Having enjoyed Palermo, we decided to continue our journey to the southwest leveraging Catania as our hub. We grabbed a pastry & coffee and hopped on a super comfy bus from Palermo with two goals: hiking Mt Etna & eating our way around Syracuse. 

We massively underestimated the demand for public transit to Mt Etna and were not even close to securing a spot on the bus. We quickly pivoted and spent our first day in Syracuse, a city that was once bigger than Athens. We had an amazing breakfast, indulged in a street market oyster & wine pairing, saw all the historic sites, and ended with a glass of wine and the most insanely large portion sizes for lunch. Of the starter, 2-person charcuterie board, and two sandwiches we ordered for three people, we finished 80% of the first two and a quarter of the sandwiches. Over our last glass of wine before the train, we met an Australian woman who was very curious as to why a sudden surge of American tourists. We all decided it must be somewhat tied to White Lotus, even though we still haven't seen the new season. 

The next morning we were more diligent and arrived very early for the bus to Mt Etna. It was the perfect type of hike for Kelsey. The bus stopped midway through the 3-hour drive for a bathroom & coffee shop and arrived at a cafe at the base of the trail. We had our daily pastries & coffees and then headed up quite literally a very steep hike. At the top, we enjoyed our conveniently leftover sandwiches from the day prior with another coffee and then split for our descent. Kyle & Kevin hiked back down while Kelsey caught the gondola and then enjoyed a glass of wine at another base cafe. We passed the couple of hours until the bus returned hanging out in the cafe.

During our two nights in Catania, we enjoyed this underrated city even more than Palermo. It's a fabulous city to wander with interesting architecture all around & the city was alive as we caught it on a weekend.