We left Salina early in the morning to make our way back to mainland Sicily and get the train down to Taormina, a popular town on the North East coast of Sicily.
Taormina is the most visited spot in Sicily, known for its lovely beaches and beautiful Old Town.
From Salina we had to get a ferry to Lipari and change onto a ferry to Messina where we could get a direct train to Taormina. When we tried to buy tickets we were told the ferry would not be going to Messina, so we would have to go via Milazzo and then train to Messina.
Although frustrated at having to go this much longer way, we bought our tickets and hopped on the ferry only to arrive in Lipari and see the ferry to Messina sitting right there! Having already purchased our Milazzo tickets we had no choice but to watch it sail away and hop onto the Milazzo ferry. Sicilian transport is extremely frustrating, nothing ever goes at the time you think and sometimes things don't go at all!
So a long and tiring four hours later, we arrived in Taormina and got a taxi from the train station to our hotel.
Luckily it only got better after that, we were staying in a lovely hotel just outside the old town, away from the crowds, and had an amazing view out over the Taormina coast.
We stayed in Room 13!
After settling in we headed out to see some of the town and stretch our legs. We soon discovered why Taormina is the most visited town in Sicily, it is only small, but full of beautiful old buildings and tiny alleyways.
It is also perched at the top of a mountain, so it has amazing views to Mt Etna and even all the way over to mainland Italy.
Taormina's main street Corso Umberto, is the main way in and out of the walled town, and it was just swamped with tourists, so we headed off the main street as soon as possible and explored the back streets instead, which were deserted.
As in Venice, we've discovered that going even one street back makes it much easier to get to where you want to go, and makes a more interesting trip than just seeing the big main streets. You discover so much more in the tiny back streets!
We came across the Taormina Public Gardens, Via Bagnoli Croce, which were donated to the town in the 1920's. The garden is full of exotic plants and flowers and has amazing views out over the ocean and Mt Etna.
We wandered around the garden for a while before taking a seat and just enjoying the views and the afternoon sunshine.
Our next stop was a viewing platform that overlooked the beautiful Isola Bella, a small island gifted to Taormina in 1806 by King Ferdinand I, that has been turned into a nature reserve.
A small path connects the island to the shore. There is a small pebbly beach on the island, and this was super busy even late in the afternoon and covered in shade.
This side of Taormina was relatively deserted, and we sat in the sunshine and watched people swimming for a while before heading back to our hotel to get ready for dinner.
The owner of our hotel had recommended several good restaurants and places to eat in Taormina, but the one that caught our interest the most was a tiny pizzeria that does takeaway only, with a few places to perch outside. It does the most amazing pizza and pasta, but it's most famous for its Arancini, the amazing fried rice ball we tried on Salina.
We got ourselves a slice of pizza and an Arancini each and sat down outside with the locals and enjoyed a delicious and super cheap dinner. The food was the best we'd had in Sicily so far, and so good we went back the next day for a mid-afternoon snack.
So delicious!
Full of good food we headed back to our hotel and crawled into bed, exhausted after a long day of travelling and walking around in the sunshine with no swimming to refresh us!
We woke up especially early the next day and headed out before breakfast to wander around a completely deserted Taormina. The only other people we saw were people exercising and rubbish men.
It's hard to tell from the previous days photos, as I am obsessive about not having random strangers in my photos, but the town had been almost unbearably busy and crammed full of tourists, so we wanted an opportunity to explore the beautiful town in solitude, without having to zoom past slow walking tourists.
Lots of ceramic souvenirs for sale
Sicilian Dolls
We especially enjoyed walking along Corso Umberto, the main street, and to the Piazza IX Aprile, a huge Piazza with amazing views towards Mt Etna.
We got a lot of looks being up that early (and clearly tourists) since everyone else was local.
The deserted Piazza
Loved these little ceramic trees, we saw them in Sorrento too. Couldn't decide if they were too kitsch?
We sat for a while in the Piazza del Duomo, it has a big fountain in the middle with a Centaur on top. The Centaur is the symbol of Taormina, it was also surrounded by fat little horses on the bottom!
The huge Church is called the Church of San Nicola and was built in 1400. There are lots of intricate carvings around the windows and on the inside of the Church.
We wandered around the deserted town for over an hour, and headed back for breakfast just before 9.00 a.m., just as the first people were beginning to emerge from their hotels.
Our plan for the day was to escape the town and head to a Lido on Mazzaro beach, a short bus ride away from our hotel. Our hotel arranged for a shuttle to come pick us up at 10.30 a.m. and take us to a lovely little beach club, which in our opinion was one of the nicest on the beach.
Included in the price was two loungers and an umbrella, plus a welcome drink. It wasn't really a hard sell. The shuttle would then pick us up in the afternoon and take us back to Taormina.
We were one of the first to arrive and got some good loungers a few rows back. Others went straight for the first row, but we've learnt from watching others that the first row always gets covered in water when the tide comes in. Not fun to be napping and wake up surrounded by water!
The beach was sandy, which made a nice change from the rocky beaches on Salina and Lipari, but it was super hot so we had to run down to the water even with our jandals on.
The sun seemed to be much hotter in Taormina than the islands, and even after applying lots of sunscreen, I still managed to get quite badly sunburnt on my legs, resulting in us having to find a pharmacy that sold little pots of moisturiser since we were leaving the next day and only had carry on luggage.
We brought these sarongs in Lipari, rather than make the mistake of buying towels like in Croatia, which just fluffed over everything! They came in so handy, especially when it was so hot I couldn't bear to put my shorts back on!
In the late afternoon we headed back to our hotel, showered, moisturised and headed out to dinner.
We left early and stopped at a wine bar which had been recommended to us while on the beach. It was a tiny bar on a tiny street, and we sat at the littlest table outside the bar.
The Sicilian red wine was delicious, and we ordered a antipasto platter to go with it. We stayed for a couple of hours, eating and drinking and watching everyone walk by and chatting to the Australian couple next to us who were on a European holiday from Australia.
It's always fun chatting to other New Zealand and Australian tourists, we always end up picking up new places to visit and giving people advice on places we've been.
Feeling tiny in our little seats!
After our pre-dinner wine and antipasto, we headed to a restaurant also recommended by our hotel. They serve fresh homemade pasta and seafood, and it made us wish we hadn't eaten beforehand, all the food looked delicious.
We started with Feta balls covered in honey, which were so good! Then I had pesto and prawn pasta and Bradley had Fusilli pasta with swordfish. Everything was so good, but we were too full for dessert or even coffee.
Wonderful pictures I particularly loved the painted pots and purple scooter.
ReplyDeleteThe food as usual looks great and so different to Italian food here.
Looks an interesting place to visit.