Taromina Day 2

Sunday Funday! The weather is beautiful and we are going out on the water. Finally! We are all so excited. We have a few things to do in town this morning before we leave for the boat. After we got all packed up for the day on the boat, we drove over to the marina in the next town Naxos. Naxos is the 1st Greek town in Sicily. They have a true beach front bay and marina. Taromina is high up on a hill and the beach/sea is way lower. Taromina does have a cable car that will take you up or down but its not working. The beaches in all of Italy are very different the sand color, the texture or they could be pebbles or huge rocks. Taromina has small pebbles at the beach directly below the town. Then around a huge point towards the East there are 2 beautiful bays with huge sandy beach’s. This beach can only be accessed by one of the beach clubs that manage the beach chairs. We were very excited to see all this from the water. We got on the boat and met our captain and crew person. Andrew was so excited to get in the water. He found a cave that he wanted to swim into. We cruised over to the bay of Isola Bella. If you have watched White Lotus this is the little island that is featured on the show. It’s not even visible from the 4 Seasons because its around a huge point in another bay. The island is connected to the mainland by a sandbar. I really wanted to go out and walk on it. But the captain said that the only way to do that was to swim. And that wasn’t going to happen. The water felt like an ice bath or cryotherapy. Apparently the water isn’t actually comfortable until July. But then you can swim until December. We were told the best time to come to a true beach town in Italy is October. We had a fantastic appertivo with Aperol spritz, salami, cheeses, olives and mini pizzas. There were several boats out because the weather was beautiful. So we got in some people watching. We moved around the next point to another beach called Mazzaro. We saw a really cool hotel and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon. The kids found their first cliff to jump off of. Tatiana, the crew assistant grew up in Taormina and she used to jump off this rock with her friends. So its perfectly safe. The kids had a blast and have no fear. We were proud! After we got back to the apartment the kids had been asking for pizza. Gabe found an awesome take away place really close to the apartment. He and I went out for a late dinner. He always manages to find the places dedicated to meat. The restaurants in Taormina have a very cool vibe. I loved the tables and chairs at this place. I decided to order some fried anchovies to give them a try. They were actually pretty good. Gabe even ate a few. We had a very light ricotta cheesecake that reminded me of my grandmothers recipe. It was just missing American graham cracker crumbs. Tomorrows weather is looking bad. Not sure what we will get to do.

*That photo of the mountain is Mount Etna. It’s the 2nd tallest active volcano in Europe. At 11,000 feet. This photo shows it with the least amount of cloud coverage that we have seen since Ortigia. It has snow on the top of it. And we found out it has 2 ski resorts. What!Read more