Day 3: 6/11/24

 Day 3 - our first full day in Italy.

Location: Taromina

Mike and I are roomies again, just like in 2013 and coincidentally, again in Sicily. 

As usual, we had to engineer the first day at our destination since our bodies felt like we had pulled all-nighters after inadequate sleep on the flight across the Atlantic. 

Alitalia must have had open seats in business class because I received three emails before the departure inviting me to submit a bid. Mike put in a bid and they accepted it. His report is that is was nice, but not worth the money. Getting your seat to go horizontal is nice, but as with any seat that converts to a bed, there were still lumps. The strategy moving forward is to put in a low bid and if they take it - bonus!

We ended up starting to nod off on Monday around 7:30pm and we were in bed and asleep before it was dark! A couple of wild and crazy guys! 

We must have been pretty tired because we both got us up around 4:30-5:30am (10:30-11:30am EDT), about 8 solid hours. 

I've commented before that Europeans know how to do breakfasts and the spread at today's hotel put me at risk of hurting myself.

I asked Mike to get in this picture for context but the table goes far beyond where he was standing.

As you might expect, we were there at opening time since we had already been up a couple of hours and were getting hangry. We were the the first and only ones there. As people began to trickle in, it is fun to guess who is on the bike trip at the first breakfast. One couple sat next to us, Tom and Deb, and since Deb had a Trek water bottle, it wasn't hard to guess they were bikers. We had a nice conversation with them.

Here's picture of the hotel that Mike took from the pool level. It looks much nicer from this view.

The tower on the right is the elevator shaft. It took a while to get used to the fact that the lobby was on the 8th floor and the rooms were on lower number floors, so rather than going up to your room, you go down and to leave the hotel, you go up.

This morning, VBT arranged for us to have a walking tour with a local guide. Although we had already walked around the village it was nice to hear a commentary.

This is Paola, a local guide, knowledgeable and friendly. Not surprisingly, she is fluent in multiple languages: at least Italian, Spanish, French, and obviously English. She said she does two to three full tours per day (ours was a shorter, orientation tour). She said she prefers working with North Americans and prefers not to work with Italians and other Europeans. I was curious because I hadn't seen many international tourists yet.

When she talked about Sicily being a society of immigrants, the sociologist in me wanted to know about current immigration patterns. She said it was the same as in the US. But she also said that Sicily was a waypoint for immigrants who usually have their sights set on Germany of the UK so in that respect it's not the same. 

Our first stop on Mike's list of things to see was Castelmola, a town above Taromina. We took a cab up to the town and walked around. 

Here's a view of Taromina. You really don't get a sense of the elevation from pictures.

Here's Mt. Etna in the distance. We'll be riding up to the summit tomorrow.

Our tour guide told us that Castelmola had adopted this as their symbol. 

It was a small and quieter town than Taromina and one of the sights that caught our attention as unusual was a public works project in progress.

Because Sicily rises abruptly out of the sea, much of town is cut into the rock walls and there needs to be fortification to keep the rocks from falling and crushing people and buildings. We saw a couple of crews installing nets made of metal cables into the rock face. 

In this first pictures, they are using a drill to make holes for anchors. It was really loud.

Here's another crew and while I don't remember exactly what they were doing, notice that the guy on the top is not wearing a harness and tethered to a rope. 

We walked around the village and found a restaurant away from the main square and with a view.

The first day in a town usually involves wandering around in addition to destinations. Here are a few things that were interesting.

Like many old cities, Taromina was probably walled at some point and there were gates that marked entry. There were two gates at either end of the main road. This picture is actually the clock tower that was in the middle of the city but the gates actually looked like this.

The climate allows for year-round outdoor plantings.

This car actually works because sometimes it would be in the main square and sometimes it would be elsewhere. Since it's engine is in the rear, the front hood opened up to be a puppet theatre set.

The next stop was a cable car that went down to the beach. There were eight pods, four at each end of the cable so they would load and unload four at the top and four at the bottom at the same time and then run them to the other station. Here we're going down and the others are going up.

It was important which pod you were in. Going down we were in the second or third pod, so looking up and looking down all you could see was the next pod.

Going back up to Taromina, I chose the last pod so we would have a clear look down to the beach.

The destination at the beach was Isola Bella. It is a small island that was purchased by an eccentric British woman who built a house on it then donated. So many burnt bodies!

The island is connected to the mainland by a pathway of gravel and sand and the water was ankle deep when we crossed over. The waves came up to our knees. I was hoping the tide was not coming in!

 Which way to the beach?

This is the view back to the mainland.

Of course, we weren't completely prepared so we spent a lot of time brushing the sand off our our feet before getting our shoes back on. It was a good spot for street hawkers selling cheap chinese sandels.

The house was was built into the rocks and with the rocks.

I guess this was supposed to be a pool or a koi pond.

Our last stop of the day was the Municiple Garden that was right by our hotel. Mike took this picture of the hedge with these flowers and a huge succulent behind. 

The garden was originally owned by an eccentric woman who built a birdhouse. And the structure is life-sized and not scaled-down to be bird-sized.

We looked for the place that our tour guide recommended for dinner but weren't impressed with the menu. We ended up across the street at a nicer place with a nice view of the street and passersby. 

We noticed a couple of cyclists on mountain bikes and Mike got a picture of them as they rode away.

When we left the restaurant, we passed a roadie but he didn't speak English.

Many European towns prioritize walking and small vehicles and this was typical - small enough for scooters and motorbikes, barely enough room for a car, rarely enough for two to pass, so what's left for pedestrians is a small sliver of gutter.

Here's the view from our hotel balcony as it's getting dark. Today we actually stayed up past sunset!