Sicily: Mt. Etna and Taormina (Oct. 29)

Sometimes a taste of a place is enough to convince you that someday you must go back for a full meal. 

I feel that way about Sicily, and not just because of the cannoli and gelato that I gleefuly consumed during the course of our tour.  (It’s a little-known fact that food eaten during the last couple of days of vacation is effectively calorie-free – just the type of travel tip that makes this blog so valuable.)

Azamara offered a wide range of tours here, but the one that stood out for me  involved visiting Mt. Etna and Taormina. 

As a crossword constructor, visiting Mt. Etna was something of a pilgrimage.  “ETNA” proves remarkably useful as fill if you can’t come up with something better.  (ETNA and OSSA are the two mountains you must know as a solver; I’m happy to say I’ve never had to use OSSA as a constructor and would like to keep it that way.)

It turns out that Etna looks much better in real life than in a crossword.  My first view of it came upon glancing out the window this morning – it towers mightily but not menacingly behind the port of Catania.  At first I thought the peak was in the clouds, but the smoke at that top was just that:  smoke.

I say Etna isn’t menacing because, according to our guide, Etna’s eruptions don’t send lava and boulders hurtling into the air and down hillsides.  They’re more of an insidious ooze, capable of causing great property damage but generally not life-threatening. 

Mt. Etna tends to split at the seams rather than busting out all over.  Eruptions rarely occur in the same place twice; subsidiary craters are found all around the mountain. 

We visited one of them, Crateri Silvestri, which erupted in 1986.  The surrounding area is nearly barren – 40 years isn’t enough time for life to come back. It’s a monochrome moonscape of fine black sand and modest lava boulders, hauntingly beautiful in its starkness.  From 2000 meters up, the vista extends all the way to the coast; I can’t share that vista with you because, as usual, the sun was directly in front of the shot. 

If you head up Etna’s slopes, keep in mind that the temperature at 2000 meters will be markedly colder than at sea level.  I tend to run hot and was fine without a jacket, but almost everyone else had sweaters (jumpers, actually; most of them were British or Australian) or mid-weight coats.

Taormina is an ancient town – settlements on the site date back nearly 3000 years.  It’s long drawn artists and writers, and it’s easy to see why.  Perched 250 meters above the sea, Taormina offers expansive views of the coast all the way to Naxos, the first Greek settlement on the island. 

Apparently it was founded by people from the Greek island of Naxos, who established a time-honored tradition by unimaginatively adopting the same name for their new commune.  (Think New York, Nova Scotia (at least they classed it up with some Latin), etc.

As so often in this part of the world, history is everywhere, thrumming from the softly gleaming, centuries-old churches, the mountaintop citadel, the stepped lanes and alleys, and an ancient Greek amphitheater.  Some of that history is modern; the Four Seasons Taormina was where the second season of The White Lotus was filmed.

Not surprisingy, Taormina was saturated with tourists – so many, in fact, that I skipped the amphitheater for fear of getting trampled by the legions heading in the same direction. 

I won’t say “seen one ancient amphitheater, seen them all” – though I doubt anyone has uttered those exact words — but having visited the extraordinary ones in Ephesus and Pompeii, I didn’t feel bad about not completing the hat trick.

Even without the amphitheater, Taormina’s main avenue teems with memorable images:  graceful balconies, vivid flowers, picturesque alleys, and colorful store displays. 

It would be a lovely place to spend several days.

Sicily has so much to offer that I didn’t get to see, including  the ruins in Siracusa and the markets and monumental buildings of Palermo, for starters. 

For afters – I’ve been surrounded by Brits for much of the past two weeks – I would willingly embark on an in-depth assessment of all the gelato places!)  I’d love to return one day and do the island justice.

Speaking of food (again?! I hear you exclaim), I received an invitation to dine last night with Rafael, the ship’s Business Operations Manager and his wife Monique, along with two lovely couples from Australia whom I hadn’t yet met.  This nearly three-hour affair, where we swapped travel tales, ate wonderful food, and drank wines of a price I normally wouldn’t consider, was a perfect end to yet another terrific day.