October 17, 2021 • 22 mins
Join me on one of my favorite day-trips in Italy, when we took a train around Mamma Etna, an active volcano, ended in a city we never heard of, had some of the best food in the entire world: Pistachio Pancetta Pasta, Tender moist grilled chicken (no American steroid monsters), and Pistachio Pancakes made with the most perfectly balanced Pistachio cream to ever grace this planet.
It turns out that the city that we visited is right next to the home of Pistachio in Sicily - it was literal heaven!
I am officially a Pistachio monster now haha.
The city itself, Randazzo, also turned out to be an amazing city, with streets and buildings made entirely from volcanic rock, which gave the city a regal, dark, yet warm and cozy feeling, full of small streets and cafes and taverns, some of which opened out onto a valley that spanned far and wide to provide you the most picturesque of places from which to watch the sunset.
When we returned home from our trip, the hostel family had finished a home cooked meal and the Sicilian Mamma greeted us with open arms, warm hugs, smiles from ear-to-ear, laughter, even more food and, of course, wine.
The day trip, the city, the food, and the company was perfect!
This was one of my favorite adventures to recount and relive and I hope you enjoy it :)
If you have any questions or comments, you can find the post for this podcast on substack and leave me a message and a like: https://nofairytaletravels.substack.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello.
Hello and welcome back to nofairy tale travels.
After last week, I've beenthinking a lot about food
because Japan is the number oneplace for food.
I've never had better food thanI have in Japan.
So I was thinking, Hmm, whatshould I talk about this week?
Well, food, but let's go toplace.
(00:21):
Number two, which is Sicily,Italy, and here, we're going to
go to Catania.
So on the east side of Sicily,and I'm going to take you
through a full day's adventurethat is rife with food and drink
and laughs and amazing sights.
And just a fun day that startedout with no plan whatsoever.
(00:44):
Just I wake up in the morning,I'm having breakfast at my
hostel and my friend says, youknow what?
We should take a train aroundthe mountain.
And that's how our day began.
No other plan, nothing.
So before I begin go to no fairytale travels dot sub stack.com.
Look for the post for thispodcast and give it a, I think
(01:06):
it's a heart fair heart or athumbs up.
Give me some love on sub stack.
Okay.
And if you have any questions orcomments, go ahead and leave
them there and I'll get back toyou.
Let me also open up some wine.
I'm feeling in a very good moodthat didn't make sense.
I'm in a very good route.
Oh, let me all right.
Let me retry this.
I didn't have that much winetoday, but I feel like I can't
(01:27):
speak I'm in a very good moodtoday.
I am feeling good.
And this wine is called a roughoh, a little bit more.
Okay.
Or rough day Cabernet.
Oh, that sounds nice.
From the Thracian valley, let'sgo to Italy, Catania, Italy, a
(01:50):
place of, of food that is juston another level on another
planet.
Second, only to the food inJapan.
It's hard to explain how thefood in Japan is so amazing, but
it just, it truly, truly is, butokay.
I'm staying on Sicily.
So let me take you to my day inSicily Catania, I wake up in the
(02:12):
hostel and amazing hostel afamily run hostel, and it's
just, Ooh, I could talk all dayabout how great that is, but
we'll get to it at the end.
I'm down there for breakfast,having some espresso and talking
to my friend and we're saying,what should we do today?
Should we have another feastday?
Should we walk around?
What should we do?
And we look off and we say, youknow what?
(02:33):
We're surrounded by all of thisvolcanic rock, this beautiful
rich black volcanic rock.
We should go and take a trainaround the volcano.
The still active volcano mamaEtna.
That's what they call it.
You can look up videos of iterupting it's it's it's it feels
(02:54):
like it would be kind of scaryto be in Catania when the
Volcano is erupting, but it'snot going to erupt in this
story.
Don't worry.
So we say, you know what?
That's, that's kind of cool.
Let's take a train around it andsee what we see.
So we walk up the hill to thetrain station, through the
(03:15):
narrow streets and we get tothis beautiful Kuwait little,
two track train station.
Of course we miss the last fulltrain around.
So he say, you know, what, whatare we going to do?
Are we going to go home and bedefeated?
Well, no, because we don't havea plan.
How you can't be defeated whenyou have no plan.
