Taormina and Mt Etna

Trip Start Sep 12, 2008
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Trip End Sep 29, 2008


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Where I stayed
Oceania Cruise Line
(Taormina hotels)

Flag of Italy  , Sicily,
Saturday, September 20, 2008

Saturday and Mt Etna in the rain! We docked at 8 am and the ship is rocking and rolling! Breakfast and back to the room till time for our tender to take us into Taormina Sicily, Italy. This is the biggest island in the Mediterranean Sea and at the toe of the 'boot'. The Greeks first settled here in the 8th century BC followed by Romans, Arabs, Normans, French, Spanish, and the Bourbons in 1860. We are docked at the bay of Naxos about 25 miles from inland Taorminia. We got our tender tickets and with the ship doing so much rolling Carol made the decision that if she went onto the tender she would be sick so turned in her ticket electing to stay on board. It was a rough but fun trip to the dock, then onto a large bus in the cool brisk day. The roads again were very narrow but NONE have compared to my trip 2 days ago! Passing cars required some care and planning but passing another bus was very interesting-slow and careful, especially if you both were near a curve in the road. The further up we drove, Etna is 10,800 ft, the foggier it got until we could hardly see the edges of the road-and believe me, that is hard to lose sight of when you are as close to it as we were no sun bathing today
no sun bathing today
 ! When we arrived at the resort area, and I have no idea of the elevation, we parked and got out to 'view' some craters-but, alas, you could only see a few feet in front of you. Into the crowded gift shop and wait in a very long line for the WC, then back to the warm and dry bus - so glad I had taken an umbrella with me today. As we descended we could only see about 1 bus length in front of us - interesting on that narrow and crowded road. On the way back to the harbor they did play a DVD on Mt Etna, and, although it was in Italian it did keep us from watching the fog and the road! We have been fortunate to have very good drivers on all the buses so far. On the way down we came to a 3 car 'mishap' spanning the entire road, but our bus just swung into a petrol station and around it with no hesitation. Back at the harbor you could see hundreds of beach chair and umbrellas set up, but not a person at them. The fog is not down this far but it is brisk and our ride back in the tender was 'fun' for some of us and 'scary' for the rest! Carol was not in our room so I wandered the ship and did not find her, had a piece of pizza and a dessert, looked some more and back to our room to finish a good book I was reading. A bit after two I went down to the pool deck for a cooking demonstration with Executive Chef Tino Daab, and found Carol sitting in the front row so shared her lounge chair. Fun to watch and listen to the 2 chefs banter back and forth while cooking a Mushroom Risotto and a Lemony Fresh Herb Cooler. from the ship
from the ship
 Later samples were distributed and I thought both were very good, and then they handed out the recipes-lots of ingredients but still would be fun to try.
To the library for another book, catch this up and curl up to read for a bit. Wow- we only have 4 more days of tours-We leave the ship at 9am on the 25th!! I decided to take my book up on deck to read and settled down with it and a chocolate malt - read as the ship got underway and after we left the port went back to our room.  After Carol left me this morning she went back to the room and slept for a couple of hours, then up to the pool deck to lounge and 'recoup' and that is where I found her when I returned. We were back in the room after the cooking demo and Carol had another nap and when she woke at 8 we headed out for our dinner, then later down to the Insignia Lounge to hear Diana DiMarzio sing music of the Romantic Italian Cinema. We had met her yesterday on the tender as she was coming aboard with about 6 large suitcases! She has quite a voice and we enjoyed it. To bed at 11pm, or really midnight as we had to move our clocks ahead one hour.
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