Mercato & Sara, Delta & Cristal

Colorful produce, grown without chemicals 


I woke at dawn again today, using the quiet hours to sip an American coffee and get my ducks in a row as far as calls that needed to be made later. The sky is soft and lovely at this hour; I should consider being a morning person. Nahhh.

Sara and I are meeting for a caffè at the new Makea on viale Europa at 9:30. Then I'll see what interests me at the market. I'm in search of a decent carry-on bag, and yes, this little market has had them!


Yes; it's both safe and yummy to buy fish from the back of a van.

Cheeses and chicken roasted on a spit

More fish from a different truck

You don't want to set down a cigarette while getting people their produce, right?

Sara is great to converse with. She seamlessly corrects my language errors without dropping the conversation. She's had a tough year — daughter going through cancer diagnosis and treatment, mom dying. She asked about the Minneapolis ICE Gestapo, because she knows information filters in from all kinds of sources. She was shocked to hear of all of it, but mostly the kidnapping of [brown] children. Despite the usual questions about our horrific idiot of a president, it was an otherwise pleasant morning with her, and Makea is a good new spot to grab a caffè.

Nothing today, as far as the suitcase hunt went.  I did, however, buy paper espresso cups to use as bathroom Dixie cups (Elena looked askance when I told her this), some reading glasses, two dish towels, a little Liu Jo knockoff purse. As I shopped for the latter, two women struck up a handbag-based conversation with me. They fell into the 50% of Italians who ask if I'm from Germany. It used to piss me off, but it's a better guess than American these days. Still, I shrugged, and said no.... "Sono Canadese".

The walk down Tutte Grazie showed the crumpled building still stands between the two refurbished ones.

Someone just had a baby boy!

The connected buckets for channeling debris still make me smile at the ingenuity.

"Leave alone (free), even in the nighttime". I thought this would be a humorous plaque above a marital bed.

Back home, I heated our pasta leftovers and also made a new batch using pesto. Time to spend down the food items in the fridge, which Mariella may have been doing at the vigne yesterday.

The family are all back in Biancavilla now.

Joe, bless his heart, washed the dishes while I spent the next 1 hour + 22 minutes on the phone with Delta. But, the call helped reduce my layover from 15 hours to 3.5 hours in Seoul. They changed my flight and kept my seating status, without any upcharge. It was worth the wait, and the agent was super polite.

I had to write the Bangkok hotel again, un-begging for a reservation change. I do need to know if they will have 24 hour reception staff.

I erased a paragraph's worth of xzxxxfffcccssfgbbcghgfdchgfc that happened here as I conked out for a few minutes. Soon, I'm going to walk to the pharmacy and the stationers, as I need to pick up some medicine and a wedding card.

********

Success on both items. At the farmacia, I tried paying with an American Express card, which I know from experience doesn't always work in Italy. I started to apologize for American Ex---

The pharmacist blurted out, "No no signora, anche prima di tRump era una problema con questa carta!" Even before tRump, American Express was a problem. He thought I thought they weren't accepting it because of the word American! This led to yet another discussion which roughly translates to "What the fuck are you people doing?! Take him out!" As the guy at Geox said yesterday, tRump isn't only destroying America, his asshole moves are putting the whole world economy in peril. It's almost as if some Russian leader wants world domination, and is using him as a puppet.

We continued on toward Bar Cristal, which has finally reopened after the ferie. Cettina, Giuseppe's mom, saw us walking there, and stopped her accompanying two friends to say hello and give us kisses. We made a dinner of cocktails, aperitivi, and cipolline. Delizioso, as Matteo would say.

Yay! They're open again!

New wall decor 

We still got all the aperitivi, in addition to the cipolline and cocktails we ordered

The usual stretch of truck vendors as we head toward via Cristoforo Colombo


We spent a beautiful evening on Cristal's sidewalk patio, people watching, talking with each other, eating, and enjoying the normal temperatures. The walk back home was tranquil, though I'm worried about Joe's hip. He limps.

We finished the night by watching an episode of Ted Lasso on Joe's computer.

Hopefully, Catania tomorrow.

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