Travel to and stay in Taormina

We needed to get up at the crack of dawn the next day so we could get back to "mainland" Sicily at a reasonably early time. Perhaps not the wisest plan after a day spent hiking Stromboli and exhausting ourselves, but we're still at the stage of our travel career where we want to fit a great many sites into our itinerary and experience many things rather than just settling into one place and experiencing it thoroughly. It's a bit of a tradeoff, but one we are generally prepared to make. And we find that 3 to 4 days is enough to get a good feel for a place.

So up we got at 5:45 AM, gathered our scattered wits about us, and trekked down to the harbor to catch the hydrofoil to Messina. I left Shoshanna at dockside with our bags, and walked back into town to find the nearest open pasticceria (basically a bakery/pastry shop that also sells coffee) so we could get some breakfast. The Italians mostly eat sweets for breakfast, so the main things available are pastry and bread rolls. I chose cornetti (sweet croissants, this time with apricot filling), so that and a small coffee each was breakfast. (Italian coffee is generally very good, but I really want my coffee in half-liter sizes, not teeny espresso cups. Trebly so after getting in around midnight the previous night, and therefore running a serious sleep deficit.)

We had a lovely sunrise while we snacked, so we weren't too upset that our boat was late. So long as we caught this one, and would therefore not miss our bus once we were in Messina, there was no hurry. Today was basically scheduled as a travel day, with the idea of letting someone else do the driving so we could watch the scenery. It's less efficient than self-driving, but cheaper and less exhausting. Our last sea voyage of this trip was pleasant enough, but surprisingly different from our trip to the islands; apparently hydrofoils don't like a following sea. There didn't seem to be a particularly significant swell, but the ship kept rolling, digging first one hydrofoil and then the other into the sea and raising the other one so the deck tilted at a surprising angle, and the ship kept burying its nose in a wave, causing water to sweep across the windows. Not unpleasant, just not nearly as smooth as the outbound trip.

Messina harbor was a long and busy space, but we had no trouble finding the bus station once we debarked. It's beside a train station, which has a nice waiting space, but there's no central booking place or waiting place of its own for buses, just satellite offices for each company in storefronts around the bus area. We found the booking office with no problem, got our tickets, and settled down to a wait of a couple hours for our bus. We had a more substantial breakfast (paninis, delish tomatoes and fresh mozzarella for me, ham and cheese for Shoshanna) and good coffee at the train station's snack bar, then looked for somewhere to wait. Fortunately, it was a lovely sunny day and there was a small park right across from the bus mustering area, so we found an empty bench in the sun, by a fountain, and settled in to relax. I alternately read and people-watched, which can be a ton of fun if you approach it with the right attitude. The star performance was by a young woman who was dirty dancing for two men she seemed to know only peripherally; she couldn't keep still for most of the two hours we were there, until finally she collapsed on a bench on the other side of the park and went to sleep. She must have been drugged out on something; the only time I've seen anyone so hyper was at a university party where various illicit stimulants were freely on offer. The co-star performance was by a surly groundskeeper, who circulated with a garbage can on wheels, a scoop, and a broom. He scowled at everyone and everything, and probably picked up less than half the trash that crossed his path. Clearly he objected to working on a Saturday, or perhaps in general.

Our bus was one of those huge Greyhound-type intercity jobs that is a surprising choice if you've ever seen an Italian city. Thing is, these cities were designed centuries ago, long before even Leonardo da Vinci had begun imagining complex futuristic machines. So the streets are designed for pedestrians and donkey carts, not 50-foot-long diesel-snorting behemoths. It's doubly and trebly difficult to navigate given that the streets are lined with parked cars, often double-parked or protruding too far from the curb, that leave no room for anything so large to move. It's frankly miraculous how the drivers can make it through without leaving a trail of crushed Fiats in their wake and trailing dozens of harvested side mirrors. Several times, our driver had to stop and lean on the horn until someone ran out of a building to move their car; often a helpful pedestrian would stop and shout or gesticulate instructions.

To add insult to injury, Taormina lies 204 metres above the seashore, clinging to the side of a steep cliff, so to get there from below, you have to endure a long series of sweeping switchbacks, complicated by oncoming traffic (including other buses -- apparently the Italian laws of physics permit two objects to fit in a space that is cleraly too small for one object). Somehow, we made it up without any significant incident. When we finally made it to Taormina, I shook our driver's hand and congratulated him on his skill, which earned me a huge smile. Apparently, my Italian is getting better. I still speak like a particularly slow four-year-old, but I generally get the idea across and my vocabulary is slowly increasing as I find gaps in my knowledge and look them up in one of our Italian resources.

Our B&B is located about 3/4 of the way across town from the bus stop, so we had a significant hike (about 15 minutes). We'd originally considered hiring a taxi, but the slope proved to be far gentler than expected, it was sunny but not too warm, and we decided to walk instead. Our B&B is Le 4 Fontani, right across from the piazza of the same name on Corso Umberto, which is the main street and the main place to see and be seen. It's swarming with tourists and locals doing the passegiatta thing (i.e., strolling around), so it's a great place for people-watching; shopping is less good, since you're paying inflated tourist prices. As luck would have it, our host (Fabio) arrived just as we were getting ready to call him to come let us in. He led us up four flights of stairs to our room. (Note to selves: Planning to spend the next four days and nights climbing stairs with knees still aching from Stromboli is not wise. Next time, find a lower place or one with an elevator!)

