Dave had a conference on this south Italian island and I decided to go there too and meet his friends I know from last summer in Alaska. If you fly to Sicily the main airport is Catania. Which was fine, it was only 60km from the airport to the hotel in Naxos, close to Taormina. Should be no problem, except of:
- the rental car companies were not located in the terminal building
- I almost killed 5 motoroller driver, they drive like crazy there
- the roads are so narrow
- I only had a slight idea of where the hotel is located
But: I made it. I have no idea how, must be female intuition. But I arrived at 9pm. Unfortunately the first wine introduction was over and the hotel bar didn't serve anything to eat that late, but that was okay. It was warm and the stars were out, we met Dave's friends and had a nice evening.
While Dave was participating the conference I decided to go diving. It was my first time diving in nice and warm water. All I did up to then was some lake diving in the Netherlands, Germany and UK and of course the diving in Alaska during my winter stay. Not really warm water. Now I was very excited about everything. The diving itself, diving from a zodiac, the underwater life, the people... And it was great. They picked me up at the hotel (I pretended I didn't have a car...I didn't want to drive again ;o)) Then I had to walk down 133 steps on ancient stairs to get to the beach. The diving took place around Isola Bella. Look how it looks like:
And on Saturday Dave was able to come with me on one dive, which was fantastic for both of us.
We also did a geocache, like always when we are travelling. But this one, I really wish we didn't do it. As mentioned our hotel was in Naxos. This was the first creek town in Sicily. The next a little bit bigger town is Taormina, which is a very popular tourist place and also the place where the dive store was located. The two towns are easily connected by bus, but to find the geocache they recommended to use some further ancient stairs. The temperature this night was still in the 80th or so (33 Celsius) this night and we walked all the stairs. Oh yes, we found the cache and also enjoyed the view, but before we were able to go to a restaurant or bar we had to dry our shirts ;o)
Taormina by night was so beautiful. We went there twice and enjoyed the best ice cream and best pizza I ever had. We also had two very romantic evenings there.
We didn't walk home, but almost. It took some time until we found out we had to press a very well hidden stop button in the bus to make it stop. We missed two stops and therefore had to walk quit a bit.
On Sunday afternoon, after my fifth dive, we decided to relax a little bit at the hotel pool. And it was necessary. I felt old. Not just a little old, but real old. After the last dive I had problems with my right ear. It felt like the water wouldn't drain out of it. Two of my fingers were bleeding from getting in and out of the neoprene twice a day. On the last walk home from the bus stop to the hotel I first ran into a pole and got some not very nice bruises at a not very nice spot. And finally after walking with my nice summer shoes I got a huge blister under my right foot. Well, relaxing at the pool sounded great.
But we also found some time for a short round trip by car. We never saw Mt. Etna since the summit was always covered by clouds. But we saw olive trees, old farmers selling peaches, small country roads, old buildings...we saw a very beautiful part of Sicily. And we had summer for four days.
But now I am looking forward to the trip to Alaska. Hopefully I will see most of you while in Alaska!
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