Southern Italy & Sicily
Day 10 - Taormina (Easter Sunday)
Sunday, 11 April 2004
Today was Easter Sunday.
Unbelievably, the Easter Bunny remembered we were on holiday and brought along candy to hide for the boys! What a time they had.
The first day we spent exploring itself. We were staying just below the town, which is on the top of a huge cliff and had to take the funicular up. The boys loved it.
Taormina is a lovely town that is full of tourists and high-end shops. It is really very long, with a single main street, but several sections that wander off. Everything was jammed with people. The grocery store was all the way at the other end of town, so a good reason to explore.
Locals loved the boys and kept stopping to play. We found a place with wonderful cannolis and bread and other cookies. Quite a few stores to come back to, and a square (Piazza IX Aprile on Corso Umberto) towards the far side of down with buskers and people selling children’s toys. We spent a long time there with the boys listening to music and watching old ladies feed the pigeons.
Of course, no visit is complete without a visit to the Greek Theater (Teatro Greco) which dominates the skyline from the sea and has fantastic views of Mount Etna as the backdrop. The boys loved climbing around. Owen sat and listened to a few tour guides and we left him alone (but within 50 yards) and both times, after the guide finished members of the party came running over to Owen and tried to talk to him, fearing that he was abandoned or just to say ‘hello’. Owen hated the attention and both times started crying, adding to the panic. We had to swoop in and save the day.
After the Theater we went food shopping and then to one of the two beaches with the boys. It was a lovely closed harbor that had a few tourist boats that were all taking the day off. We found a nice patch of sand, near the boats, but that you didn’t have to pay for (most beaches are what they call Lido, where they are maintained by a resort and you have to pay a little something to sit — but often not the best with kids, the upset the paying customers and usually have to leave for some reason or another within ten minutes).
The water was cold, but we played in it a little. We mostly dug and climbed around on the rocks and rock pools at the cove’s edge. It was a lovely time.
In the evening, before dinner our neighbour, who spoke no English passed me a handful of herbs to cook with — mint, basil and parsley, all growing in pots on his patio. How lovely. I have to say, the place seemed to be filled with older people, but how friendly were they. We couldn’t look and act more like tourists, but everyone was looking out for us. There was even a man on the beach who told me to make sure the kid’s sunglasses were real glass because of the UV…