You just want to take a trainaround the mountain.
So we go to the bar and we havea few drinks, the train bar, and
(03:39):
we sit outside in the sunbasking in the beautiful warmth
of Sicily and just think, Hmm.
All right, well, let's just takethe next train, no rush.
And by this point, it's myfriend myself, and we managed to
get a new Polish friend, alovely lass from Warsaw.
(04:02):
And I have to tell you a Polishgirl can drink as much as five
average men from the west.
So she happily went toe to toewith us an hour, a day, drinking
at this point morning drinking.
So we have a few drinks and thenwe get on the train.
And by the way, you have kind oftwo choices to explore this
(04:24):
mountain.
Apparently we learned this as wewere on the train.
One way is you can hike up themountain.
You take a bus and then you hikefor hours and hours and hours.
And you kind of don't really getto the top of it.
And then you hike down and yourday is over and it's a volcano.
It's just, you know, you see alot of black, I don't know, sand
(04:45):
soil, our version of exploringthe volcano bit more enjoyable.
You sit on the train and youjust look out the right side of
the almost completely emptytrain as it just chugs along,
going around the outside of themountain.
And you see this beautifulpicture, ask a view of the
volcano for over an hour and youjust relax.
(05:08):
You let your morning drinks seepdeep into your soul.
As you enjoy the view.
It's really, really nice.
I mean, this could be a tour Ishould charge for this tour.
This is just a regular train, bythe way, a regular commuter
train that people on thevillages or the cities around
the mountain take to get toCatania, which is the biggest
(05:31):
city in the area.
And at this time of day, so 1030 in the morning or so there's
almost nobody on it.
It was completely empty, Ithink, except for one other
person.
So we make our way to one cityseems like a nice city.
We don't know that much aboutit, except for one thing, it is
the home of pistachiosPiscataquis.
(05:55):
So pistachio in Italian isstocky.
So that's, that's what I'm goingto call it now because it sounds
just cooler than pistachio.
So we go through the home of thepistachio and we get to where
the train ends and we have noidea where the hell we are now,
it's this little city I'm goingto read it off a map.
So I make sure I get it right.
(06:16):
This little city called run dotsoul, R a N D a Z Z O.
We have no idea where we are.
We've never been there.
We've never read about it.
We don't know what's going on.
We just wanted to take a trainaround the mountain.
And this is where it stopped.
We get out of the train and westill have no idea where to go,
what to do, what to see.
(06:37):
So we see a group of unistudents, university students
boarding the train, and I say,Hey guys, where should we go for
some food?
We want to get some good localfood, no touristy crap.
And we want to have drinks andfood and enjoy the day.
Where should we go?
They pointed us in thedirection.
They gave us the name and weheaded down there.
And we ended up in a restaurantthat had no more than six tables
(07:01):
inside menus.
Only in Italian, no English, nota single word of English.
And a waiter also did not speakEnglish.
And the menu had no more than 10items on it.
And those 10 items span,basically sandwiches, pasta, and
(07:24):
dessert.
And then you could get somevegetables as well.
Now this city is virtually nextto the home of pistachio in
Sicily.
So what better place to orderpistachio dishes?
I hadn't really found that Iliked pistachio at this point in
(07:46):
my life.
I'd never really had that muchpistachio, just some nuts here
and there and not that special.
So I order the stocky pancheetah pasta.
And I have to tell you, this isthe number one pasta and one of
(08:07):
the top 10 foods I have evereaten in my entire life.
Top five.
This is definitely in the topfive.
So Japan holds number one, spot.
Number one, this is the top fivepistachio Penn cheetah pasta.
And it was the bow tie pasta.
It probably has a special name.
I don't know what the name is.
It doesn't matter.
(08:27):
It was so amazing, just thick,rich, beautiful flavorful sauce.
And just those few ingredientsthat combined with flowing red
wine carafe after corral, afterCref, I nearly burst my stomach
(08:49):
with one of the most pleasurableeating experiences of my life.
Pistachio panchetta pasta.
You must have this at some pointin your life.
This puts me above cloud nineand cloud 10 or 11 or 12.
(09:12):
It was amazing.
Honestly, I just want to, I justwant to think about this pasta
forever and ever, and ever, andever, and ever and ever, oh, my
stomach hurts so much after thatpasta.
