Arrivederci Sicily

One more hike on Mount Etna, one more visit to a city, and then we'll take the ferry from Messina back to the Italian mainland in Calabria. That was our plan for the last two days in Sicily.

The hike started directly from the campsite - to a "wishing tree" and then to an old crater and through the beautiful forests. The weather changed for the first time in more than 2 weeks and there were clouds and a few drops of rain. Wonderful! The area around Etna is really beautiful and very natural as it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

But we had to move on, a little sad. After shopping, we drove northeast to Taormina. The town is said to be beautiful with its old amphitheater and small alleyways right on a steep slope above the sea.

As is usually the case in the south, the roads are narrow, there are deep potholes and you never know what awaits you around the next bend. So we decided to take a parking space a little outside of town. But this time, even getting to the parking space was an adventure. A very steep dead-end road led behind, directly under, a motorway bridge. But the parking space had been neatly and thoughtfully prepared by the German-Italian owners. There was also a shuttle service that took us into the city center and back home late.

We read that Taormina is a small tourist town with over 1 million guests every year. And I think there were 500,000 there when we visited the town. Almost every alley and every square was packed. Queues formed in front of the restaurants and guests were called by name like in an office and only then were they allowed to enter. Pretty weird.

What a contrast to Etna. But the city is very beautiful, the amphitheater impressive, the view breathtaking. At night we even saw Etna spewing fire again.

But if you can, you should avoid Taormina in the summer. I don't think we've seen as many tourists in all our previous visits to Sicily as we did there.

In summary, we can definitely recommend Sicily. If you don't let the dirt and the wild ride on the bad roads put you off, you can have a quiet and relaxed time, especially in the north and northwest. The east offers a lot of culture but is much more crowded with tourists (especially Taormina). Spring or autumn are probably the better times to travel.

So the next day we went to Messina and from there took the ferry to Calabria - there is still no bridge over the strait.

Oh yes. We had another strange experience on the motorway before Taormina. In Italy you usually pay tolls and print a ticket from a machine at the beginning. This time, however, two young women were standing in front of the machines and printed out tickets for everyone and gave them to the drivers for a "fee" of €5.

We were a little surprised when we got there and I asked her why this was being done here. She said that since we didn't have a Telepass, we had to pay the fee. After everyone else before us had obviously paid, we did too. However, when we had to pay another €2 at the end of the motorway, we realized that these €5 were going into private pockets. It was pretty cheeky, but the €5 wasn't worth getting upset about any more.

Oh yes, the second one. We lost part of our motorhome on the motorway again. This time, thank God, it wasn't a roof window, but just a 5-meter-long rubber seal. Since it hardly ever rains anyway, that's no problem 😉.

The coasts in Calabria, like in Sicily, are steep and therefore it is not easy to find a place that can be reached with a 3.2 meter high motorhome.

Finally we ended up in Tropea. The journey there was again an adventure, but it is beautiful once we get there. It is quite touristy, but you can find fairly quiet spots on the beach. The sunset is fantastic here in the west anyway. Swimming until 9 p.m. And if the weather is good, you can even see Stromboli.