Southern Italy & Sicily

Day 9 - Sorrento to Taormina

Saturday, 10 April 2004

Today we drove from Sorrento to Reggio di Calabaria, took the ferry to Messina, then down to Taormina. All parts of the trip were about 100% better than we expected and where told to expect. The traffic and the quality of the road on the A3 was fine considering the level of traffic.

We were passed by about 100 cars going well over 100 mph, but who cares.

The boys did well. we only stopped twice on the trip, for lunch and gas.

On the ferry Owen and I had some local rice and meat ball (which I now know is arancini) and met a cook who used to work in New York. He told us to be careful in Sicily, but only in Palermo, everyplace else was fine. Well, we only had to drive into Palermo to get a ferry to Naples, so it wasn’t a real worry.

The drive to the house we rented was easy as well. The only difficulty was figuring out which flat was ours as the neighbours had no clue. Luckily the owner’s staff appeared quickly and let us in. The place was small, homey and in a great location on on the point of land overlooking the beloved beach of Isola Bella, From here we could easily walk to either of the town’s two beaches.

Right outside the gate of the place was a lovely delicatessen whose owners spoke no English, but feed us beautifully for a week, literally filling our basket with just the ingredients for a perfect meal. It made the trip.

[ day 10 —Taormina ]