Though it was lovely laying there listening to the waves down by the sea in Letojanni below from Taormina, the room was quite cold so took a while to get to sleep. Got up reasonably early and we had breakfast on the terrace overlooking the sea.
We then had another trip up the mountain again – must try and find a ‘u tube’ of this as its hard to describe. Anyway as always the hair raising trip is actually worth it once you are in Taormina. Taormina is classed as the Jewel of Sicily.
We were going to get a bus further up to Castelmola which is a village overlooking Taormina – so would be an even higher ground experience. The castle dates back to Norman times and was used as a defence fortress and prison – now they do falconry shows here. This has been classed as one of the prettiest villages in Sicily.
One of the churches – San Baggio is located right on the edge of the cliff as is the castle and both have panoramic views and a direct view to Mount Etna. The origins of Castelmola date back to pre-hellenic times and was once named the Acropolis of Taormina. Mylai is one of the first to settle here.
Castelmola was also mentioned in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, where there was steamy goings on between Baroness Frida, Mrs Betty and Peppino D’Allura, a mule keeper. D H Lawrence fell in love with Taormina and stayed there for 3 years.
Florence Trevelyan was a british noblewoman married to Professor Cacciola, who set residence in Castlemola and lived in a pretty stone cottage with a magnificent viewpoint and which still stands today.
Anyway we never managed to get to the village, due to time restraints, although we can see it from Taormina.
So we headed for the Greek Theatre – this was a must for me. Once inside you sort of felt transported back in time – the Greeks used this theatre for plays and concerts and with the backdrop of Etna it must have been a show to remember. The Romans did come in at a later date and there is evidence of roman brickwork, but the theatre is considerably well preserved. Romans used this for their gladiator shows with the lions waiting in the pit, which had previously been used by the Greek performers to ascend to the stage.
One of the reasons the Greeks built this theatre here was because of the direct views with Etna.
I have some amazing pictures and these will follow.
After this we walked to the cathedral – it is amazing how long the main street is, it seems to go on for ages and at the end is another amazing set of views. The cathedral was small and not as elaborate in comparison with some of the others in Sicily that I have seen but set in a lovely piazza and still worth a visit. You could spend ages meandering down these streets, there are lovely boutiques, gift shops and in the lanes lots of art shops plus an abundance of places to eat.
After lunch we went to look at the times of the bus back to Catania to head home. We had to go back down to Letojanni to get our cases and come back up again to get the bus, but the local buses were not running for about two hours so we had to get a taxi down the hill, grab our cases and then back up the mountain again – by now I was just looking out the window and not feeling too bad about the heights anymore – as we had been up and down quite a lot by now. Luckily because there were three of us it did not work out too expensive.
We just made it back to the connecting bus with 10 mins to spare back to Palermo – the journey running a lot smoothly than on the way there. It was very hot so was glad we had air conditioning.
On the way back we passed Enna – this is a town which is at the highest point in Sicily around a 1,000 metres up. It is a medieval town and has been conquered many times, because of its vantage points. In fact, the Arabs tried for 20 years to conquer Enna but to no avail, until they decided to go in via the sewers. We could not get a good view of this town as we passed it, because we then went into a series of tunnels.
Anyway we got home fine and the journey was a lot easier than on the way there.