The Godfather Show

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We wake up an email from Ryan Air telling us that we need to check in on-line for our flight to Malta on Monday. This includes a reminder to print out our boarding passes, and that if we don't we'll need to pay a 50 Euro fee each to get them printed at the airport. This seems like an awful lot of money to print out a piece of paper; the fare was only 65 Euro each. Maybe this is how Ryan Air makes its money. We don't usually carry a printer with us in one of our suitcases, so we're not quite sure what to do. We look through the Ryan Air website and are relieved to find that they also accept electronic copies of the boarding passes. Our relief is shortlived; the fine print says that this only applies if you happen to be a citizen of the European Union. We ring Stefano, the owner of the apartment, who's the only person we know in Sicily, and fortunately he's happy to print them for us. Problem solved, although I'm still shaking my head; I'm fairly sure we could have bought a printer for less than Ryan Air's printing fee.

We set off for today's destination, which is the seaside town of Taormina about an hour and a half's drive north of Siracusa. It seems that half of Sicily has decided to come here today, and parking spots are at a premium. The restriction signs are only in Italian, so we can't understand any of them, although pictures of tow trucks next to empty spots suggest we probably should keep looking. We find a spot on the clifftop and start the long trek into town. The clifftop's littered with fancy hotels that look like they're dripping with money and wouldn't look out of place on the French Riviera. We wonder where the money comes from... well we did until we see a sign advertising "The Godfather Show", which probably probably provides some guidance as to the answer. A caption at the bottom that says it's "the show you can't refuse!". Hopefully we'll be safely in Malta by the time anyone realises that we didn't go.

First stop is the spectacular Giardini della Villa Communale, high on the clifftop overlooking the sea. Its features include a number of very unusual tower like structures, and a war memorial. It's very green, shady and peaceful, and the views from the promenade along the top of the cliff are excellent.

We walk on into the main part of the town and up into its ancient Greek theatre. We read that this was built in the third century BC, and was then later enhanced by the Romans. It's been further restored and added to in modern times, and they regularly hold concerts and other ceremonies here. Mount Etna is directly behind the stage and can be clearly seen smoking away in the distance. We assume that this was deliberate, and that the Greeks figured that if some of their shows got a bit boring the audience could at least amuse themselves by watching the smoke. The theatre's high on the hill, and the views along the coast in both directions are again stunning.

Taormina is very pretty. We have lunch in the main square, and then decide to spend the afternoon down on the beach opposite Isola Bella, a small offshore island that you can wade to from the beach. The views over it from the clifftop are mesmerising. Taormina's several hundred metres above the beach, so we're pleased to see that there's a cable car to take us down. As we approach the ticket counter the man inside puts up a sign saying that the cable car's just stopped running due to a "helicopter emergency". We're not at all sure what this means, but if it involves rapidly spinning rotors getting anywhere near the cable that holds up the car, we're happy to walk. It's very crowded down on the beach, but also very pleasant, and we rent a pair of sunlounges and an umbrella, and settle in for an afternoon of relaxing.

We've noticed that the vast majority of people here in Sicily are Italian, but with two notable exceptions. Just about everyone who looks like they're African or Indian is male and a street vendor, and everyone who's Asian is female and a masseur. This leaves us wondering whether there'll shortly be a proliferation of mixed race babies in Sicily, but we're distracted from thinking too much about this by the constant and insistent approaches of middle aged Asian ladies offering us massages. They all carry the same pamphlets in Italian and English explaining how the massage will tap into all of our body's pressure points. This seems to be a very organised operation, as does the street vendor enterprise offering an endless supply of either sunglasses and hats, or umbrellas, depending on the weather. We sense a challenge to the traditional Don Corleone way of doing things. We wonder what the "families" might do if the street vendors and masseurs start to tread on their territory, which might possibly be a good subject for the next Godfather movie.

Issy signs up for a massage with a friendly Asian lady whose name is Lisa. She says that it was good but not long enough.

The sun starts to disappear behind the cliff, so we trudge back up the hill to our car. It's now nearly dark. Driving on the motorway was challenging enough in daylight; doing it in the dark introduces a whole new level of difficulty. People seem to drive at a very diverse range of speeds. We pass cars dawdling along in the right lane at about 50 kilometres per hour, but we're then overtaken by a motorbike that must be doing close to 250. The left hand lane is strictly only for overtaking, and most cars that roar past us seem to be doing somewhere around 150 to 200. It's harder to tell how quickly they're coming at you in the dark. If you get in the left lane and don't get back quickly enough, you're in a world of trouble. The person charging up behind you at warp speed generally flashes their headlights at you from about a car length away leaving you temporarily blinded. Interestingly, as they do this they usually have their left hand indicator on, this seemingly being one of the rare times that indicators are used here.

We're keen to celebrate our safe arrival back in Oritigia with a dinner down by the waterfront. We pass spruikers standing outside restaurants trying to coax us in, and they inevitably speak to us in English. We wonder how they can possibly know just by looking at us that this is our native language; it's not as if we've got Union Jacks or Kangaroos tattooed on our foreheads. We can't tell just by looking at people whether they're Italian, or German, or Russian, or French, or from Uzbekistan. We conclude that this must be a special secret skill that's only taught at spruiker school.

Issy is engrossed in the menu. She senses a person standing next to our table, and assumes that it must be the waiter, so she tells him that she'll have a whiskey with ice and Coke Zero. She then looks up to see that he's a now very confused looking street vendor trying to sell her a bunch of roses.

The cashier sounds exactly like Marlon Brando did in The Godfather, and we fear that horse's heads and concrete shoes are still alive and well here in Sicily. We hope that no one from any of the families reads this before we're safely in Malta. I begin to wonder whether we will be safe in Malta. I think I can feel another restless night coming on.

Today has been excellent; Taormina was a real highlight.

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Photos

View from Giardini della Villa Communale
Mount Etna is smoking away in the background

Massage on the beach
I don't think Lisa is trying to strangle Issy