Thursday morning we had breakfast and then went out in hiking clothes and climbed the giant staircase up the mountain to the Church of Madonna Della Rocca that overlooks the city. Along the way there are sculptures that I think show the stations of the cross. The views along the way and at the top were beautiful and the church was small and very beautiful. According to the internet it was around 700 steps up. They are wide steps that serpentine up the mountain so it wasn’t one long straight staircase.
After getting back to our hotel we changed and went out for the day. We went to Villa Comunale de Taormina, a public park with an English style garden that overlooks the coast line. It was beautiful. So many different flowers and plants as well as monuments and sculptures. There was even a playground and an outdoor gym area.
After the park, we got arancini at a nearby café. We had ragú (meat sauce inside) and eggplant (also with a red sauce). From lunch, we walked to the cable car so we could take it down the mountain to the beach area and go to Isola Bella.
Isola Bella is an island maybe 100 feet from shore and there is a sand bar you can walk across. However, it’s not really dry in the afternoon, so we had to remove our shoes to get across. We tried to wait out the tide a little bit but then I found out the tide only changes a few inches not a few feet like we are used to in Massachusetts. On the island is a villa that has transformed into a museum which was really cool. The way the house was built into the rocks was so interesting. After wading back to the mainland, drying off and putting our shoes back on, we returned to the cable car to go back to the center of town.
We did some shopping after visiting Isola Bella and had our first Granita with brioche. I’m not entirely sure why they put gelato and ice on bread here but both were delicious. I kept joking it was like an alien tried to make an ice cream sandwich and took it too literally.
Later we had dinner at Osteria Villa Zuccaro which was delicious. We had fried calamari and shrimp, lamb chops and pesto gnocchi.
On the walk back to the hotel, we had cannoli at the place Nicol took us to which was amazing. Friday we move on to Siracusa.
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