12 Hours in Sicily

Well, it was an early start to catch the 7am high-speed Catamaran to Sicily for my 'excursion.' I was up at 4:30am, left the hotel just before 6am (the shuttle was about fifteen minutes late picking me up), through customs and onto the ferry by 6:15am.

High-speed catmarans are really fast, and we got to Pozallo, Sicily just after 9am. First stop was a cafe where we could pick up some breakfast. Now I'd grabbed some tea and a yummy chocolate-cinnammon pastry on the ferry, but I decided that since I was in Italy, I had to have a cappucino, even though I stopped drinking coffee nearly a year ago. It was so good! I had more sweets with my cappucino (I'd heard that Italians like sweet breakfasts, and there wasn't anything else to choose from).

We left Pozallo for the 2.5 hour bus ride north to Taormina on double-decker buses. Taormina is a little town perched high up on the cliffs overlooking the sea and mainland Italy. It's reached by a narrow, winding road that has been built out over the cliffs, and part way up, tour buses and tourist cars have to park and take a shuttle service to the town. It's a beautiful little town (hence the masses of tourists that go there), and one of the highlights was seeing the Greco-Roman theatre there. This whole area of Sicily was settled by Greeks, and their slaves built the theatre. Then the Romans used it for Gladiator events, and I believe it is still in use today for concerts.

After ice cream and shopping in Taormina, we got back on the bus and drove to Mount Etna, which towers over northeast Sicily. I was hoping we'd get to see the currently active crater, but it's on the other side of the volcano from where we were. That might be for the best, because tourists can be kind of stupid sometimes. It turns out the tourist area was right near the action in the 2001 and 2002 eruptions. It's amazing to see the lava from old eruptions snaking down the sides of the mountain. Here and there are the ruins of houses that were destroyed by the lava.

I had some Italian pizza at Mount Etna, then at 6pm it was back on the bus for the 2.5 hour drive back to Pozallo. We took a different route back, and it was so beautiful. Southeast Sicily is incredibly picturesque.

The ferry left at 9:30pm, and we arrived back in Malta just after 11pm. It made for a very long day, but I got four passport stamps out of it (leaving Malta, arriving in Italy, leaving Italy, and arriving in Malta), plus it was really cool to see Sicily.

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Part of trip: Malta 2005

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