Blogs from Sicily, Italy, Europe - page 9

Sunday March 25, 2018 - Of course it’s hard to go to sleep early on a Saturday night, even when you’re just home preparing for your trip. And of course you haven’t finished preparing for your trip because somehow you never learn. So you find yourself still awake at 11pm, knowing you have to get up at 4am AND daylight savings time starts that night, taking away yet another precious hour. So of course you wake up at 3:30 and can’t go back to sleep. I was on the tram by 5:14, waited 15 minutes for the bus to the airport and hungrily devoured all of the “driving in Sicily” materials I could get my hands on before I left. I was moderately terrified of driving abroad, and here I was starting in Sicily. Crazypants. I ... read more

We spent the past weekend homebound, as on Saturday we were recovering from our all-day outing to Agrigento the day before; and on Sunday the weather was positively wretched, with rain showers, wind and chilly temperatures throughout the day. So when we awoke to clear skies this morning, we were anxious to relieve our “cabin fever”. Our goal was to walk a section of Taormina we’d not yet explored, and then to stop by the tour agency office to see if it might be possible to arrange for a last-minute excursion to Mt. Etna before we leave. Unfortunately, the agency has not received enough reservations to satisfy its minimum requirements to conduct the tour. Just below the Corso Umberto stands the 14th century Palazzo Duchi di Santo Stefano, a masterpiece of Sicilian gothic architecture, with characteristic ... read more

Today we had arranged for guided tours of Palermo and Cefalù, cities that are the repositories of many Sicilian architectural and artistic treasures, including several of the most celebrated examples of Byzantine and Arab mosaics scattered throughout the island of Sicily. Both of these cities lie on the western side of the island, so the distances to be traveled from our base in Taormina required more than 6 hours in a tour bus; and a long, 13-hour-day from start to finish. We made it to the pick-up point at the Taormina bus terminal by 7 AM, where our 12-seat-capacity tour bus, driver and guide met us in short order. After a couple of stops on the way out of town to pick-up a few more passengers, we drove south toward Catania via Sicily’s superhighway system, where ... read more

After a late-morning start, our first order of business today was to walk from our apartment to the public bus terminal on the other side of town, where we'll be taking several excursions next week. The tours depart at 7 AM, and our concern is whether we can manage to reach the station, which is about a mile away, in time to catch the bus. In fact, it turned out to be a longer and slower "slog" than anticipated, with several stretches of roadway without sidewalks, and it took us more than 30 minutes to reach the station. So we'll probably need to arrange for taxis on those days. From the bus station we continued walking to reach the Villa Comunale (Parco Duca di Cesarò), a beautiful public garden created by Lady Florence Trevelyan in the ... read more

Our 78-day journey began shortly before noon yesterday, as we flew from Daytona Beach (via Atlanta) to JFK in New York, where we boarded an overnight flight to Rome. The final flight from Rome to Catania, Sicily, touched down around 2:00 PM local time today, with a pre-arranged taxi service driving us the last 40 miles or so to our final destination in Taormina. With four separate legs to begin this odyssey, the connections in JFK and Rome were a little tricky, but all went well---even my lovely companion, aka "Airport Anxiety Annie" (see Dee's comments below), managed to stay on an even keel throughout the airport ordeals. Security screening was a breeze in Daytona, thanks to TSA Pre Check, and in Rome we were able to take advantage of a fast-track security check through Alitalia ... read more