After a busy few weeks traveling through Austria, Slovenia and Uzbekistan I’m really looking forward to some downtime in Taormina, Sicily. This gets off to just the right start when we’re greeted by our pals with a beer and within a few hours a local meal with wine…. this is gonna be good!
We’re staying at an Airbnb smack bang in the centre of town. It’s an interesting building with a lot of stairs to the six levels.
It also has some very “interesting” art dotted around the place…
We have a view of Mt. Etna from our terrace, when the clouds are cooperating.
Sicily is the largest of all the Mediterranean islands and is just off the “toe” of Italy’s “boot”. It has a population of approximately five million and it’s capital is Palermo, which is on the northwest coast of the island. We flew into Catania (the second biggest city after Palermo) on the east coast and are staying in Taormina about an hour north. Taormina is a popular town for tourists and it gets its fair share of cruise ships. In fact I was here way back in my early twenties on a day trip from a cruise ship but I can’t really remember it other than the Greek theatre.
We explore the town on our first day…
Taormina is not only perched on a hill high over the sea but once you’re up there the streets are very hilly too. We’ll have calves of stone after this week! Luckily there’s a cable car that runs to the very bottom of the hill by the beach. I use the word “beach” very loosely – there’s rocks and stones and the sea!!
The views of the coastline are really nice though.
We climb down some steps to Isola Bella, a tiny island that you can walk to at certain times depending on the tide. It’s not much if a beach here but it’s very pretty.
There are churches at every turn in Taormina and there seems to be a patron saint of every town!
The narrow streets, some pedestrianised, some where you need to dodge cars and mopeds are full of shops, restaurants and bars. Lots of open air osterias and terrace bars. They are decorated in bright colours and a lot have these heads out front or on balconies. They allegedly are a custom from a story of two lovers, she from a wealthy family, he from the wrong side of the tracks. The father wasn’t having any of it and beheaded the young man and put his head on his balcony for all to see.. nice!!
Today we get a bit closer to Mt. Etna on a day trip involving walking up a crater. As we drive from Taormina back toward Catania and into the Etna region the soil and landscape changes quite drastically. The lava rock is everywhere. The area in the photo below was full of the trees you can see until an eruption in 2013 knocked trees and whatever else down and covered the land in this rock.
The crater that we climb is called Monti Sartorius, named after the man who first catalogued the eruptions on Etna.
It’s steep in places and our guide Davide gives us walking poles but it’s fairly easy.
Happy to have made it to the top:
After a quick packed lunch of salami and cheese sambos we make a short stop at Grotta della Neve, a cave system that we don helmets to climb into.
Before heading back to Taormina we stop at the Gambino family winery to taste some Etna wine. To be honest it doesn’t compare as well to the Austrian wine at the beginning of my trip (and it’s a lot more expensive) but it’s nice, so of course we buy a few bottles!
Next morning we visit the famous UNESCO listed (of course) Greek theatre. This theatre was built in the 3rd century BC by the Greeks for dramatic productions and was later transformed by the Romans’ to hold gladiator battles. Today it hosts open air concerts and operas which would have been amazing to see. It has an amazing view toward Mt Etna.
There are also some more great views of Taormina from up there.
One of the big draws of the island is the ancient Valley of the Temples at Agrigento. It is a 3+ hour journey from Taormina to the south coast, so we are up early for a full day of site-seeing of these Greek temples. There are approximately seven temples, all of which are in the Doric style (as is the Parthenon in Athens). The better preserved temples are on the Eastern side of the archeological park. We start there with the temple of Hera (also called Juno):
It was built in the fifth century BC and thirty of its columns are still standing – amazing.
The complex itself is huge, spanning 1,300 hectares and we walk about a kilometre to our next temple, en route seeing interesting ruins of homes and burial chambers.
Next stop – The Temple of Concordia. This is the one UNESCO use as their logo.
Again it was built in the 5th century BC and it’s one of the best preserved in the world. This is generally attributed to the fact that it was turned into a church in the 6th century AD. There’s plenty of hordes here so I can only imagine what it’s like in high season.
The third temple we visit is the oldest, dating to the end of the 6th century BC, but it was destroyed in an earthquake and today only eight columns remain. It is The Temple of Heracules.
I like walking among the fallen columns that once formed part of this great building.
With an hour free time before we get back on the bus, we take a quick look at the Western side of the park. Lots of huge rocks and pieces of column with an odd few columns still standing.
After a quick arancini [Arancini are stuffed rice balls which are coated with bread crumbs and then deep fried. The most common fillings are ragù, mozzarella and/or ham], we’re back on the bus heading to the Villa Romano del Casale at Piazza Armerina which is famous for its mosaics. As we drive toward the middle of the island a really heavy rain storm hits and some of the small roads are flooded with muddy water running from the hills onto the road. When we reach our destination we have a significant walk to the villa and everyone is soaked. Even though I’ve got my raincoat it’s hard to avoid getting wet. It continues to lash rain and the drain pipes at the villa are working overtime!!
It’s worth getting soaked to see these beautiful mosaics though…
They are unique in how vast they are and are possibly the best preserved in the world. This is due to their being covered by mud for 700 years after a landslide in the 12th century…. seems very apt on a day like today…
There are so many different scenes portrayed and I take far too many photos but it’s so hard to capture how stunning they are. Here’s another couple to give you an idea…
From Taormina we can see Castelmolo, which is the town on the hill above us. Today we decide to head up there and check it out. It’s been raining again this morning so we decide to bus it up and walk back down. The view from the top to a second hilltop town is quite lovely.
There’s an old church on the hill that we check out and I notice they have a couple of carrying statues that are used in the Semana Santa parades. Last night we saw a news story on tv where locals were running with the statues, some running with fire and holy statues getting dragged behind them – mental!!! [side note : we watched some very peculiar Italian tv including a tv show called “Guess My Age”]
It’s an easy walk down, much shorter than we expected with a decent path. As we are walking down the steps we are surrounded by cactus and prickly pear fruit all over the steps.
The prickly pear is everywhere….
On our final day in Sicily we go to Giardini Naxos which is at the bottom of the hill where the “beach” is. It’s a nice little town with a long promenade that we walk for a couple of hours.
We finish our walk with lunch and I have fresh seafood which is really delicious, especially when accompanied by a very tasty rosé.
The damn bus is late though…
Just monkeying around..
Throughout this past week in Sicily we have had numerous good meals and tried all of the locally recommended delicacies we could find. We’ve had our fair share of beer, wine, local firewater and cannoli which I’m now a big fan of.
We’ve also had a lot of laughs and are looking forward to visiting the next country together. So long Sicily… Malta, we’ll be seeing you very soon.
odohertyelaine 