We went up into the Madonie Mountains and it was beautiful. Taormina is one of the most gorgeous places on the planet

That's Mt. Etna rising in the distance. This shot was taken in a Greek temple's ruins.

I was there in early December. It was warm and sunny in beautiful Palermo but there is snow on the top of Etna and we thought it would be a great idea to hire a driver to take us to the top of the volcano but we encountered a raging snowstorm. Our Sicilian driver had no experience driving in snow and it was one hairy experience getting down...the driver kept calling us pazzi (that means crazy in Italian).

I can tell you the pizza was terrific as was Sicily's own dish Pasta Norma(pasta with eggplant named after an opera singer). One guy on our trip ate it everwhere to find the best one...

Going back to Taormina is one of my travel goals...

ate at Il Pescatore:


Didn't do any great adventures like you did, yank, but were there for Easter and so saw some interesting cultural aspects of Sicily.

One of the nicest things about the Godfather movies are all the shots of Corleone's life in Sicily. Coppola shot those scenes on site, including the very last scene where Michael's daughter is killed on the steps of the magnificent opera house in Palermo (a world class city, btw).

I wonder why American tourists don't flock to Sicily? Any ideas, ellen?

We stayed in Siracusa for a couple of nights, after Taormina and a night in Porto Empedocle (where we feared not finding a hotel at all!) Was night before Easter, and people marched through the streets in a formal 'mourning' procession, very moving. THEN, in Siracusa, saw our/my first passeggiata, heard the name of a little girl with her family, Ciela, and later named our cockatiel after her, such a lovely Italian word, is of Esperanto origin. The meaning of Ciela is "heavenly, from the sky". JUST learned it's from Esperanto!

Until that trip, I hadn't realized that the U.S. still had an Air Station near Catania. I had forgotten that whole segment in the movie Patton...LOL...