It was just so, oh, it was sofilling and we had had a lot of
(09:32):
wine.
So there was a lot of winealready in the stomach for the
second dish, or maybe someoneelse just ordered this and I had
some of it.
We had chicken and then theygive you French fries.
The French fries look kind ofbland and silly actually
compared to the beauty and the,the, the unmatchable taste, the,
(09:57):
just the heaven, like embodimentof serenity and happiness.
That is the pistachio pinch at apasta.
All right, I'm going to get overthe pasta.
Okay.
The chicken was amazinglytender, white meat, chicken.
The likes of which I didn'trealize until I just came back
(10:19):
to America.
It can be kind of difficult toget here because you can taste
the hormone in enriched fat,little chickens here.
You can taste it when you eatthem, it does taste different.
And there you just don't havethat.
You got your lovely littleskinny chickens is still have
some good meat on them.
(10:39):
Tender juicy white meat, grilledto perfection.
Not too much, not too little,just perfect.
You don't even need a sauce forit.
Now we have more wine and morewine and more chicken and wine,
and we get to dessert and nobodyhas room for dessert, but we
(11:03):
decide that we just can't passup the[inaudible] pancakes.
This is pretty much when we geton the big stocky bandwagon.
After this day, life was all thestocky.
I want to use that for good.
How are you feeling today?
Very Piscataquis life is stocky.
(11:26):
Trey Piscataquis.
See, um, oh my gosh.
Okay.
So he ordered Piscataquispancakes and these come out like
thicker than crepes, but thinnerand more delicate than American
pancakes and filled in themiddle with their home made
(11:47):
stocky cream sauce.
That is sweetened to perfection,but not overdone.
And, oh my gosh.
Oh, if there is a heaven afteryou die, they give you a pice
stocky pancakes.
Okay.
(12:07):
Oh my gosh.
Oh, after the meal, somehow wemanaged to excavate ourselves
from the chairs, go outside andwander through the city, the
city, which turned out to be abeautiful old, maybe ancient
(12:31):
city with a lava cobblestonestreets and a lava stone walls
for the small buildings.
And as you walk through thesedark yet, oddly warm streets,
you can't tell if you're back insome sort of Spartan city where
you think Leah Knight is goingto walk around the corner.
(12:53):
You don't know where you are.
It is amazing.
It is immersive.
It is beautiful.
It is in chanting.
It is so perfect and going therewith no expectations, having no
idea what was going to be there,wandering the streets, bellies
full of, stocky and pasta andwine swaying slowly walking like
(13:18):
penguin, soaking up all of thebeauty that there is finding a
viewpoint to look over thevalleys of Sicily, watching the
sunset, a truly beautiful,relaxing, lovely experience with
almost not a single additionalsoul in sight.
(13:41):
My friends do not ever travel inhigh season.
If you want to enjoy anythingthat you do, shoulders season
grew all the way.
This was just perfect.
We decided there there's nopoint in looking for the train
schedule.
We are going to enjoy ourselveshere until we are done.
(14:04):
And if we miss the train that'slife, you got a credit card, you
got a passport.
You're going to get a bed.
So we wander the streets.
So small, you think barely twoaverage Americans could fit
walking shoulder to shoulder.
Yet the cars drive through them.
(14:25):
These tiny little horse carriage[inaudible] lanes, uh, lava
stones on the ground and thewalls and the sidewalk.
Actually, there is no sidewalk,just random little bumps that
you have to be careful of.
So as you Dodge the cars andyou're looking around, we found
(14:46):
a beautiful, old, lovely cafe,kind of like a patisserie, like
a bakery, like a sweet shop witha beautiful vaulted ceilings, 20
feet high.
What is that?
Four meters, five meters, sixmeters high, very, very high
ceilings with ornate decorationson them and paintings and
(15:10):
beautiful tables that are daintyyet heavy at the same time with
stone and marble and fit for aking or a princess, or just
three travelers.
Having a great time abroad.
We have espresso, we have sweetsand cookies and we have
(15:33):
digestives, which really, it'sjust a lovely word for highly
alcoholic beverage.
After your meal to help youdigest everything.
