmland of Ganzirri, Italy

Our next stop in Sicily was Ganzirri, for our workaway. We spend 8 days working on a Donkey farm on the hill top overlooking Messina. It was beautiful and really cool. Our host took us into town with her and showed us around the town to the highlights. Messina was pretty much destroyed in an earthquake in the early 1900s so there isn't a ton of historic sights there, but the ones that are are very cool. So when they rebuilt the town after the earthquake they built on top of the ruins so the few buildings that still stood are like 20 feet lower than the streets. Apparently it is pretty common when they are digging for construction that they will run across some roman or Greek ruins and have to stop construction and bring in historians to rifle through the area because they lost those things in the earthquake. 

While we were out with our host she took us to the local cheese markets and they let us taste all the cheeses, it was so cool. I wish I could have taken it all home with me! She also took us to have Canolli, because when you are in Sicily that is a total must. We also got to try another Sicilian treat of Gelato con Brioche, so good I had pistachio. The gelato comes in a cup with cream and chopped nuts on top then you make it into a sandwich or just dip the bread. Very sweet but it will rock your world. 

Our host was everything that I would expect from an Italian host, Nadia was awesome. She cooked spectacular food gave great tips on how to pick the best pastas, we made homemade pasta and I was lucky enough to get a few classical Sicilian recipes from her. Since they live on a farm as well everything is so fresh which made it all that more amazing. They had a lot of animals running all over there were Chickens, Ducks, Peacocks and Guine Foul that they collected eggs from everyday then there were several Cats, a Dog, Donkeys and Horses. It was a really cool place to see and very cool to see how self sufficient they are. They are also on the very top of the mountain so it was a spectacular view of everything. Definitely a beautiful place to see, and great experiences to have had. 

There is never enough time in Napoli

Naples is a place that I have to admit that I drastically underestimated. It is my favorite place that we have been thus far. Originally we only planned a several hour layover in Naples on our way to Rome, this would have been a huge mistake if we didn't change this. Our hosts near Rome didn't respond to us when we emailed to confirm our stay with them a few days in advance. So, we decided to just book hostels and spend a couple extra days in various places in Italy one of those being Naples and oh my am I glad that we did, It was awesome. 

We stayed on a hostel called Giovanni's Home and that's exactly what is was. As soon as we got there Giovanni gave us the best areas and highlights that we should see in the city, he warned us of the areas to stay away from and gave us an idea of how much it would cost for the things that we wanted to see and of course he told us where THE best pizza place would be in Naples. The building of the hostel was on the third floor with an awesome terrace and was build before Columbus discovered America. The cool thing about Naples is the historic sights to see were actually built within so a lot of the highlights have people living in apartments in the same building. Giovanni drew us a map with the route we should take to hit the important sights so that's what we did the first day. Naples being in Italy one of the main sights to see is the Catholic Churches and they did not disappoint, each one had the most extravagant details in everything aspect you could spend hours in one room, unfortunately time did not permit such things for us. There is a Christmas market in Naples that is open all year round, so of course I went there to check it out and get my own ornament to take home for my tree next year. We got to check out the monastery and the museum that was there, and finally my personal favorite the aqueduct. 

Everywhere you turn in Naples there are amazing and beautiful things that are full of stories and history. The first morning that we were there we went into a church and ended up taking a tour of it. It is where the dead were kept in the 14th century up to the 18th. One question that this tour answered for me was "what's with all the skills in Naples?" Well in Naples when people would have a dream that had a "lost spirit" in it they would go to this church and adopt a skull and build it a little nook in the wall with tiles from there house and they would bring the skulls gifts and offering. Touching the top of the skull because they believed that the soul of a person is connected to the skull. This practice went on for serval centuries in Naples till the catholic church band it. Learning all the local history was very cool, and most of the tickets that you would buy included a tour guide, which only made it better. The aqueduct that we toured had so much history in it as well. It was originally build to bring fresh water into Napoli, then it was used for a bomb shelter during WWII. Now however it is used for tours and research. They currently grow plants in here, because of the humidity in the ducts they don't have to water them at all they only provide a synthetic light. As part of our aqueduct tour we got to see some of the history that was uncovered. There was a roman theater that was built on top of serval centuries ago. In the 80s parts of it were uncovered in a woman's wine cellar, it was actually the dressing room for the actors. We were in a group of only 3 so we got to go down there, that's not typically part of the tour so it was cool to see. 

