And so it rains. And rains. Well, it did brighten up yesterday afternoon but not before they shut the public gardens and stopped the hop on/off buses because of the weather conditions. (Still not quite sure why the public gardens - we were in there at the time and there were no signs of flooding. It's very pretty).
We had cloudy and slightly chilly respite this morning, so got on a hop on/off bus tour while the going was good and saw some lovely scenery and coastline round about for a couple of hours.
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| View from Castelmola |
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| Isola Bella. Not as bella on a wet Wednesday |
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| Imagine how it would look in sunshine |
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| Lava from Etna. Check out the rain at sea - coming our way |
And we found some more ruins,
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| Neily at the Odeon |
having managed to negotiate the amphitheatre yesterday when the rain eased off, and I stood on the stage and tried to remember my opening speech as the Chorus in Henry V to see how good the acoustics were. Both were a bit rubbish, but I think the acoustics were down to general sogginess.
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| If you tilt your head to the left you'll get the general idea. I CANNOT work out how to rotate my photos once stored.. |
We are now stuck indoors again for an hour or so til it's less stair-roddy, and so we are blogging.
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| The view from our window. We hadn't realised that last night we ate at the restaurant under the white canopy and that we're directly above another very ancient bit of alleyway called the Namauchi |
I have also done laundry across the street and had the distinctly middle-class problem of not being very well-versed in the art of using a launderette. Thankfully a couple of kind young Aussie backpackers saw me right. I really needed Dot Cotton for a service wash. And the inadequate spin and lack of an available tumble dryer means my washing is hanging out in the bathroom and is showing no signs of getting dry by 11am on Friday when I have to check out.
Trouble is, there's not a huge amount to do on an island in the Med when it's raining, as museums and art galleries are pretty hard to find and often not hugely well done anyway. Many of you will know that my default setting would be to shop, but with over a month to go and finance on the tour, plus a Nellie who's already very full, I have had to be remarkably restrained, having bought only a necklace and some fridge magnets. Neily has done all his gift shopping in readiness for his return to Blighty on Friday.
Oh, and I did buy a cheap watch yesterday because of the three I brought with me (I like to match them vaguely to what I'm wearing - so shoot me), 2 have developed dud batteries and a pin has come out of the bracelet of the third. And can you find a Timpson's in Taormina when you want one? No, of course not.
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| New watch! |
Just like you struggle to find a shop selling normal food other than multicolour pasta, various flavours of liquer, fancy biscuits, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and marzipan which looks like fruit and taunts me when I realise that vitamin C is still not within my grasp beyond a daily glass of breakfast juice. I did manage to buy a Twix yesterday though. And of course there's a gelateria on every corner. We ate 8 euros' worth yesterday and wore hair shirts for the rest of the day.
Ruins are still wet and the going gets soggy, so we've had to forego a trip to Syracusa (and apart from that, the trains run at really odd times) but in the spirit of sheer bloody mindedness we have booked a trip to Etna with a wine tasting thrown in tomorrow afternoon. The weather forecast has a big black cloud and and a yellow flashy thing, so that should be interesting. The wine is pretty damn good over here, but not especially cheap - I guess we're paying maybe a fraction below London prices, but as it's local we should be! It's very beautiful here, even in the rain, but it's a little tough on the wallet, even for pasta in a vaguely nice restaurant.
So once we finally got out and about again, we climbed many many steps to try and get to the Saracen castello high above Taormina, and whilst we did see a very beautiful small chapel, typically the Sicilians had omitted to mention on the sign pointing to the castello that it was in fact closed for restoration for some considerable time. So we enjoyed the panoramic views, and went back down again for a slightly smaller portion of ice cream than on Tuesday, meandered and did a bit more shopping (I bought a scarf and a cheap gadget with similar properties to a Swiss army knife without the tool for removing stones from horses' hooves, but with a corkscrew which in my world is much more useful. There are lots of alleyways for meandering in Taormina - is nice, especially when you realise where you are.
Dinner tonight was pizza and I am now feeling like a stuffed crust. We were lured into this particular restaurant with the promise of free Prosecco while we waited - so pitifully weak.....I also had a very nice local nero d'avola and a frozen mandarin liquer, from the same ilk as limoncello. Temptation is impossible to avoid here.
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