Finally, it was time to leave. Boarded the InterCity train at the Salerno Centrale station—no FrecciaRossa fast trains now—for a 5+ hour ride down through Calabria. Fascinating scenery that I had never seen before, and in first class we basically had the car to ourselves—so comfortable. I do want to say that we booked no-change tickets with Trenitalia way back last fall, and each leg, for first or business class, cost each of us no more than $40 each per leg. Unbelievable value. It’s the only way to fly! Got down to Villa San Giovanni at the tip of Calabria, and it was time for the train to dock onto a ferry, and traverse the Strait of Messina to Sicily. Yes, that’s right—it’s the only train/ferry remaining in all of Europe. I had purposely booked this route, out of curiosity more than anything else, and it was just very, very cool. Took 20 minutes to dock, about 4 train cars went underneath the ship, once we departed for the 30 minute trip across we were able to get out and climb up on deck, saying goodbye to Calabria, and buongiorno to Sicily. Fun stuff.
At the Taormina/Giardini station, the driver from my old friends at Sicily Life Tours met us as expected. We had hired Sicily Life fifteen years ago on our first Sicilian adventure, and they were stellar then, as now. Highly recommended. We were driven to our AirBnB, a 4 BR, 3 bath, which had a panoramic view of the beaches at Letojanni & Giarre, and the Ionian Sea. Now…Taormina is on the side of a mountain, meaning stairs and lots of them. We counted 80 stairs of various sizes and shapes from our AirBnB up to the main drag, the Corso Umberto. Every time. So…it’s not the kind of place where you can just run and drop stuff back at the room and come back out in five minutes. That really was the only downside of our lodging. But…Taormina was, a broken record here, busier than I had ever seen it before. Where in 2010 we could just walk leisurely over to the 3rd century BC Teatro Greco (Greek Theatre), now there was a huge line and had to pay admission. That’s progress I guess, and we declined to participate. The Corso on a Sunday was totally packed into the evening, a little less so during the week.
Thank goodness…we had hired Sicily Life to take us on a wine & gastronomic tour of Mt. Etna, about an hour away from Taormina. It was around 150 Euro/pp, and so worth it. We were driven in a van up to 6000 feet, almost seeming Alpine-like in California. Couldn’t go any further unless we had a registered volcanologist and wanted to hike for hours. Nope. We walked along the lava from the 2002 flow, and heard rumblings from the active volcano, and when the wind would blow we’d get some ash rain. On the way back down, after a wonderful winery tour in the fog and a light dinner of charcuterie, cheese, sausages and silky Nero D’Avola red, we were taken through some tiny medieval villages, saw the Castello di Lauria from the 6th century, where they used to fight off marauders with boulders flung from catapults. Catapults!! Saw the beautiful Alcantara Gorge, where sulfur-laden waters flowed and we imagined centuries before…that’s where the lava flowed. That night, we heard some rumblings from our terrace in Taormina, and found out that the other side of the crater from what we had seen, to the southeast, was erupting. And…my cousins were woken up at 3:30 AM by rattling doors and their beds (we slept right through!)…and we found out it was a 4.8 earthquake! Incredibly, the Sicilians deal with this all the time, and don’t think anything of it. I wanted to tell them…remember Pompei!
So this was the trip. I think the venues & pacing was good, lots of different things to see, and no matter what—the food was consistently outstanding. I still love Italy. The downside, and not even a detriment because the crowds could be avoided whenever we wanted, was the sheer volume of people visiting Italy right now. Be prepared.