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Published: April 22nd 2010
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Saturday, April 3, we woke up fully rested after our long night of sleep, ready to see Mount Etna—Europe’s largest volcano! Neither of us knew too much about it, except before I left Tours my host family had me watch the French equivalent of a Bill Nye the Science Guy episode about Etna, which was mostly about the science behind volcanoes.
We ate our hotel’s breakfast and attempted to check out with a man who spoke no English whatsoever before standing outside our hotel, waiting for some sort of vehicle that we would hopefully be able to identify as belonging to the Etna Tour we signed up for. Luckily, we were only there for about five minutes before a large white van pulled up with Etna written on the side. The driver got out of the van—he was a large Sicilian man, exactly how you would picture one—kind of like the giant on the Princess Bride, with brown curly hair, light blue eyes, and skin that looked like it had spent a few too many years in the sun. He was really nice and spoke English decently well (the best we had experienced so far in Sicily). We picked up
a few other people to go on the tour with us and then started our climb up the volcano.
He took us to the sites of the volcano flows of 1978, 1971, and 2002, and we also went cave diving in a lava cave, as well as a short hike up to a beautiful viewpoint. It was a trip well worth while, and on our way back down our guide even helped us go to the different bus companies and figure out how to get to Giardini Naxos, the next town we were staying in that was supposedly on the beach a little north of Catania. When we found out the next bus wasn’t leaving for another hour, he also took us to the train station and we found a train that was going there, leaving in 20 minutes!
We thanked him profusely and then went to buy our train tickets (for about 2 euro—sweet!) and then realized we had no idea where to go from the little room we had bought the ticket in. The person who sold us the ticket must have seen our confusion because she pointed to another woman who had just bought a
ticket and told us “follow her.” So we followed this woman who spoke no English but was giving us grand gestures that we should follow her and punch our tickets, etc.
After about an hour train ride, we showed up at the Giardini Naxos train station, where we had assumed we could buy a map to find our way to our hotel, since it was supposed to be close. You can imagine our surprise when we stepped off the train and realized that the train station had absolutely nothing in it. Luckily, there were cabs right out front, so we asked if they could take us to our hotel, to which they responded yes, but it was close and any taxi ride in the city costs 10 euro. We decided that despite it being close, there was no way we could find it ourselves, never mind the fact we would be lugging our suitcases behind us on a mildly busy road with no shoulder…so we forked over the ten euro and arrived at our hotel approximately 90 seconds later, after one turn. Whoops.
When we first got out of the cab, we found ourselves standing in front of
a little bread and breakfast type place…I can’t even begin to describe our first impressions of this place—we thought it was on the beach, but it was slightly inland from a mildly rocky shore, and also the name was something in Italian, and I had had the English translation written down, so we weren’t even sure if we had the right place.
A nice little Sicilian man greeted us and seemed to have been expecting us—we asked if we were at the right place, showing him my itinerary of the whole trip I had typed out, and pointing to the name of the hotel. He nodded and took my piece of paper (which turned out to be a project to convince him to give it back to me…) and took us to the front desk, where he had my name written down on some scratch piece of paper saying that he was indeed expecting me. He then took us up to our room, insisting that we left our suitcases in the lobby (why!?!? We just had to carry them up ourselves later…) and told us that he was going to give us the most beautiful room that he had.
It was very pretty, with nicely decorated walls and paintings of beautiful scenes around Sicily, and we even had our own porch!
Him trying to show us around the room was kind of hilarious because he spoke next to no English, and we already knew the ins and outs of how a hotel room worked. Despite this, he showed us where the towels were in the bathroom, how to use the heat, and how to use the TV. (How to use the TV: press on. Channels 1 through 7 are Italian. 8 is English. 9 is French. 10 is Spanish. He said this and then proceeded to point to the number one on the remote, look at me, and say, “Italian.” Then he pointed to number two, said “two. Italian.” He did this all the way through 7, saying Italian each time. So unnecessary.)
After settling into our room, we went up to Taormina, the town that was pretty much just up the cliff from Giardini Naxos. We took a terrifying bus ride to the top, with hairpin turns where the driver would have to honk before going around them, and forcing the cars going the opposite direction
to back up if he couldn’t make the turn. Once we got to Taormina, we quickly found the famous, beautiful amphitheater there that was built around 3 BC. We got there about 30 minutes before closing, so the woman at the ticket booth was nice and told us we could be 18 for the day and get in for free! We took the most beautiful pictures and saw Etna from a distance before finding a delicious pizza dinner and heading back down to our B&B and watching Mrs. Doubtfire before bed.
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Mom
non-member comment
Stunning!
Your touring sounds wonderful, and the scenery looks stunning! Glad you're having so much fun! Love, Mom