Of course, it probably doeswork, but it's also a nice
excuse to have a couple amazingshots of alcohol.
Oh, what a great time.
(15:56):
And, you know, throughout thewhole day between the three of
us it's stories, it's laughs.
It's talking about all of thebeautiful adventures that we've
gone on in the past that we'vegone on together that we want to
go on in the future, laughing atour mistakes.
(16:19):
Cheersing to our triumphstraveling is about experience
and sharing them as well asmaking them and the whole day
drinking and sharing experiencesand laughing, laughing, and the
good times laughing at theembarrassing times, laughing at
(16:39):
all of the times.
And we met our Polish friend inthe hostel, by the way, which is
why you stay in a hostel and nota hotel.
And I met my friend in a hostel,although a couple of years
before this.
So the whole thing is you'resharing wonderful experiences
with wonderful drinks andwonderful food and wonderful
(16:59):
scenery and a wonderful view andno plan.
And now it's evening, the sun issetting and we're in this lovely
cafe in a city that we nevereven knew existed when we woke
up that day.
Oh my gosh.
(17:20):
It's such a beautiful moment,such a beautiful day.
And then at some point wedecided it was time to head to
the train station.
We had found that there was onelast train home, and we had
about 20 minutes to make it justenough time to stop at the wine
(17:42):
store.
As we walked into this place, wesaw walls of wine and to Nothing
else, wine here, wine there,wine everywhere.
And just the three of us and theowner.
And we tasted wine after wineuntil he found the one that was
(18:04):
perfect for us.
Perfect.
To finish the evening.
Perfect for the train ride home.
Perfect for the wait for thetrain.
Perfect for full Belize.
So we got our wine, we made itback to the train station.
We opened them.
We had some cups because ofcourse, when you buy a wine, he
(18:27):
knows you're not waiting untilyou get home.
So you get some cups with it.
So he opened the wine on thetrain station platform, wait for
our train to come.
And yeah, this is about when mymemory starts to fade just a
little tiny bit, but I know thatwe had a lovely train ride home.
(18:49):
There was no view because it wasafter the sun had set.
We met lots of people.
There were a lots of unistudents on the train going back
for university.
So I guess it must have been thebeginning of the week.
And we had a great, great timeand finish all of the wine on
the train.
It's, you know, you make friendsa lot faster in public
(19:10):
transportation.
If you have alcohol.
I, and the moment that I saythat, and I'm trying to make it
a beautiful experience.
I realized that in a lot ofplaces you could be arrested for
that.
I don't know if it's legal inItaly or not, but we had such a
great time and we had so muchfun with the uni students that
we met there, sharing our drinksand laughing and teaching each
(19:31):
other.
How to say funny words andItalian and English and the
Sicilian version of this and theSicilian version of that and how
it's better than Milan and allof these other things.
It's just, it was such a funexperience, a real fun
experience.
And then when we get to thetrain station, this is
definitely when the trainstation in Catania.
(19:54):
This is definitely when Iremember almost nothing until
somehow we, the three of usmanaged to lock arms and sway
ourselves down the hill, back tothe hostel, no injuries, no
injuries.
And I'll never forget whathappened.
(20:16):
When we got back to the hostel,a family run hostel, the parents
had come back to the hostel thatnight to make dinner.
And they made a beautiful,lovely feast.
And we got there right when theyhad finished.
And right, as we got into thecommon area, I see the mother
with open arms, a laughing andsmiling and coming up to me and
(20:38):
giving me the biggest hug and onher face, I could just, I could
see the joy that I enjoy, howmuch you are enjoying my country
and my culture, the food and thescenery and the cities and the
(20:59):
city where we had been thatwhole day was very near where
she was born and raised.
And she loved that.
We had an amazing experience.
There was no judgment of, oh mygosh, I can't believe you drank.
There was, oh my gosh, you hadso much beautiful wine.
And you had such a good timewith your friends and all of you
are back now and everyone issmiling and laughing and I'm so
(21:21):
happy to have you back.
And if you want any more food,we've got food here.
And of course, there's a big barthere, so you can drink more
wine.
And of course, of course, ofcourse, when a happy Sicilian
mother is talking to you aboutfood, you don't say no, even
though your stomach almostexploded.
Not that long ago, you just say,yeah, I would love it.