Finally the pizza. This by its self is worth of its own blog post but I will resist the earge. Naples is the home of pizza and everywhere you go in Italy will tell you that the best pizza that you will ever have is in Naples. One host said that you can take the same man and have him make pizza in Napoli and in Venice and it will be better in Napoli, this is true. Given Napoli is the home of Pizza so they have had more time to prefect it. It was amazing, we ate it every night while we were there. Honestly writing this blog about it is already making my mouth water. We went out with a larger group the second night so we got to try serval types of pizza that were offerd. It was ridiculously good. A blog will never do it justice, just go to Napoli and try it yourself. 

Naples honestly was way more than we expected I absolutely loved it, there is so much  to see and do that I am going to break it up into 2 different blog posts so that they are not 10 pages of pictures alone. 

Ciao!

16 hours in Catania, Italy

Ciao all! 

Well our stop after Athens was Catania, Italy. We only spent one night there on our way to our workaway in Northern Sicily. 

One of the major sites I have been using to plan this trip is rome2rio.com while it is awesome sometimes it can be a little off. We flew out of Athens in the morning and had a 9 hour layover in Rome (which we took full advantage of) but this did mean that we made it to Catania very late, so when we got there and realized that the bus that we take from the airport to the stop near the hostel had changed numbers it was a little confusing after such a long day. Luckily I know much more italic than Greek and was able to communicate where it was we were trying to get to and we figured it out with relative ease. I spoke in Spanish not Italian to figure it all out but Sicilian Italian is the closest that you can get to Spanish so it worked out well and made for a much easier transition than I expected. 

Catania is such a beautiful place, every corner you take there is history on it. We actually accidentally wound up in a cemetery there but it was beautiful. All the headstones are so extravagant and beautiful it was interesting to see the difference between that and places in the U.S. We got up early enough to go the the fish market and wounded around. I love simply watching the differences in they way people treat food in various places, it's one of those wow Americans are tight asses about there food, kind of experiences. One thing that is a little less pleasant is once they close the fish market they dump the water on the streets and so all you smell is fish through out most of Catania, not in like a "I smell the sea" way but like a bad fish way. 

I wish we would have gotten there before 1 AM because the night life there was so lively, but since we only stayed one night and got in very late that one night we unfortunately missed out on that. Catania was a beautiful place to simply wonder around, we had cappuccino in the square and watched kids eating gelato on the elephant statue in the center of the square, saw the pope being broadcasted to the square on the big screen, and listened to the church bells ring all around the city. It was pretty magnificent but very brief, less than 24 hours after our arrival we were on a train headed north to Messina for our next adventure. 

The beautiful Athina, 2015

While you are in Greece how could you miss the chance to go to Athens? So that's what we did. After our stay in Skiathos we travelled a little further south to the capital and spent a couple of nights there. We unfortunately only made it to see Arcopolis as far as major sights go, the weather the the second day didn't permit much sightseeing. Bad weather is bound to happen when you are gone as long as we are, so the rest of the sights will just have to wait until I get the chance to go back to Athens. 

One thing that was a little disappointing about Skiathos was since we were the ones cooking the food we didn't get to try very much Greek food, I did my best to make up for this in Athens. Every time I would go into a restaurant I tell my waiter that I am a chef in the U.S. And  ask if they had suggestions of food that before I leave Greece I must have, they always had suggestions for me which was awesome. Of course some of the classics were on my must try list like baklava, Gryros and saganaki. All of which lived up to all of my expectations and then some especially the baklava. When it comes to food and drinks in new places I have the same philosophy, try them all. So I would pretty much just let waiters choose what I ate and drank which is pretty cool. On the last night in Athens I asked the server if there was any Greek drink that I should try and he sent the man in front of the restaurant to his scooter. Her came back in with a water bottle full of a Greek liquor, before anyone says anything yes I know I shouldn't take things from strangers but he was drinking it with us so I figured it would be safe, and our hostel was next door just incase. Things like this happened p a lot while I was in Greece though. People kept thinking I was Greek (again for some totally unknown reason) but they liked me I guess because we got a lot of free food and drinks in the 2 days we were there. 

One thing that you have to realize when you are in Greece is always look around you, if you don't you could miss something awesome. Every Time we would turn around we would see something ancient and ask each other was that there when we walked by before? Every corner has history on it and every place it a totally new experience. I wish we had more time there but there is only so much time we have for each place. 

This is not my last post on Greece but it is for a month. We are going back in March to meet Andras Dad and Sister in Santorini so there will only be more amazing Greece stories to come!