Wow - Taormina was something else

 Very occasionally I get it right. Where were we going to be for her birthday?  This year it was Taormina which is very well known it seems.  But it has never yet been on our radar.   So I read a little and punted a little that we could spend a few days there. Within that decision was a need to decide whether to stay in town or down the bottom of the hill nearer to the water. It was a correct call for us to stay in top town.

So now I know that the place was virtually put back onto the map over a hundred years ago when the travelling English in particular discovered it and put in on their educational/finishing grand tour of Europe maps. A lady in waiting to Queen Victoria, D H Lawrence, Winston Churchill, two honeymoon stops for Liz and Richard Burton and now Yvonne; all have spent time here. The latest kick up the touring scale occurred in the 1950s when some bright sparks started annual music festivals in the fantastic Greco ampitheatre, a place set on the edge of town with a huge backdrop of Mt Etna. And apparently now there is new Russian money around the sumptuous villas hanging onto the views here. A small armada of huge boats dot the nearby waters. It is a tortuous slog for vehicles to climb up into a town now catering for a lot of tourists. And the views along the drop dead to look at coastline are quite sensational.

 So Randall scores 1 and Yvonne is happy, for the moment.

Just a quiet meal in a family run restaurant well off the main tourist spots completed the birthday.

And in between times we took one of the many well run local buses up even more tortuous roads to Castelmola which is even deeper and higher into the hills. It took the bus half an hour to climb 5 kms along very windy road and horse shoe bends with jaw dropping views along the way.

We spent a few hours with others strolling along the seen and to be seen main pedestrian street and of course we dropped down to the coast to have the obligatory time on the pebble beach and flopping into the sea. And twice Randall ventured out early in the morning to to cover the 695 steps down to be beach below and then the 695 steps back up again.

At this time we are hearing that would be mate George Clooney has had a prang on his motor bike in Sardinia and so is paying the price for not consulting me about safe driving there gained from our recent experience.

But now we may have moved just a tad too far down the scale of exciting places. We have just had our first of three nights in Catania, the second city of Sicily. We will give it the usual 24 hours before making judgements about the place but at the moment we may well run out of things to do and see. A city that seems to be doing okay but has plenty of downside/struggle sights on show.