And yes, I would love some morewine.
(21:42):
Of course it was a warm feelingof acceptance.
It was energy feeding off ofenergy.
Yeah.
I'll never forget that.
Look, I'll never forget that.
That was such a beautifulmoment.
And one of the times when, whenI just really felt like I am
(22:03):
home, I am home hostel life,baby.
Cheers.
There's nothing better I can saythan that to end it.
I hope you have a wonderfulweekend.
I hope you have a wonderfulweek.
(22:23):
And if you have any questions orcomments or you want to give me
a like go to no fairytaletravels dot sub stack.com and
find the post for this podcastand leave it there to see you
next week, guys,
Hello.
Hello and welcome back to nofairy tale travels.
After last week, I've beenthinking a lot about food
because Japan is the number oneplace for food.
I've never had better food thanI have in Japan.
So I was thinking, Hmm, whatshould I talk about this week?
Well, food, but let's go toplace.
(00:21):
Number two, which is Sicily,Italy, and here, we're going to
go to Catania.
So on the east side of Sicily,and I'm going to take you
through a full day's adventurethat is rife with food and drink
and laughs and amazing sights.
And just a fun day that startedout with no plan whatsoever.
(00:44):
Just I wake up in the morning,I'm having breakfast at my
hostel and my friend says, youknow what?
We should take a train aroundthe mountain.
And that's how our day began.
No other plan, nothing.
So before I begin go to no fairytale travels dot sub stack.com.
Look for the post for thispodcast and give it a, I think
(01:06):
it's a heart fair heart or athumbs up.
Give me some love on sub stack.
Okay.
And if you have any questions orcomments, go ahead and leave
them there and I'll get back toyou.
Let me also open up some wine.
I'm feeling in a very good moodthat didn't make sense.
I'm in a very good route.
Oh, let me all right.
Let me retry this.
I didn't have that much winetoday, but I feel like I can't
(01:27):
speak I'm in a very good moodtoday.
I am feeling good.
And this wine is called a roughoh, a little bit more.
Okay.
Or rough day Cabernet.
Oh, that sounds nice.
From the Thracian valley, let'sgo to Italy, Catania, Italy, a
(01:50):
place of, of food that is juston another level on another
planet.
Second, only to the food inJapan.
It's hard to explain how thefood in Japan is so amazing, but
it just, it truly, truly is, butokay.
I'm staying on Sicily.
So let me take you to my day inSicily Catania, I wake up in the
(02:12):
hostel and amazing hostel afamily run hostel, and it's
just, Ooh, I could talk all dayabout how great that is, but
we'll get to it at the end.
I'm down there for breakfast,having some espresso and talking
to my friend and we're saying,what should we do today?
Should we have another feastday?
Should we walk around?
What should we do?
And we look off and we say, youknow what?
(02:33):
We're surrounded by all of thisvolcanic rock, this beautiful
rich black volcanic rock.
We should go and take a trainaround the volcano.
The still active volcano mamaEtna.
That's what they call it.
You can look up videos of iterupting it's it's it's it feels
(02:54):
like it would be kind of scaryto be in Catania when the
Volcano is erupting, but it'snot going to erupt in this
story.
Don't worry.
So we say, you know what?
That's, that's kind of cool.
Let's take a train around it andsee what we see.
So we walk up the hill to thetrain station, through the
(03:15):
narrow streets and we get tothis beautiful Kuwait little,
two track train station.
Of course we miss the last fulltrain around.
So he say, you know, what, whatare we going to do?
Are we going to go home and bedefeated?
Well, no, because we don't havea plan.
How you can't be defeated whenyou have no plan.
You just want to take a trainaround the mountain.
So we go to the bar and we havea few drinks, the train bar, and
(03:39):
we sit outside in the sunbasking in the beautiful warmth
of Sicily and just think, Hmm.
All right, well, let's just takethe next train, no rush.
And by this point, it's myfriend myself, and we managed to
get a new Polish friend, alovely lass from Warsaw.
(04:02):
And I have to tell you a Polishgirl can drink as much as five
average men from the west.
So she happily went toe to toewith us an hour, a day, drinking
at this point morning drinking.
So we have a few drinks and thenwe get on the train.
And by the way, you have kind oftwo choices to explore this
(04:24):
mountain.
