Next stop: Taormina

We are off to a slow start, regretfully leaving the Hotel Algilá comfort and friendly staff. The weather seems a little brisker, but before noon we’re on our way north out of the city. Victor is at the wheel, and we watch, appalled, the bumper to bumper endless line of cars headed for the city, luckily going in the opposite direction. 

We enter the freeway, which heads up the coast past Catania to Taormina, with the great Etna cloaked in mists and only partly visible. Several times traffic slows to a halt, only to continue later as if nothing had happened. There are many long tunnels. The trip, which should have taken about 1 ½ hours, takes more than 2. We will later learn that Easter Monday "La Pasquetta" is a national holiday in Italy, devoted to going out with the family - most of which seem to have chosen Taormina as a destination! Finally we turn off the freeway and drive into Taormina, a warren of buildings high and low, old and under construction, clinging to the rocks. Our hotel, Villa Angela, is above the city after many, many tight hairpin turns. The GPS lady, “Kate”, is going crazy in her educated way, suggesting u-turn after u-turn, until we turn her off, relying on Google maps on the iPhone. Suddenly we’re there, at a great yellow structure hanging on the hill with a fabulous view of the volcano and of the sea. 

 We have rooms with balconies and sit in the sun sharing the rest of a bottle of Don Corleone, a not outstanding red wine – “probably made by mafiosos,” grumbles Oswaldo. Then we catch a shuttle down to the famed town center. We’re amazed when the narrow Corso Umberto I is filled to the brim with wandering tourists. “Like a subway exit,” declares Oswaldo. We’re hungry, though, and dive into a garden restaurant, “Il Ciclope." 

dedicated to an Italian/American translator and writer, Frances Winwar, who braved the Ellis Island experience (all this I get off my phone) to live in NY, go through 4 husbands, translate important Italian literature, and write her own historic romances. The woman who serves our table inspires confidence as well, deftly handling our orders, unperturbed by the (for Sicilians) weird 4.30pm lunch hour. Preceded by a great Aperol, 

we eat surprisingly well. I have homemade Gnocchi ai Funghi. 

Then we brave the crowds again, finding on the one side a church entrance swathed in pink tulle,

and on the other a spectacular view to the curve of azure sea, into which some unsettling white liquid seems to be gushing.

We will later learn it is mud from recent rain. They claim there is no pollution.

Then we’re pushing through the press of people again

until we must have an ice-cream, mine a combination of Nutella and Sicilian Flavor (i.e. w/pistachios). Victor is sticking to his no-carb diet when he can’t work out, and doesn’t have any. We begin to long for space and quiet and head back to where the hotel van will pick us up. Once back at the hotel I see a conservatively dressed gentleman having a coffee on the balcony, enjoying the view, and I suggest Oswaldo and I do the same. While I wait for him to return from our room, where he has gone to leave our things, a blue-blazered friend joins the man and they begin to chat. There is something familiar about their voices. Wait, they’re speaking in Danish! I go over and introduce myself as a fellow Dane, just in case they’d think they are speaking in all confidence. They find this amusing – “we’re talking state secrets here” - and tell me about their trip yesterday to Etna. Very cold, they warn me.Victor comes to our room to correct SAT essays on Oswaldo’s computer, while I try out the Jacuzzi in our bathroom. We have an early start tomorrow with our birthday boy, when a jeep will pick us up at 9am for an 8 hour excursion to Etna, followed by lunch and wine-tasting at a vineyard. We hope the mists will have cleared by tomorrow for his special birthday celebration.