Taormina, Sicily

We came to Italy to relax a bit before the International Sales Meeting. We are staying at the Residence Lettojanni on the hills above the village of the same name. This is a popular vacation spot for the Italians and this time of year it seems to be the retiree crowd. It's also an exchange time share through RCI which is how we found it. Consequently there are some other Americans here with us.

It's a somewhat aging time share but pretty comfortable and has all the basics. The views are amazing. The hills are steep but we have a nice little car that climbs them like a goat.

Sunrise walk the first morning.

We drove to a big German grocery store called Lidel on the first day to get supplies.

We came back and relaxed at the pool. The pool has lifeguards from 9 am to 1 pm and 4 pm to 7 pm. We thought that was strange but they said we could use the pool all day.

Turned out to be a good thing. We had a good time by ourselves but when the lifeguards came on duty they put on loud techno-pop music we are not really into. Worse, they tweeted Barbara out of the pool for not having a hair net.

We retired to our balcony with music more to our liking and enjoyed ourselves immensely.

We also put on our restored and replaced wedding bands. This was supposed to happen on our anniversary last month, but you can't rush art. Barbara's ruby ring is a piece of art she designed and Mam and Chap of B-Tree jewelers in Ban Tawai helped her realize.

Monday we went to Taormina a mountain village nearby that dates back to the Greeks during the Hellenic Era.

Mt Etna is the backdrop to the city and in the early morning the two cauldrons were quite clear. It's a very active volcano, just like on the big island of Hawaii.

Taormina is a pedestrian only center with some faded but to the point rules. We didn't see any bare chests but we did see plenty of eating going on despite the sign.

On our morning walk down the main street of Corso Umberto, we saw mosaics from the 3rd century BC and a very unique Duomo Cathedral. It looks more like a fortress than a church. It dates back to the 13th century and is built on the site of an earlier church.

The second church is Chiesa Caterina and the courtyard is in the Palazza Corvaja now used as the tourist information center.

There was an outdoor art gallery behind the Palazza Corvaja. The focus seemed to be on miracles although others were telling a story of a knight who gave up his armor to slay dragons and such. The guy in the back of the third picture had the job to flick the stones back into the stone garden. It looked to me like a great retirement gig.

Some of the miracles were a little hard to figure out.

After the visual arts we toured an ancient Greek theater, remodeled by the Romans and still in use today. It was a stunning setting and just amazing to imagine all the shows that have gone on there. It was configured to seat 10,000 during the Roman era, but only seats about 5,000 today.

The views of the city in front of the theater and the views of the sea behind it made for a magnificence setting. The clouds were really cool over the top of the city and the gate and one could imagine symbolism from it. Other symbolism could be read into the last pictures as well.

We enjoyed a pizza for lunch, our first in Italy on this trip. It was delicious of course.

Then we went off to pay our respects to the Godfather. The wedding between Michael and Apollonia Vitelli was filmed in nearby Savoca. In the movie, after the wedding they come to Vitelli Bar.

It's a winding hairpin turn up to town. Barbara said we were following the cobbler on his way up to fit some new shoes :)

We finished up with Granitas (Lemon and Pistachios) with melon, prosciutto and arugula. It definitely felt like we were in Italy.