La Cite des Huitres (aka, Linda eats an oyster)

Actually not bad.  Tastes like chicken in sea water

Taormina and Mt. Etna

Taormina and Mt. Etna

Taormina, in the province of Messina, is the crown jewel of Sicily.  With spectacular views of Mt. Etna, warm and sunny weather and a lovely balcony room in our hotel, it was easily the highlight of our trip.  Not to shortchange the beautiful Amalfi coast (which is absolutely breathtaking), I think Taormina was even better.

Bob took the included tour UP to the ancient amphitheater still in use today, and took amazing pictures of Mt. Etna from that high ground.

Mt Etna viewed from the Amphitheater

View from our balcony

   while I was still nursing my wounded foot and stayed behind in the hotel and just relaxed on our balcony, enjoying the peace and quiet.

When he got back from the morning tour, Bob took me on a tour of the village.  The village is high up, and since it was off season offered a lot more than the nearly deserted beach.  We had lunch at a lovely little pizzeria and met a German couple sitting next to us.  Bob is fluent in German; Katerina spoke passable English (she was once a nanny for an American couple living in Germany).  I know no German and Gunther knew no English.  It was a lively conversation, with translations galore!  Katerina's English improved by the minute once she got back into it.  You know I had to ask what they thought of Obama, since in 2009 Germany was as besotted with him as the media in America was.   Not so much now.  Everyone over here is concerned about ISIS, and the instability of N. Africa ever since the "Arab Spring" destabilized those governments and led to the chaos that is now enveloping Western Europe.

Sicily and Malta they have to deal with the refugees from N. Africa.  "Boat people" they call them.  They are happy to take them in because to send them back would mean a certain death, but it is creating a strain on their social services.   Unemployment in Sicily is very high, especially among people under 30 or so, but these immigrants are "doing the jobs Italians don't want to do."  Sounds familiar.  In Malta they have the same problem, but Malta's economy is good as opposed to that of Sicily.  Yet even in Malta there is growing concern about the huge influx of refugees because it takes 2 years to process them, and once they have been given legal status they can't send them to other EU countries because Malta is where they landed.  Very chaotic situation all over the Med. and no easy answers or solutions in sight.

But I digress.  Back to Taormina - - -

We went up to Mt. Etna, and it was a remarkably clear day.  We were told that the group there the week before never even saw Mt. Etna because of the clouds.  So we were very lucky to have good weather that day.  We hiked around an old crater from the eruption of 1693, if I remember right.  There is another crater several hundred feet higher that was created in 2001, but the climb was too daunting for all but the young.  We were quite satisfied with the views we saw from our crater, although photos of the crater itself don't show up very well.  Most of the snow at that level has melted, but what remains just isn't very photogenic.

Lava Field on Mt Etna

Bob near the crater's edge

Crateri Silvestri w/people walking on the rim

Me walking the rim on top