Fabio is charming, friendly, and very chatty, and is delighted to have a chance to teach me Italian while I teach him English. His native language is Sicilian, and he admits he has a terrible time with Italian verbs and (like most Sicilians) speaks too fast. So the language barrier is definitely there, but isn't impassable, since we can shift between languages when necessary, and both of us have smartphones we can use to look up words and show them to the other person when neither of us could figure out the other person's accent. He has an excellent sense of humor, so navigating the uncertainties of translation is far more fun than it is frustrating. Our room has an interesting "life away from the street" view along our the side of the building perpendicular to Corso Umberto, with the tip of Aetna just poking up between two roofs off in the distance, two sidestreet restaurants immediately below, and a nice view up the stairway/alley running up the hill beside us. The old church in the piazza across from our door rings its bell periodically without being annoying about it, and when the room's window is open, there's a constant buzz from the street. (When it's closed, you can hear a low buzz, but not enough to be really annoying.) We don't have an ensuite bathroom, and the private bathroom we do have (about 10 feet away across the kitchen/dining room) is TINY. I barely fit into the shower stall, and the toilet is squeezed into what little space remains. But it's clean and functional, so the net result is charming rather than annoying.

We dumped our bags, then went roaming for a couple hours to get a basic feel for the city. Exhausted as we were, we decided to eat close at hand rather than looking farther afield. There was a pleasant little restaurant, Le Quatro Fontani, right next to the fountain. (There is actually only one fountain, but it has four streams, hence the name.) It was a bit chilly, so we opted to eat indoors rather than al fresco. Had a very nice dinner, which began with complimentary flute of prosecco, and I discovered two new food loves. First is caponata, which is a savory sweet and sour mix of eggplant, peppers, capers, and olives. Second is swordfish (pesce a spada), which cooks up to a firm, steak-like texture. I had the involtini version, which is thin slices rolled around a stuffing (typically bread crumbs, pine nuts, and a few spices). Grilled fillets immediately moved to the top of my list for subsequent meals. Dessert was tartuffo and amaretto coffee, which Shoshanna heroically shared. (She rarely wants a full dessert of her own, but is always willing to try anything I order.)

Taormina reminds me a lot of the old part of Edinburgh, with big and touristy main streets and tiny alleyways ("closes" in Edinburgh, "vicos" in Taormina) diving off at right angles up and down the steep slopes. After we'd done the main drag a few times, we resolved to escape the tourists and hit the side streets instead. As a result, we had a much quieter time, made many pleasant discoveries, and found a few treasures, including an alleyway with a ruined Greek- or Roman-era wall backing the houses, and all kinds of plants growing wild and cultivated along the ground and in cracks in the walls. We also found a few nice cafés and restaurants and views of the sea, the mountains, and old buildings we might otherwise have missed. Departing from the beaten path is something we've being doing pretty much since we began traveling together, and I thoroughly recommend this approach. You have to have a good sense of whether such wandering is safe, but if you keep your eyes open and your wits engaged, you tend to see and avoid any sketchy areas.

Our first full day in Taormina was spent exploring the town, and particularly back alleys. We started our day doing some much needed laundry at a tiny laundromat down a very secondary street a couple blocks uphill from our B&B. After dropping off the clothes in our room, we wandered over to the Teatro Greco, a Greek amphitheater built around the 3rd century B.C. Like all such ancient sites, it's in ruins, but this one is well-enough preserved that you can get a real sense of what it was like in its prime. It's huge, and quite a significant piece of architecture; the people who built it clearly had a ton of money and power, plus the luxury of being able to apply both to such a project. They also had the good taste to locate their theater on the part of town with the most spectacular views, both of the town itself and of the cliffs above and below. While gazing, we ran into a pleasant elderly couple from Boston who heard us chatting in English. While gazing out to see, we had a nice chat with them before moving off on our separate wanderings. Our last stop of the day was the Villa Communale, aka the Parco Duchi de Cesarò. It's a surprising oasis in the center of the city, with a wide range of vegetation and enough of it to largely block out any view of the city if you want to escape for a time.

After we left the park, it was early afternoon and we were feeling peckish, so we wandered off down a side street until we found a promising-looking place, Casa de Rita, located right at a sweeping bend in the street that allowed for good people-watching up- and downhill. Lots of folks were wandering along as couples or young families, and we shared a good laugh with a couple at the table beside us over one young woman who was out walking her puppy; needless to say, everyone wanted to pet the puppy, so she didn't get far between pettings. We ordered a plate of gnocchi drenched in really good olive oil filled with fresh basil. Molto delicioso, and Shoshanna was particularly charmed that her house white wine came in a ceramic pitcher glazed in bold primary colors and shaped like a chicken. The wine was decent if not outstanding (the Italians and French enjoy wine enough that they rarely serve plonk), but the pitcher made it particularly good.

Dinner that night was at Il Baccanale, a tiny little place we discovered while wandering down side streets, although we recognized the name because it was also listed in Lonely Planet. (There was no actual bacchanalia on offer, which was probably a good thing given the unsavory habits of the Bacchantes.) We decided that we like the name enough to look at the menu, and they had a good list of choices. We came back that night. I had the grilled swordfish, which was lovely; Shoshanna had a broad-noodles dish in a rosé sauce with shrimp and pistachios. The house red wine was a pleasant wine from Castelmola, a town on the peak above Taormina. As we finished dinner, the host brought us two tiny complementary flutes with what we thought was red wine or grappa (similar to brandy); it turned out to be red wine mixed with almond milk, and was beyond delicious. Dessert was tartuffo, plus a complementary dish with three small pastries. The ambiance was lovely, the food was very good, and we'll probably return there for our last meal in Taormina. Probably tied with Kasbah for our best meal yet.