Arivaderci, Sicily!

Waiting for the ferry back to Naples. This has been such a great trip, except for the sick kitten. I threw some cat food down at the cats in the Roman ruins here in Catania, but I feel so bad about the kitten. Yoko and I went back to the restaurant last night to see how she was, but the guy who'd helped us wasn't there, and I think the guy who was there thought I was a bit crazy, as I kept meowing, hoping he'd understand. He finally came with us outside, and we thought it was to go find the kitten, but then it seemed he just wanted us out of the restaurant. He kept saying, "Restaurante!" And then I'd meow and pretend I was sick and point over to the alley. And then he'd yell, "Restaurante!"  And I'd meow again.

But apart from that, everyone here in Sicily has been wonderful and the bus driver even gave me a free ride today (not like in Agrigento, which was something else entirely).

And, I highly recommend the Liberty Hotel in Catania!

At a cafe overlooking the sea in Sorrento

Hmmm.  Where's the waiter?  I wonder if he thought I just wanted to sit here and enjoy the breeze?

Went up to the little glass-walled room/hut (hut does not give the right impression) where the waiters were congregating.  The lead waiter snapped to attention, "What can I do for you?"  And then he offered me a seat on the forbidden balcony -- the first waiter had said only hotel guests could sit there.  But, I know my place and went back to it.  I asked for a glass of wine, and as one of his sub-waiters went off to fetch it,  I specified, "Red."  He nodded and smiled, as in 'of course'.

He set it down: "Chianti."  And boy, it's delicious!   I usually don't like chianti, but maybe it's because I only ever drank it in places like the Cheesecake Factory and it had lots of fruit and stuff in it.

Oh yeah, so earlier today I sat down at an outdoor cafe (nowhere near the same category as this place) on the crowded little street near our hotel and ordered a latte macchiato (very careful to add the last word, after my glass of warm milk at the Hilton) -- when I added on the macchiato, I looked around to see if any Americans were around to witness my worldliness.   There are Americans all over here, but I rather like it, as they've regained their exotic status for me.

Except the one lady a few tables down, who is going on about how she's been on antibiotics since she was 25.

"Why?"  her friend asked in a rapturous sort of whisper.

"Acne."

"Acne?"

I didn't hear the rest of it.

Anyway, while waiting for my latte macchiato glass to cool off a bit, I decided the table and chair set-up was too uncomfortable, so yanked my chair a bit.  The table thumped down a couple inches and coffee spilled.  Everyone around me looked over.  I smiled and shrugged.   A few minutes later, I decided it'd be nicer to sit with my legs not crammed to one side, so I moved my chair again, and this time my whole glass tipped over and all the coffee spilled out onto the tablecloth (which I checked -- it was real cloth).  This time I bowed and said, "Thank you."  Again, everyone stared, but with no expression, like they were sheep that just happened to be looking over to see if I were some rambler they could advise the cows to trample.