The Beautiful Island of Salina and Pollara

On our second full day on Salina, we headed West of Malfa to the tiny village of Pollara, a town made famous by the movie Il Postino, a beautiful Italian love story set on Salina with an amazing backdrop of Pollara Beach.

Unfortunately Pollara Beach has almost eroded into almost nothing due to the sheer number of people visiting on foot and on boats. All that's left is about a four metre patch of sand, blocked off to visitors, surrounded by towering cliffs. So rather than visit the beach itself, you can visit a tiny cove with houses built into the rock and swim directly from the rock into the crater of an extinct volcano.

We caught the bus for a twenty minute journey up the side of a volcano with sheer cliffs dropping down into the sea, and down the winding road to the other side.

The bus dropped us off in the tiny town, and we began the long walk to the beach. We couldn't find much information about Pollara, other than it being beautiful and the setting to Il Postino, so we weren't really prepared for the long walk down a hot road, and then down about 200 steps until we finally reached the small cove. Having walked down, I was not looking forward to making our way back up towards the town a couple of hours later.

The path down to the original beach, now closed off to visitors

The view upon reaching the bottom of the steps was amazing, there were stone houses built directly into the side of the cliffs, with steps leading up to each one, and we could see all the way to the furthest Aeolian Islands, Alicudi and Filicudi.

Looking over towards the original Pollara Beach, or what remains of it

There were lots of boats moored off shore. They are not allowed to come closer than 150 metres to the beach because of the damage they cause.

The water was so clear and really calm for swimming. There was a small ledge to easily get into the water, though it was super slippery, so we almost had to crawl into the water. We were swimming in what used to be a volcano, now long extinct, and the crater goes down a long way. There was lots of sealife, sea urchins, fish and octopus, plus some little jellyfish. 

The presence of sea urchins and jellyfish was enough to make me have a quick swim only, but Bradley is not as scared of marine life as me, and had a lovely long swim.

I retreated to a flat patch of rock overlooking the bay after watching a man bring in a large octopus and kill it right in front of me. Didn't really want to watch what happened next, so headed away from the water. Octopus's freak me out, so the thought of swimming while they were in the water was not appealing!

The cove is a well known snorkelling destination because of all the underwater life, and almost everyone swimming also had a snorkel and fins.

Relaxing far away from Octopus killers

After spending a couple of hours relaxing in the sun, we began the long walk back up the steps. Luckily we had saved some water and a nectarine for the return journey, we didn't want a repeat of what happened in Sorrento!

After returning to our hotel we headed back down to Punta Scario beach just down the road. It was just as beautiful as it had been the day before, and we rented a Lilo for a couple of hours of relaxing and swimming in waters with no sea urchins and jellyfish!

As the sun was setting we headed back up to the hotel and had dinner at a restaurant in Malfa. All the food we had in Salina was so fresh, and we must have had capers with almost every meal.

It was so hot that night that we woke up several times, and after a while I gave up on sleep and headed onto the balcony to watch the sun come up.

Sitting on our little balcony and watching the sun rise over Stromboli was an amazing experience, and one of the most beautiful sunrise's I've ever seen.

After going back to sleep and dozing for a few hours, we got up for breakfast to find the day was quite overcast and windy. There was a fair bit of smoke coming from Stromboli which was creating weird patterns in the clouds. The entire middle of the island was completely covered in fog.

Admiring the view

Since the day wasn't as warm as it had been the last few days, we decided to explore the towns of Santa Marina Salina and Lingua, on the South East side of Salina.

Low lying fog over the middle of Salina

We started our day in the small town of Lingua. All the towns on Salina are small, with Pollara definitely the smallest, and Lingua was easily explored in about 20 minutes end to end.

The town has a long promenade that runs along the seafront, with lots of restaurants and small shops selling clothing and jewellery.

Lingua is on the very tip of Salina, with amazing views across to Lipari.

Looking along the promenade towards Lipari

Lingua also has small pebbly beach, with lots of small coves separating the beach from the open ocean.

We had also heard Lingua had a lighthouse and wanted to investigate, though upon arrival discovered a derelict crumbling lighthouse that looked a bit sad and haunted.

It was not surprising to come across an abandoned building in Sicily, we had seen lots in our short stay, and it made an interesting contrast from the lovely town of Lingua 100 metres down the road.

We set up camp on a small patch of beach and watched the hydrofoils going backwards and forwards between the islands. It's so interesting to watch them rise out of the water onto their 'ski's' as they got faster.

When it got too windy we headed up to a restaurant we had seen recommended on TripAdvisor called Da Alfredo's. We had an amazing Pane Cunzato each, without realising how big they were. 

They are almost like a huge bruschetta, topped with tomato and mozzarella, or you can go the whole way like I did and have tuna, olives and sundried tomatoes as well.

They were so huge I could barely even get through half, and had to settle for leaving the base and trying to eat as much of the topping as possible.

After our huge lunch we went for a long walk along the beach to settle our stomachs before catching the bus to Santa Marina Salina.

We arrived in Santa Marina at the time of day when everything is closed, but as it's usually the busiest town on the island, we enjoyed wandering the back streets and exploring when it was empty of visitors.

We loved all the brightly coloured doors and windows on all the houses

Not a soul in sight!

We picked up a couple of souvenirs before hopping onto a bus to take us back to Malfa.

We stopped at a Gelateria on the way back to the hotel and picked up some Gelato to eat on the walk back to the hotel. I discovered my favourite flavour of Gelato is Peach, definitely better than my previous favourite, Strawberry!

Bradley enjoying his Pineapple and Coconut gelato

We spent the rest of the afternoon reading on our balcony with a bottle of Salina red wine along with some olives and cheese.

After stuffing ourselves full of cheese, we headed into Malfa for our last dinner on Salina. We went back to the place we had dinner the night before. It had been so delicious and we wanted to try some more things on their menu.

I started with an eggplant gratin and Bradley had a spinach and mozzarella Arancini. Arancini are fried balls coated in breadcrumbs and full of rice, and usually spinach, tomato sauce or mozzarella. They are so yummy, and while popular in all of Italy, are said to have originated in Sicily. The ones we had in Sicily are definitely the best we've ever had!

Bradley then had a huge pizza while I had pasta, though both of us were too full to fit in dessert. We weren't too full for an espresso though to wake us up for the walk back to our hotel.

We had such an amazing time in the Aeolian Islands, and especially Salina. We headed back to our hotel and to bed early, as we had to be up early to make our ferry to Taormina.