Taormina, Lettojannie, Sicily,

The Italian road builders made a tunnel for the Autostrada right under the town, so Taormina’s thousands of years of existence on top of the hill, continues, undisturbed by the needs of modern transportation. We drove up the narrow switch-back road and fell in love with the place. At lunchtime we checked into the campsite in nearby Lettojannie, ate lunch, then spent the rest of the day just meandering and rambling here and there in Taormina.

Taormina is a captivating tourist town, very clean, picturesque, with plenty of places to spend our money. At one store Emmy bought a table cloth and a dozen napkins. That night she found there were only six napkins in the package, so she returned to the store the next day and the owner gave her another six.

I talked to the owner of a hardware store in Lettojannie. He had lived in Australia for many years, and was just thrilled to be living again in his homeland. He said that all the homes we see that are partially complete, will be finished when the money is available. They are purposely designed so they can be partially built and lived in, until money is available for more construction, maybe a generation or two from now.

One afternoon we left the camper in the campground, and rode the bus to and from Taormina, as others were doing. When the large gravel truck in front of us just quit, our bus driver, a skilled driver with a lousy attitude, drove his bus right up almost against the back of the truck. Our driver wasn’t about to give up his space without a “fight.” For a minute we expected a real fight would accompany all that bellowing.

Some people moved their parked cars, and several very large men bounced a very small car out of its non-parking space, bounced it across the street into a similar space. Now our bus, with an inch to spare, could slither up the switch-back road to Taormina, high above the Mediterranean Sea. The road was so narrow and the switch-back curves so sharp, the bus must stop and back and turn some more to make a few of the curves.

The huge, very powerful city buses are able to climb the steep hills easily, but are almost too large for these narrow streets. But come to think of it, on some of these streets, a donkey-cart would be too large.

We arrived at the bus stop for the 6:30 bus back to the campsite, but it did not arrive. Finally they said a vehicle wreck, somewhere on the east side of the hill, has all Taormina traffic stopped in both directions until who knows when. There’s another street on the north side, but it’s either not big enough for busses, or busses are not allowed on that street, or by now who cares.

We got on the 7:30 bus, but it didn’t go anywhere for awhile. We finally got to the campsite (ten minutes away) by 8:15, and by 9:00 we were finished eating, the dishes are were washed and put away, I had made the beds, and we were resting and reading. Surprising how easy and quick we can get settled.

Taormina has been here for 2300 years, in the intervening centuries the road has not gotten bigger, the vehicles have.