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Published: January 30th 2007
Why did we choose Sicily? It was actually because the flights were really cheap so we thought "why not?".
We had read about the place just before booking the tickets and it sounded really nice, but after that we didn't worry at all, so a month later when we landed in Palermo we didn't really know where to go - we forgot our travel guide at home (very smart!).
We got ripped off by a taxi driver who charged us 50 Euros to take us to the hotel (it should have cost 30 Euros) and the hotel was only 5 min from the airport as it was stated on the website. Needless to say we were feeling a bit annoyed on our first morning (mainly Axe).
We went back to the airport to rent a car and finally start our holiday. We were on the west side of the Island but had heard from people that the East side is much nicer so we drove to the other side of Sicily, which only took a couple of hours.
The first city we saw was Catania. What an experience! It's a big city and the traffic is absolutely crazy. There is
Dionisio
Made to keep prisoners captured in battles and due to the accustic Dionisio could hear everything the prisoners said from the top. no such thing as trafic signs or traffic order in general. There are cars coming from everywhere, motorbikes with 4 people on it and cars parked in the middle of the street - no need to spend hours looking for parking when you can just stop right there!! We decided to not stay in Catania and look for somewhere else.
We drove all day on our first day, and were starting to wonder what we were going to do for six days, when we finaly came across Siracusa.
Siracusa is a beautiful city - the old, historical part of it. There is quite a lot of historical monuments and sites to see from when the Greeks had invaded Sicily. Because it was in the middle of winter when we went there the place was a bit quiet, it was hard to find a restaurant open to have a meal, but in a way it was nice to have the place almost to ourselves.
After two days in Siracusa we dicided to move on as we didn't have much more to do there. At that point we new where to go as we had finally bought a Travel Guide, so we
headded to Taormina.
Taormina is the most turistique place in Sicily after Mount Etna.
On our way to Taormina we went to Mount Etna on the South Side. It's an amazing place. It gets to a certain altitude where there are lava rocks on the side of the road and nothing else. It felt like we were driving on a complete different planet. The last time that Etna erupted, in 2001, it almost destroid the ski resort on the south side. You can see the freshness of the lava rocks right there, the colour is more vibrant than on the lower part of the mount.
We spent three days in Taormina and in one of the days we went visit the north side of Mount Etna. That side was more alive, with people coming to ski and children playing with tobogans. We had lots of fun just walking in the snow and kind of getting ourselves excited about our snow trip in March.
Taormina is a beautiful place built on a hill and also with quite a lot of history from when the Greeks were in Sicily.
On our last day we left Taormina quite early and drove along the
Port of Siracusa
Siracusa is one of the most important Ports for Sicily coast up north all the way around Sicily back to the west side. Our flight was at 9 PM so we took our time. We stoped in Cefalu, a beautiful fisherman's village. Apparently quite a lot of tourist come to Cefalu in Summer.
One more trip finnished, one more place crossed out of the map.
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