Apparently we learned this as wewere on the train.
One way is you can hike up themountain.
You take a bus and then you hikefor hours and hours and hours.
And you kind of don't really getto the top of it.
And then you hike down and yourday is over and it's a volcano.
It's just, you know, you see alot of black, I don't know, sand
(04:45):
soil, our version of exploringthe volcano bit more enjoyable.
You sit on the train and youjust look out the right side of
the almost completely emptytrain as it just chugs along,
going around the outside of themountain.
And you see this beautifulpicture, ask a view of the
volcano for over an hour and youjust relax.
(05:08):
You let your morning drinks seepdeep into your soul.
As you enjoy the view.
It's really, really nice.
I mean, this could be a tour Ishould charge for this tour.
This is just a regular train, bythe way, a regular commuter
train that people on thevillages or the cities around
the mountain take to get toCatania, which is the biggest
(05:31):
city in the area.
And at this time of day, so 1030 in the morning or so there's
almost nobody on it.
It was completely empty, Ithink, except for one other
person.
So we make our way to one cityseems like a nice city.
We don't know that much aboutit, except for one thing, it is
the home of pistachiosPiscataquis.
(05:55):
So pistachio in Italian isstocky.
So that's, that's what I'm goingto call it now because it sounds
just cooler than pistachio.
So we go through the home of thepistachio and we get to where
the train ends and we have noidea where the hell we are now,
it's this little city I'm goingto read it off a map.
So I make sure I get it right.
(06:16):
This little city called run dotsoul, R a N D a Z Z O.
We have no idea where we are.
We've never been there.
We've never read about it.
We don't know what's going on.
We just wanted to take a trainaround the mountain.
And this is where it stopped.
We get out of the train and westill have no idea where to go,
what to do, what to see.
(06:37):
So we see a group of unistudents, university students
boarding the train, and I say,Hey guys, where should we go for
some food?
We want to get some good localfood, no touristy crap.
And we want to have drinks andfood and enjoy the day.
Where should we go?
They pointed us in thedirection.
They gave us the name and weheaded down there.
And we ended up in a restaurantthat had no more than six tables
(07:01):
inside menus.
Only in Italian, no English, nota single word of English.
And a waiter also did not speakEnglish.
And the menu had no more than 10items on it.
And those 10 items span,basically sandwiches, pasta, and
(07:24):
dessert.
And then you could get somevegetables as well.
Now this city is virtually nextto the home of pistachio in
Sicily.
So what better place to orderpistachio dishes?
I hadn't really found that Iliked pistachio at this point in
(07:46):
my life.
I'd never really had that muchpistachio, just some nuts here
and there and not that special.
So I order the stocky pancheetah pasta.
And I have to tell you, this isthe number one pasta and one of
(08:07):
the top 10 foods I have evereaten in my entire life.
Top five.
This is definitely in the topfive.
So Japan holds number one, spot.
Number one, this is the top fivepistachio Penn cheetah pasta.
And it was the bow tie pasta.
It probably has a special name.
I don't know what the name is.
It doesn't matter.
(08:27):
It was so amazing, just thick,rich, beautiful flavorful sauce.
And just those few ingredientsthat combined with flowing red
wine carafe after corral, afterCref, I nearly burst my stomach
(08:49):
with one of the most pleasurableeating experiences of my life.
Pistachio panchetta pasta.
You must have this at some pointin your life.
This puts me above cloud nineand cloud 10 or 11 or 12.
(09:12):
It was amazing.
Honestly, I just want to, I justwant to think about this pasta
forever and ever, and ever, andever, and ever and ever, oh, my
stomach hurts so much after thatpasta.
It was just so, oh, it was sofilling and we had had a lot of
(09:32):
wine.
So there was a lot of winealready in the stomach for the
second dish, or maybe someoneelse just ordered this and I had
some of it.
We had chicken and then theygive you French fries.
The French fries look kind ofbland and silly actually
compared to the beauty and the,the, the unmatchable taste, the,
(09:57):
just the heaven, like embodimentof serenity and happiness.
That is the pistachio pinch at apasta.
All right, I'm going to get overthe pasta.
Okay.
The chicken was amazinglytender, white meat, chicken.
