Good Byes to Sicily

We had to return our car by 1 pm and it takes about two hours to drive from Brolo to Catania so we had to wake up a bit earlier than we usually did. We ate the last Italian, sweet breakfast and made sure we didn't leave anything behind. At around noon we curved to the Hertz parking lot at the airport and returned the car. There weren't any problems and we didn't really leave any extra gasoline for them either. All in all everything went well with the car although we took a risk by not taking the extra insurance.

The Italians have a club for everyone (maybe not for the Japanese) and they aren't shy to show it.

We had a couple of hours before being able to check in so we went for a walk and hoped to find a grocery store. Usually airports are located far away from any shops or civilization but Catania is an exception. You can see apartment buildings all around and less than two kilometers away we found a big supermarket. And things just got better and better for us: after buying food we noticed that there's a nice, quiet park right next to the supermarket. We sat and ate there, watching people jogging and running. Everything wasn't perfect though: after a while a group of three street dogs surrounded us like wolves and didn't give up. The dogs were a lot bigger than street dogs usually but they were still very cautious. We didn't finish the meal there and walked back to the airport.

A typical collection of traffic signs in Sicily

Nothing interesting happened on the way back. We arrived at Tampere at 3 am and I felt really sorry for Inna because she had to continue all the way to Ukraine early in the morning. Her flight left at 8:40 am and she came back home almost 24 hours later.

A few words about Italian traffic:

• Almost no rules
• Forget stop- and priority signs.
• Did you see a red light? The locals didn't.
• A lot of tunnels and bridges
• Park in any way you can imagine.
• Stop anywhere you want.
• Almost all the cars are damaged in one way or another. You don't want to drive your new Mercedes here.
• The highway speedlimit is 110 km/h or 130 km/h, depending on the size of the motor.
• Curvy roads

Our honeymoon wasn't perhaps as relaxing as it could have been but anyway I liked it! It was very different from the trips we've had during the last few years. We had a hotel reserved, we had a car and Italy is way more expensive than any other country we've been to together. The people in Italy are nice but the food isn't! Perhaps the next time in Italy we'll be climbing in the Alps and bring our own food :)!

The international airport of Catania

Inna in Berlin