View of Taormina Giardini
On board the ferry at 2am
The amazing thing about Italy is simply that the cities differ greatly from one another. When we reached Sicily, we seemed to have left Italy for some other country. The west of Sicily felt like an old coastal town, the centre of Sicily like Scotland and the east of Sicily like New Zealand.
After reaching Messina, we continue driving down to Taormina Giardini where our accommodation was. By the way, 3 out of the 5 of us were dudes so we slept in the car to save on accommodation, while the other 2 girls preferred booking accommodation to have a good sleep. Afterwards we went to visit Taormina. You can't drive into Taormina per se, so you have to park near the city where parking is a stupid €5 an hour. We only spent 2 hours in this city as a result. Then afterwards we went to Taormina Giardini to have a nice lunch and visited Gole Alcantara and the Giardini beaches for the rest of the day.
The next day, we headed to Mt Etna. Mt Etna is the largest active volcano in the whole of Europe and is sight to behold. There is a north and south entrance, Piano Provezana and Rifugio Sapienza. Rifugio Sapienza is the better side to go as the weather there is actually warmer, so the funicular would more likely be working there than the south side. The funicular is a cable car thing that you take to go 2,500m higher, and from there you can take a bus to see the summit of the volcano. Unfortunately, the funicular was closed when we were there due to poor weather, so we ended up hiking near the mountain to see a 2002 crater. The funicular costs about €30. We drove down to Cefalu afterwards, stopping at Enna, another city, along the way to grab dinner. The drive towards Cefalu is spectacular in the afternoon and takes about 4 hours.
We spent the next morning in Cefalu to explore a cathedral, the old town and the beach. Nothing that beats what we have seen so far, but still pretty nonetheless.
Afterwards, we headed down to Palermo which is about 1 hour from Cefalu. While they say that Palermo is the headquarters of the Italian mafia, I felt that it was safer than Naples. Palermo is a nice city to spend half to a day in, with 3-4 markets, gelato, and many Sicilian desserts.
Once we are done with Palermo, we head to the final leg of our journey. We drove from Palermo to Scopello and had a picnic lunch there.
From Scopello, we headed north to San Vito Lo Capo, another city with breathtaking mountains and coasts. Once there, we headed for the Zingaro Nature Reserve that has an entrance close to San Vito Lo Capo.The entrance to the reserve costs €2 and you can walk to the beaches inside.
Afterwards we headed off to Trapani! Our last city of this Italy trip. Just in time to catch the sunset too. There's nothing much to do in Trapani, the only reason we are there is to catch our Ryanair flight the next day.