The likes of which I didn'trealize until I just came back
(10:19):
to America.
It can be kind of difficult toget here because you can taste
the hormone in enriched fat,little chickens here.
You can taste it when you eatthem, it does taste different.
And there you just don't havethat.
You got your lovely littleskinny chickens is still have
some good meat on them.
(10:39):
Tender juicy white meat, grilledto perfection.
Not too much, not too little,just perfect.
You don't even need a sauce forit.
Now we have more wine and morewine and more chicken and wine,
and we get to dessert and nobodyhas room for dessert, but we
(11:03):
decide that we just can't passup the[inaudible] pancakes.
This is pretty much when we geton the big stocky bandwagon.
After this day, life was all thestocky.
I want to use that for good.
How are you feeling today?
Very Piscataquis life is stocky.
(11:26):
Trey Piscataquis.
See, um, oh my gosh.
Okay.
So he ordered Piscataquispancakes and these come out like
thicker than crepes, but thinnerand more delicate than American
pancakes and filled in themiddle with their home made
(11:47):
stocky cream sauce.
That is sweetened to perfection,but not overdone.
And, oh my gosh.
Oh, if there is a heaven afteryou die, they give you a pice
stocky pancakes.
Okay.
(12:07):
Oh my gosh.
Oh, after the meal, somehow wemanaged to excavate ourselves
from the chairs, go outside andwander through the city, the
city, which turned out to be abeautiful old, maybe ancient
(12:31):
city with a lava cobblestonestreets and a lava stone walls
for the small buildings.
And as you walk through thesedark yet, oddly warm streets,
you can't tell if you're back insome sort of Spartan city where
you think Leah Knight is goingto walk around the corner.
(12:53):
You don't know where you are.
It is amazing.
It is immersive.
It is beautiful.
It is in chanting.
It is so perfect and going therewith no expectations, having no
idea what was going to be there,wandering the streets, bellies
full of, stocky and pasta andwine swaying slowly walking like
(13:18):
penguin, soaking up all of thebeauty that there is finding a
viewpoint to look over thevalleys of Sicily, watching the
sunset, a truly beautiful,relaxing, lovely experience with
almost not a single additionalsoul in sight.
(13:41):
My friends do not ever travel inhigh season.
If you want to enjoy anythingthat you do, shoulders season
grew all the way.
This was just perfect.
We decided there there's nopoint in looking for the train
schedule.
We are going to enjoy ourselveshere until we are done.
(14:04):
And if we miss the train that'slife, you got a credit card, you
got a passport.
You're going to get a bed.
So we wander the streets.
So small, you think barely twoaverage Americans could fit
walking shoulder to shoulder.
Yet the cars drive through them.
(14:25):
These tiny little horse carriage[inaudible] lanes, uh, lava
stones on the ground and thewalls and the sidewalk.
Actually, there is no sidewalk,just random little bumps that
you have to be careful of.
So as you Dodge the cars andyou're looking around, we found
(14:46):
a beautiful, old, lovely cafe,kind of like a patisserie, like
a bakery, like a sweet shop witha beautiful vaulted ceilings, 20
feet high.
What is that?
Four meters, five meters, sixmeters high, very, very high
ceilings with ornate decorationson them and paintings and
(15:10):
beautiful tables that are daintyyet heavy at the same time with
stone and marble and fit for aking or a princess, or just
three travelers.
Having a great time abroad.
We have espresso, we have sweetsand cookies and we have
(15:33):
digestives, which really, it'sjust a lovely word for highly
alcoholic beverage.
After your meal to help youdigest everything.
Of course, it probably doeswork, but it's also a nice
excuse to have a couple amazingshots of alcohol.
Oh, what a great time.
(15:56):
And, you know, throughout thewhole day between the three of
us it's stories, it's laughs.
It's talking about all of thebeautiful adventures that we've
gone on in the past that we'vegone on together that we want to
go on in the future, laughing atour mistakes.
(16:19):
Cheersing to our triumphstraveling is about experience
and sharing them as well asmaking them and the whole day
drinking and sharing experiencesand laughing, laughing, and the
good times laughing at theembarrassing times, laughing at
(16:39):
all of the times.
And we met our Polish friend inthe hostel, by the way, which is
why you stay in a hostel and nota hotel.
