We started the morning bright at early at 8am, which doesn't sound very early but when you don't lay down in bed until 2 am it's extremely difficult. We then drove to Marco's house where the Italian version of Misty came and picked us up to go meet the mayor. We went to the same square we went to yesterday with the cathedral and the elephant statue. Then we met up with Hannah's counterpart from last year, which I'm still not really sure why she came with us but oh well. We had to play the waiting game in two different rooms once we arrived in the mayors building. They kept moving us from room to room until finally we got to the mayors office.
An hour or so after we arrived we got to finally meet the mayor! He was super nice and very talkative and spoke some English to us. We sat down and talked about all of the history of Catania and how it's an extremely old city, exchanged gifts, took pictures, and he showed us around his palace of an office. It really was a mansion but as far as I could tell he was the only city official in there. He also told us that we will be in the newspaper tomorrow, so I'll try to get a copy of that for you mother. Then we left, said our goodbyes and toured a fish market that was close. It was actually very interesting to see all the different fish and everyone rushing around buying and selling fish, even if it smelt weird.
After that we went home, stopped by a shop to have some granite for lunch. Then go to Marco's friend Christiana's house for more lunch which was pasta and tomatoes. Lunch mixed with a little nap and talking made up most our afternoon. For the evening we took a little trip to Siracusa which was honestly pretty similar to Catania, just wider/cleaner/smaller. They took us to see a few of the ruins there as well as a massive church with a wedding Going on. Side note: I haven't mentioned this before but almost Everytime we see a church, there is a wedding going on, or finishing up.
In the 2nd picture above is Marco's younger brother Mateo, or Paco as Marco likes to call him. We proceeded to have dinner by the sea where I had pizza of course. But here's the shocker, they served us French fries! Not nearly as good as American fries, but they were still nice to eat. As for tomorrow it looks like we have another special occasion, so I have to sleep now and I look forward to tomorrow!