Antonio gets our vote for being the closest thing to a “guardian angel” we’ve had on our trip thus far. When we arrived in Sicily after an extremely delayed flight, the hostel that we were staying at overbooked themselves, and decided to give away our room. This resulted in us standing on the street at 11PM with no idea of where to go, while carrying our loaded backpacks. Antonio is a local cab driver in Catania, Sicily who picked us up and literally drove us from place to place asking owners of different hostels and B&B’s if they had room for us that night. There was an extreme language barrier between us, but through laughter and his grand hand gestures, we somehow understood each other. After driving us around for roughly an hour (and calling endless properties), we finally decided that we weren’t going to find a “budget” hotel during the height of travel season on such late notice. As a result, we finally settled on the Grand Excelsior Hotel in Catania, which Antonio explained the cost to us through rubbing his fingers together and shaking his head exclaiming, “money, money!” Though it was double our budget, it was money well spent. We can’t thank Antonio enough for helping us find a room, and not leaving us wandering around Catania by ourselves looking for a place!

Musically,

MV