August 08, 2019 Thursday Siracusa and Catania
Thursday morning after breakfast we walked to another
waterfront, but again no beach. The
ferries were unloading and the trucks just kept coming. Everything not grown on the island must come
in by ferry. Then we went to the station
to take the 11:15 train to Siracusa.
This ride was only 2.5 hours. We
stored our luggage at a bar right outside the station. We had about a 25 minute walk to the Church
of Saint Lucia to see the Caravaggio painting.
Most of the walk was pretty ordinary.
The area near the Cathedral had narrow pedestrian only streets, and they
were pretty touristy. St. Lucia and the
Cathedral are on a large plaza. St.
Lucia is now just a museum, with no admission charge. No photos are allowed, and there are large
signs notifying you of this when you enter.
The Caravaggio painting is big: 13’-4.6” x 9’-10”. There were quite a few people there, but it
wasn’t crowded. As we were looking at
the painting, the attendant announced over the speaker that photos were not
allowed, as a lady took a photo. I later
told him that they should sell photo licenses, as some museums do, he
chuckled. I did buy a postcard of the
painting. Then we went back out to the
plaza to take some more photos. Sue
noticed a sign for the exhibition of a painting by Caravaggio. I thought it was for an exhibition showing
photographs of Caravaggio paintings. The
attendant said no, there was one painting by Caravaggio and two by a student of
Caravaggio’s. I paid the 7€
and went inside. The painting is “The
Crucifixion of St. Andrew” this painting is attributed to Caravaggio. I could waste our time talking about
paintings by Caravaggio, attributed to, copies of, questionable, disputed,
etc., but I won’t. St. Andrew is known
for being crucified on an X shaped cross, and that is not what Caravaggio has
shown.
We had plenty of time before our 17:12 train back to
Catania, so we stopped for a beer on the way back to the station. We then once again walked down to the
waterfront, and again didn’t find a beach.
We got back to the bar, picked up our bags and had a beer. We were going to stay the night in Catania so
we could take the Friday flight at 15:00.
This is the only weekly flight that wasn’t at 7:00 or 23:00. The train ride was supposed to be only an
hour and 12 minutes. The train had to
wait a half hour for another train to pass.
We didn’t get to Catania until after 19:00. When we made our reservation at the B&B we
had told them we wouldn’t get there until late in the afternoon. Our B&B
was on the top floor of a building, 79 steps up. It was actually like a small hotel in an
apartment building. Our guess is that
the owner buys up apartments in the building and then has them refurbished. The
room was small but nice with a new bathroom, air conditioning, and Wi-Fi. There was an open air sitting area under
cover with tables and chairs. There was
a refrigerated cabinet with sodas and beers, using it was on the honor
system. After the long climb up Sue’s
knee was not up for anymore stairs, so I went out to get dinner. We had seen the Istanbul café with a big
take-away counter nearby. I got Sue a
beef kabob and two large pieces of pizza for me and with a couple of beers it
was not a bad way to end the day.
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