{"id":4739,"date":"2016-05-22T01:28:59","date_gmt":"2016-05-21T15:28:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/?p=4739"},"modified":"2026-05-12T07:41:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T06:41:45","slug":"travelling-in-taormina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/2016\/05\/22\/travelling-in-taormina\/","title":{"rendered":"Travelling In Taormina"},"content":{"rendered":"

You will do foolish things in life, but make sure you do them with enthusiasm <\/em><\/p>\n

\"Bellissimo
Bellissimo pebbles on the\u00a0Campeggio Paradise \u00a0beach<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

No more spectacular sights of the sun setting into the sea, but on Friday evening a full moon rose out of the ocean and created a lovely shimmering silver path across the sea to Eileen\u2019s back window.\u00a0 A glimmer of paradise.<\/p>\n

The wind died down at some point in the night and the sea stopped sounding quite so angry.\u00a0 When we woke up in the morning the sea sounded more like Neptune breathing; a deep low inhale and then a louder longer exhale.\u00a0 It\u2019s a wonderfully calming sound, especially when you can stand at Eileen\u2019s kitchen window and watch the rhythm in motion.<\/p>\n

\"Taormina
Taormina balcony<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

At 10am we set off to the bus stop and sheltered from the drizzly rain under the concrete of the autostrada.\u00a0 Now we know you should never accept lifts from strangers, especially on the island that heavily promotes the Mafia on tea towels, mugs, postcards and aprons, but\u2026..!\u00a0 A vehicle stopped, and the friendly driver asked us if we were going into Taormina and would we like a lift.\u00a0 His girlfriend \/ wife smiled nicely at us\u2026\u2026\u2026.so we climbed into the back seat.\u00a0 He turned out to be a very friendly local who spent most of the ten-minute drive quizzing us about average salaries and rental prices in Australia, translating our very vague answers to his passenger lady and then looking back at us in the back seat!!!\u00a0 We watched the road ahead for him.\u00a0 \u00a0As we entered Taormina, he pointed out numerous car-hire companies; he obviously thought we needed some wheels.<\/p>\n

\"Piazza
Piazza IX Aprile in Taormina<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"I'm
I’m not sure we’ll get Eileen down this road….<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"
Sicilian foodstall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Safely and very gratefully deposited in the centre of Taormina, grazie, molto grazie, grazie, thank you so very much, we ambled along the main Corso Umberto and embarked on a little window shopping.\u00a0 A caf\u00e9 drink, beside a steep staircase of a side lane, set us up for a very steep climb up a footpath to the Castello Saraceno which sits at the very top of the town.\u00a0 We managed to get all the way up there, in a shorter time than I anticipated when we had\u00a0initially looked up at it.\u00a0 We passed quite a few tourists coming back down, and apart from a few hellos and buongiornos, no-one said anything else.\u00a0 So quite frankly, I was a little bit peeved when we got to the gates of the castle to find them padlocked and long since derelict; the Saracens had left town. Dang and double dang, wish one of those tourists had warned us.\u00a0 We never thought to ask the tourist office if we might find it closed if we walked up there.\u00a0 At least there was a charming little grotto-like chapel, the Santuario Maria della Rocca, built into a cave near the top.\u00a0 That made the effort worthwhile, almost.\u00a0 Needless to say, on our way back down, we did warn the hikers who were dragging themselves up.<\/p>\n

\"
View over Taormina from the Santuario Maria della Rocca<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"View
View of the coastline south from the Santuario Maria della Rocca<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

With an appetite now building, we ate a late lunch, of three lamb chops each, sitting on the terrace of La Cisterna del Moro restaurant and enjoyed the view out to sea.\u00a0 Then we meandered our way back through town to the Greek \/ Roman amphitheatre.\u00a0 As ruins go, there is not a lot left standing apart from the main arc of the seating area and a modern stage being set up for future performances, but sitting in one of the rows gave you the most lovely views of the sea and, somewhere in the cloud, the top of Mount Etna.\u00a0 In fact, we sat there for quite a while, enjoying the warmth of the sun and soaking up the scenery, then we carried on further downhill to the lovely Parco Duca di Cesaro.\u00a0 The garden was created by Lady Florence Trevelyan who lived in Taormina in the late 19th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 She moved there after being \u2018invited\u2019 to leave Britain after allegedly having an affair with Edward VII, the then future British king.\u00a0 She settled in Taormina, marrying a local Italian, and she has certainly left behind a lovely\u00a0garden paradise.<\/p>\n

\"The
The stage in the Teatro Antico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The
The Teatro Antico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"View
View north to our campsite at Letojanni, from Teatro Antico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Taormina
Taormina wedding scene<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

We still had an hour to wait for the 7:10pm bus, so we sat ourselves outside a bar in the Piazza Pancrazio and watched the world, a parading wedding couple, evening shoppers and the gusty wind pass by.\u00a0 At the bus stop no-one offered us a lift to the campsite, so we caught the bus and enjoyed the crazy drive back down the hairpin bends to the main road.\u00a0 At one point another bus was coming up and our driver had already swung to the wrong side of the road to get around, resulting in a \u2018Mexican standoff\u2019.\u00a0 Finally, our driver backed up a bit, but stayed on the wrong side of the road and the bus coming up passed through the gap, followed by a number of cars, all on the wrong side of the road!!!\u00a0 Ah, these Italian drivers really are giving us a lot of laughs and we really must have a go at doing some diagonal parking when it should be parallel.\u00a0 You just poke the bonnet of the car in at a jaunty angle and it saves time doing a couple of \u2018back and forwards\u2019 to fit in the space and park properly.\u00a0 No one seems to care, but there are an awful lot of cars which are lacking in one, or more, rear corners.<\/p>\n

Taormina \u2026.\u2026.tick\u2026\u2026..<\/p>\n

\"Our
Our view of Baia dell Isola Bella from the bus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Mount
Mount Etna at sunset<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You will do foolish things in life, but make sure you do them with enthusiasm   No more spectacular sights of the sun setting into the sea, but on Friday evening a full moon rose out of the ocean and created a lovely shimmering silver path across the sea to Eileen\u2019s back window.\u00a0 A glimmer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4739"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8230,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739\/revisions\/8230"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}