And I met my friend in a hostel,although a couple of years
before this.
So the whole thing is you'resharing wonderful experiences
with wonderful drinks andwonderful food and wonderful
(16:59):
scenery and a wonderful view andno plan.
And now it's evening, the sun issetting and we're in this lovely
cafe in a city that we nevereven knew existed when we woke
up that day.
Oh my gosh.
(17:20):
It's such a beautiful moment,such a beautiful day.
And then at some point wedecided it was time to head to
the train station.
We had found that there was onelast train home, and we had
about 20 minutes to make it justenough time to stop at the wine
(17:42):
store.
As we walked into this place, wesaw walls of wine and to Nothing
else, wine here, wine there,wine everywhere.
And just the three of us and theowner.
And we tasted wine after wineuntil he found the one that was
(18:04):
perfect for us.
Perfect.
To finish the evening.
Perfect for the train ride home.
Perfect for the wait for thetrain.
Perfect for full Belize.
So we got our wine, we made itback to the train station.
We opened them.
We had some cups because ofcourse, when you buy a wine, he
(18:27):
knows you're not waiting untilyou get home.
So you get some cups with it.
So he opened the wine on thetrain station platform, wait for
our train to come.
And yeah, this is about when mymemory starts to fade just a
little tiny bit, but I know thatwe had a lovely train ride home.
(18:49):
There was no view because it wasafter the sun had set.
We met lots of people.
There were a lots of unistudents on the train going back
for university.
So I guess it must have been thebeginning of the week.
And we had a great, great timeand finish all of the wine on
the train.
It's, you know, you make friendsa lot faster in public
(19:10):
transportation.
If you have alcohol.
I, and the moment that I saythat, and I'm trying to make it
a beautiful experience.
I realized that in a lot ofplaces you could be arrested for
that.
I don't know if it's legal inItaly or not, but we had such a
great time and we had so muchfun with the uni students that
we met there, sharing our drinksand laughing and teaching each
(19:31):
other.
How to say funny words andItalian and English and the
Sicilian version of this and theSicilian version of that and how
it's better than Milan and allof these other things.
It's just, it was such a funexperience, a real fun
experience.
And then when we get to thetrain station, this is
definitely when the trainstation in Catania.
(19:54):
This is definitely when Iremember almost nothing until
somehow we, the three of usmanaged to lock arms and sway
ourselves down the hill, back tothe hostel, no injuries, no
injuries.
And I'll never forget whathappened.
(20:16):
When we got back to the hostel,a family run hostel, the parents
had come back to the hostel thatnight to make dinner.
And they made a beautiful,lovely feast.
And we got there right when theyhad finished.
And right, as we got into thecommon area, I see the mother
with open arms, a laughing andsmiling and coming up to me and
(20:38):
giving me the biggest hug and onher face, I could just, I could
see the joy that I enjoy, howmuch you are enjoying my country
and my culture, the food and thescenery and the cities and the
(20:59):
city where we had been thatwhole day was very near where
she was born and raised.
And she loved that.
We had an amazing experience.
There was no judgment of, oh mygosh, I can't believe you drank.
There was, oh my gosh, you hadso much beautiful wine.
And you had such a good timewith your friends and all of you
are back now and everyone issmiling and laughing and I'm so
(21:21):
happy to have you back.
And if you want any more food,we've got food here.
And of course, there's a big barthere, so you can drink more
wine.
And of course, of course, ofcourse, when a happy Sicilian
mother is talking to you aboutfood, you don't say no, even
though your stomach almostexploded.
Not that long ago, you just say,yeah, I would love it.
And yes, I would love some morewine.
(21:42):
Of course it was a warm feelingof acceptance.
It was energy feeding off ofenergy.
Yeah.
I'll never forget that.
Look, I'll never forget that.
That was such a beautifulmoment.
And one of the times when, whenI just really felt like I am
(22:03):
home, I am home hostel life,baby.
Cheers.
There's nothing better I can saythan that to end it.
I hope you have a wonderfulweekend.
I hope you have a wonderfulweek.
(22:23):
And if you have any questions orcomments or you want to give me
a like go to no fairytaletravels dot sub stack.com and
find the post for this podcastand leave it there to see you
next week, guys,
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