Blogs from Sicily, Italy, Europe - page 12

There‘s no water coming out of the taps in our room, so I trek down to reception to have breakfast and to tell the receptionist about the water. I hope she doesn't try to bite my arm off. Fortunately it’s a different receptionist and this one even seems moderately friendly. She‘s very apologetic and tells me that the water will be back on again shortly. Issy’s asked me to bring her back a whole fruit. She doesn't specifically say that she wants a watermelon but I don't ask for clarification just in case. This morning we‘ve decided to head over to the neighbouring island of Vulcano to scale its 500 metre high mountain peak. It seems that this is also an active volcano, which I suspect we probably should have been able to work out from ... read more

Today we travel to Lipari, which is one of the Aeolian Islands off the north coast of Sicily. As we pack I again notice that there's a tin on the desk in our room; when we arrived here Issy told me that it was full of tobacco. I ask her if she wants to take it with her. I'm not sure why; she doesn't smoke. I open it, and find two lollies in the bottom. It seems that she told me it was full of tobacco so that I wouldn't open it and find her secret stash, which she's now nearly finished eating. I'm clearly blindly trusting of her. She says that she can't believe that she made me believe that the hotel had given us a tin of tobacco, which now that I think about ... read more

We don't always write blogs about our holidays, and it was not something that even entered my thoughts until this evening but I do feel inspired, perhaps it's the wine and food, or the relaxation after a very busy time at work and training for my next challenge but here it goes. Yesterday started with a very early alarm at 03:45 to get ready for the taxi only 45 minutes later. Luckily we had booked to fly Alitalia rather than BA (for those that are reading later this was the weekend where BA's IT systems crashed causing all flights to be cancelled). However when we got to Rome we had to high tail round to get our connecting flight just having time to grab a quick bite to eat. This was when we hit our first ... read more

Today we have to farewell our wonderful hostess. It has been a delight staying here at Rustico San Leonardo, the name of our apartment. It has been well designed with great outdoor seating where we have breakfast each morning or drinks and nibbles late afternoon. Our hostess has been more than generous. With her lack of English and our lack of Italian we had a very happy relationship. The daughter was a great help when she visited. Our three days were not enough but we felt sorry for those who arrived late afternoon and then prepared to leave on an early flight next morning from the nearby airport. We are sure they didn’t appreciate their stay as we have. We have a long drive across Northern Sicily to Milazzo. If we drive the toll road the ... read more

Geo: 37.9325, 14.0873Time Check: 1755Location: Castelbuono: The Relais Santa AnastasiaPosition: "FLOPPED" Having just guzzled 2 Moretti Beers in about 6 seconds after a mammooth 300km/6 hour drive from Castelmola to Castelbuono involving mile after mile of hairpin bends and spectacularly bad driving from the locals. The highways department must have been on LSD when planning the road systems. Sure they have had to negotiate tricky terrain that is mostly mountainous and descends rapidly to narrow coastal flats........but there seems to be a plethora of roads that go nowhere........ cobbled dead ends and crazy switch-back junctions involving "plasma bag" popping turnouts! .....trash lorries coming head on at high speed with oblivious and bonkers moped drivers overtaking on blind corners! Absolutely no road discipline whatsoever! In the last two days I have ... read more