February 3-5, 2017
Taormina is a gorgeous place. That’s to be expected, I guess, because it is a small city on a mountainside largely dependent on tourism for its living.
I wouldn’t be surprised if even now, in the off season, half the people in town are visitors.
Some of the hotels and restaurants are closed, perhaps for the season, but even so, nothing is crowded.
You can get terrific views of Etna from many parts of town. From our balcony, for instance. The seats of the ancient Greek theater look towards it.
There are ancient piazzas placed to show off the mountain and the Mediterranean.
The hotel serves breakfast in a restaurant on the sixth floor. It looks out onto Etna, which is constantly sending out clouds of steam and what may be small puffs of dark smoke.
All morning, people (including us) stand up at their tables from time to time to snap photos.
A local wine, Etna rosso, is made from grapes grown in the volanic soil of the mountain. A nice mouth-filling flavor. There are also Etna rosato and Etna bianco, but I haven’t tried them.
We got to Taormina without too much trouble. We left the Hotel Continental in Reggio around 9 and walked downhill less than a quarter mile to the ferry terminal.
The ferry ride takes 35 minutes. Google gave me walkng directions to the train station, which was supposed to be less than a kilometer away.
Which way to start was a problem because we couldn’t see any street names. So we took a taxi, way overpriced at 10 euro.
I didn’t mind the overcharge as much as the driver’s pain-in-the-ass arguments about why we should pay him 80 euro, no, 75, no 70, to take us to our hotel in Taormina. He wouldn’t shut up. At one point I started to get out of the cab.
I wanted to ride the train and I hate having to say no more than twice. It was a short ride, though, so we got rid of him fast.
Our train arrived on time on the platform right next to the station, so there was no lugging bags up or down stairs this time.
The ride took about 40 minutes, past the seaside on one hand and steep hills on the other. The countryside is covered by cactus, palms, tall columnar cedars, and other evergreens that spread like canopies.
The shore is rocky and many places are identified with episodes of the “Odyssey.”
Three rocky islands near Capri are the haunt of the Sirens. Sicily claims the Cyclops. Scylla and Carybdis are somewhere in the Straits of Messina.
We got to the Taormina station and walked onto the street. We had walking directions, about a kilometer and a quarter to the hotel. Of course there were no road signs in sight.
I was pretty sure which way was northeast, and since this was the only road running past the station, it was likely to be the one we wanted, Via Nazionale/SS114.
We walked a short way and saw a sign pointing the general direction of Taormina. So far, so good.
Next we had to find Via Madonna delle Grazie, which would bring us within a few feet of our hotel, the Villa Paradiso on Via Roma.
We asked a lady at a bus stop for directions. She wasn’t sure where to find the via. Then Joanna noticed an empty taxi parked by the curb.
The driver was waiting on the other side of the road. How much? 20 euro. I didn’t complain. Didn’t have much choice. He knew the way and we didn’t.
It was the best 20 bucks I’ve spent in a long time. That kilometer and a quarter? Straight up.
I lost count of the switchbacks, and they were tight turns.
We saw the top end of Madonna delle Grazie from the hotel balcony. The road is so steep and narrow that it has steps in the middle.
We were supposed to climb it for 850 meters. The hotel sits maybe 200 meters above sea level. If I’m overestimating and the rise is only 150 meters, that’s still a grade of more than 15 percent.
Even without bags, I wouldn’t want to try walk.
So don’t trust Google to make sense.
We got here early in the afternoon and went searching for the Greek theater shortly after we checked in.
We followed the direction of one sign, but missed another and went too far, though one of the old city gates.
I wasn’t sure where we were on the map, but could see that if we were going to find a theater, we had to turn right. We did and what found instead is a small Anglican church created decades ago by British ex-pats.
It made me think of a movie, “Tea With Mussolini.”
I’m writing this on Monday morning, and the food is all so good here (except for squid stuffed with broccoli rapa) that I can’t remember which meal we had Friday night.
I think the place was called Angelo, and it’s on the Corso Umberto I. That’s where I discovered Etna rosso.
We ran into Umberto I almost three years ago. He was assassinated in 1900 and is entombed at the Pantheon in Rome.
It was on the way back to the Villa Paradiso that we saw that “Teatro Antico” sign.
We followed that the next morning, and found the theater at the peak of the hill, where it was carved out by the Greeks who settled this place. Time and the Romans have made quite a few changes in the place.
Some of the columns of the proscenium are still standing. The large central arch has collapsed to create a framed view of Etna.
The theater is still used. Some of the stone seats have been restored and wooden bleachers have been installed in the upper half of the cavea, the place where the audience sits.
I think they have held a film awards ceremony in the place, and maybe still do. There may be musical performances, too.
We started at the top and worked down. It’s particularly interesting because of the great views you can get from many points.
We were walking around the stage area and could hear people speaking in the upper tiers. The acoustics are that good.
We stopped for lunch at Piazza Badia right by Santa Catarina’s church on the Corso Umberto. I had some grilled vegetables and Joanna had eggplant parmagiana.
They didn’t call it that, but that’s what it is in New Jersey. And it was the best I’ve had.
We wound up going back to the same place for dinner because I found later that I had walked away with the signed credit card receipt, the one that the restaurant needs.
We shared spaghetti with swordfish, and followed that with chicken and mushroom (which was a little sweet and tough).
Sunday we walked the Corso to the duomo. There is no bar there named for a church, only a restaurant, and we weren’t ready for a meal.
The cathedral church is named for St. Nicholas, who has been adpoted by the Italians as one of their own, after his relics were stolen from Byzantium by Crusaders in the 13th century and brought to the Italian city of Bari.
It’s very old, very spare, and one of the most striking things there is a Byzantine style painting of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. It is covered with decoration, but the faces are missing.
I haven’t been able to find out why. The piece could be a thousand years old, for all I know. A lot of invaders have looted a lot of churches in all that time. Maybe this is one of them.
I was feeling very thirsty after walking the full length of the Corso, so we stopped for some water, and to wash it down, I had an espresso and a Danish strong ale called Ceres, which was terrific, as good as any British or American craft ale.
We tried to take a shortcut back to the hotel, but I think it was actually the roundabout route. Being a wise-ass, I had to try a sample of the via Madonna delle Grazie when we passed the head of the stairs.
I may have walked down maybe 50 feet. Even with the help of a cane, the climb back was a bitch.
We got back around 3:30 and didn’t do a thing more until dinner.
We walked a short way up the winding street to a restaurant called Red & White. The owner waits on the tables and gives discourses on the wine and food.
It’s his first restaurant, he says, but he has worked in other restaurants for several years. Red & White started as a wine bar, an “enoteca,” and then he added a kitchen.
We started with linguine with a sauce of tuna and swordfish eggs, and followed it with lamb chops with a honey sauce.
The food was fun, but the real hit was the wine. It is an Etna rosso with a name I can’t pronounce: Diciassettesalme. We shared a couple of glasses of it. The aroma is fantastic. It is full of fruit flavor and has very little of the tannin edge that the Vesuvius wines had.
We tried to go for a walk to work off some of that. We went out the gate and looked at the steep road leading down to the next square. Not tonight. We had walked for more than three hours to the Duomo and back.
We were done in.
And so is this message which had grown too long already.
Be well, all. More later.
Harry
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