Catania is the second largest city in Sicily. The population of Catania proper is about 320,000, but there are a combined 1.1 million people who live in the metro area. In Italy overall, Catania is the 10th biggest city, and the 7th largest metro area. This is a major population center for Sicily, second only to Palermo, which will be our last stop on this trip. Catania is not the most well-known place, but it's definitely not small either. It's actually really big, especially by Sicilian standards. But Catania's burgeoning population should be surprising. This isn't exactly prime real estate.
Why? Because of Mount Etna.
It was a long and unfortunate series of circumstances that delayed our flight from New York to Algiers for 2 full days, but they say that when God closes a door, he opens a window. And for us, this window came in the form of a extremely long layover in Rome. This would give us just enough time to sneak out of the airport to go into the city, so that's exactly what we did.
Even if you know Rome only by reputation, you can probably guess that it's far too big a city to see in a single day, so we decided to break off a single bite-sized piece: a neighborhood called Trastevere.
With places like Florence and Rome literally at my fingertips, it might be considered an odd move to choose to visit Genoa instead. Genoa had always fascinated me though. Nobody ever talks about it, but, if Google Images was to be believed, it's a gorgeous seaside city! Let's check it out...
