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| Marg in Taormina, Sicily |
We drove off the ferry from Reggio de Calabria
on the mainland of Italy, into Messina, Sicily. Finding ourselves on the
autostrada, we drove south along the coast, then found a rather busy, and very
crowded camping ground right on the beach.After on night there, we moved on to Taormina.
However, we were thwarted by masses of traffic, very narrow roads and nowhere to park our big campervan, Vanni!
However, we were thwarted by masses of traffic, very narrow roads and nowhere to park our big campervan, Vanni!
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| Interesting street in Taormina, Sicily |
We felt very relaxed there under the shady
trees in the searing heat, and ended up staying 4 nights.
This proved to be a great base for seeing the area, and we caught the local bus outside the camp gate, and visited
Taormina without having to worry about parking.
Taormina
is a gorgeous hill town which we really liked. It's accessed by a very steep,
winding and narrow road over which the bus travelled at great speed.
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| Catania (UNESCO) |
The next morning, we hired a motor scooter in
the nearby village of Giardini-Naxos, and rode south to visit Catania, the
second largest city of Sicily. It's a UNESCO World Heritage site, due to
its Baroque architecture.
While it had the usual grey and dirt of big
cities, we loved the Teatro Massimo Bellini, Piazza del Duomo, the Duomo St
Agata, Via Etnea (the main shopping street), and the many sculptures, and other historic
sights.
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| Almost at the top of a smoking Mt Etna, Sicily |
But no......it was Mt Etna having a bit of a
blow off!
It was very loud but the locals assured us it
was normal behaviour for this volcano, and that we were quite safe where we were. We were
very relieved!
The next day we went up Mt Etna on our motor
scooter. It was a long trek up through lots of little villages, and it got
steadily colder the higher we went - from 32 down to 14 degrees within 30 minutes –
brrrrr. Leigh managed to get a good hip massage as Marg shivered on the back of
the bike!
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| Syracuse waterfront, Sicily |
We biked to the first level of craters, and
then took the funicular as far as we could go up the mountain. Or course, we couldn’t get right to the top because of the eruption the previous day, but we got quite close.
It was becoming quite cloudy at the top and our
view was pretty restricted, but we could see smoke coming out of the vent that
had recently rumbled!
Travelling home through one of villages,
Giarre, we saw locals sweeping black stuff off the road. We suddenly realised
that it was in fact ash from Mt Etna, and were amazed to see how much was
around.
We briefly visited Syracuse, which has an old
town that is on an island reached by a bridge. We enjoyed walking around the
narrow, winding, ancient streets but found it very hot and moved from shady
spot to shady spot.
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Ancient salt
windmill at Trapani, Sicily
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The rest of the city was not very memorable,
but this is something we have found in lots of places, as we tend to seek out
the old towns rather than the new.
Moving on we drove to the other side of Sicily
and ended up at Trapani, which boasts some of Europe's oldest salt marshes and
windmills.
It is a port town and does not have a camping
ground. After some investigation we found a large parking area which had a
truck and another campervan parked in it, so we decided it would be a good
place to free camp for the night.
A lovely Italian family arrived in their
campervan shortly afterwards, and we had a great time, sharing travel stories
using a mix of English, Italian and body languages.
The parking area proved to be a favourite local evening family picnic place/piazza, and soon we were surrounded by families chatting, eating and playing. None appeared concerned that three campervans were parked there in the middle of them.
The parking area proved to be a favourite local evening family picnic place/piazza, and soon we were surrounded by families chatting, eating and playing. None appeared concerned that three campervans were parked there in the middle of them.
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| The waterfront at Trapani, Sicily |
We jumped up, grabbed decent clothes and
thought about a weapon (!) and opened the door tentatively, to find a kindly
but concerned market stall holder.
Turns out that we were in the middle of a
market being set up, and the stall holder whose spot we were on, wanted us to
move; eeek!
Needless to say, we moved pretty fast. Half
asleep, we drove around the corner and found the bus station and parked there. We
managed to get a little more sleep before the buses started coming in.
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| Historical centre of Erice, Sicily |
We drove back past the market after breakfast
and it was absolutely chock-full of stalls, so we were rather relieved that
we hadn’t woken up in the middle of that.
Don’t know what happened to the other campers,
but it would have been interesting seeing their faces when they awoke in the
middle of a market already trading!!!
Later, we found a ‘proper’ car park and caught a
local bus to the medieval hill town of Erice, which is perched on the top of a
very steep, craggy, rocky hill surrounded by a defensive wall about 800 metres
above sea level.
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| Shady but noisy camping at Isola Delle Femmine, Sicily |
It is a lovely town, but it rained while we
were up there. When we tried to get the funicular down, we found it was closed
due to the wind.
Rather than wait 1.5 hrs for next bus, we
scouted around and found a taxi which we shared with a Swedish couple.
Then we moved on to the Palermo area. Palermo city is the capital of Sicily.
We found a pleasant treed and shady camping spot a few kilometres away at Isola Delle Femmine, on the coast.
We found a pleasant treed and shady camping spot a few kilometres away at Isola Delle Femmine, on the coast.
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| Marg at Quattro Canti, Palermo, Sicily |
We used this camp as a base to catch the local
bus into Palermo to view an amazing range of beautiful architecture, statues,
and other sites.
We saw Quattro Canti, Piazza Pretoria and its huge fountain,
Teatro Massimo (where Leigh spoke at her first OECD conference in 2004).
Back at the camp we discovered the downside of
Italians being on holiday in the summer months. Most of them love to go to the
local lido (beach). They crowd as many people as possible on to a little strip of sand, or in some cases pebbles or rocks, rent them a banana lounge and umbrella, then leave them to bake.
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We found that loud music is a fact of life on a lido, and it would
appear that the whole village of Isola Delle Femmine is surrounded by lido bars
and discos, with extraordinarily loud music. Saturday and Sunday night were a real challenge for us. Thank
goodness for earplugs!
We pitied the local residents, especially the
older ones, who had to survive the searing heat of July and August with their windows open.
After Palermo, we followed the coast road as
much as we could through such places as Cefalù, which is supposedly one of the
best beaches in Sicily, but it was so busy with people at the lido beach that
we didn’t stop for more than a peek.
We passed by some pretty hill towns, then drove
on to Messina. We arrived just in time to get a ferry back to Reggio de Calabria on the
mainland.
We'll stay in Reggio for a bit, as we want to
get an air-conditioner installed in the living area of Vanni. It is so, so hot.