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| Another beautiful day.....sunny and warm. We pack up the car and head out of town. We stop on the road out of town at a British military cemetery. The Allied forces had landed in Sicily on July 10, 1943...the Americans came ashore to the west near Licata and the British near Siracusa. The cemetery is beautifully kept up...the lawn is manicured and there are beautiful flowers planted in a pattern of colors in front of the graves. There are about 1,000 graves there and just seeing the rows of headstones packs quite an emotional wallop. We walk around the first row....most headstones with crosses and several with Jewish stars on them....and read the names, military affiliation and dates - so many very young men - and we look at the register of those buried there; there is a complete list that includes the names of the parents and in some cases, the surviving spouses of the soldiers and sailors. Before we leave, we sign the guest book and read some of the names, addresses and comments of some of the recent visitors. A very moving experience.
On the way to Taormina, we drive through the center of Catania, the major city on the east coast of Sicily. Catania doesn't have a good reputation as a tourist destination...it is very crowded and many of the buildings are made of very dark lava blocks, which adds to the feeling of grime and dirt in the city center. It is an early Sunday afternoon so the traffic in the center is not too heavy. We wend our way to the "centro storico" and pass the Teatro Bellini (Bellini is a native of Catania) and then pass the Piazza Duomo with the statue of an elephant in the center of the piazza; the elephant is the symbol of Catania. We then head out of town and pass through the more modern part of the city which is to the north on the waterfront. There are many restaurants and beach facilities as well as new hotels and apartment buildings. Traffic gets pretty heavy in this area--there are lots of families out for a Sunday stroll along the water. As we work our way north, we pass some very pretty harbors. We finally reach the autostrada towards Taormina, which is only 40 minutes north of Catania. As we approach Taormina, we lose our sunny day and it looks like it will start raining at any minute. Taormina is set about 1,000 feet up on a ridge along the side of a mountain. Hotels are scattered everywhere on the hillside. There are beautiful views over the water and back into the rugged hills. Our hotel is on the main street of town--Corso Umberto--and we will have to park in one of the public garages that have been built below the town. Before we park, I try to get closer to the hotel to drop off our bag before parking the car. After a couple of passes around the town--it takes about 20 minutes to make a complete circle--we call the hotel--the Hotel Isabella--and they tell us to pull up to the Porta Messina (the north entrance to town), bring the suitcases to the hotel and then go back down the hill and park. The traffic patterns in Taormina have changed significantly since our previous visit nine years before and parking has become almost impossible in the town...even on an hourly basis. The city has built two large multilevel parking garages, one on each side of town, and all cars and buses are encouraged to park there (unless one's hotel has private parking.) We park and take the free shuttle bus up to the town and check in. It is now drizzling steadily so we rest in the room for a while...there is balcony with a nice view over the town and down to the sea. The room is pleasant but it is quite dark...the one door to the balcony is narrow and doesn't provide much additional light. It has become muggy but the air conditioning has not been turned on yet. And their elevator is being overhauled and will be out of service for a month....luckily we are only one flight up from the lobby, but other rooms are three flights up--tough to negotiate for those with heavy luggage. The sun tries to break through around 4 pm...so we head out for a walk along the main street. There are crowds on the street....walking up and down.....shopping, eating, window shopping and people watching. The town is very attractive and there are many high end shops among the scores of tourist gift shops; there are lots of cafes and lots of restaurants. We do a little shopping and stop for a gelato. We enjoy our stroll and the people watching but we have some doubts how much of this Taormina we will want to experience. We have dinner at Al Duomo, which is listed in Slow Food as well as many other restaurant guides. It is small, pleasant room (no outside seating on this cool evening) but I immediately have a feeling that we have made a mistake. There is not an Italian in sight when we come in and we are greeted in English....the menu is also in four languages; it doesn't feel very Italian. It turns out that the food is fine....I have a good version of spaghetti alla mollica--a Sicilian peasant dish made with anchovies, capers and breadcrumbs followed by involtini of swordfish. Diana has the Sicilian menu degustiazione...a nice antipasto, pasta with sardines and baked lamb . We have a nice bottle of red wine.....a local grape variety, Nero d'Avola, made by Curto from Ispica, a town very near Modica. It is also one of our most expensive meals so far.....over Euro 90.00. I don't think we would return to Al Duomo. We had planned to stop on the way back to the hotel at the Wunderbar....we had spent an evening on their outdoor terrace nine years before listening to their accordion player and watching the passeggiata....but it is cool and we are tired so we decide to pass and go straight back to the hotel. |
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