Eternal Confusion of the Infinite Bus- Sicilian Holiday Part Two

First things first: because we are inept travelers who love their pint or three of something, we generally skip the hire a car part, which, as you shall see, is particularly irksome in Sicily. This also implies that our mobility is somewhat limited by the quirks and whims of local transportation companies, and we therefore cover less of everything- I would love to say that we do it more thoroughly in exchange, but this statement might not be that valid either. So the scientific review below will thus concentrate on the Ionian coast of Sicily, as it extends from Messina (where we haven’t been) to Syracuse (where we have).

How to get there.  Flying is probably the best option irrespective of whether you are already in Italy or abroad, as a quick perusal of the Trenitalia connections to Rome and Milan uncovers a world of meandering rails, uncertain timetables and most probably massive discomfort.  Our experience with buses wasn’t all that inspiring either, so the top tip is to avoid them as long as you can.  The main airport in the area is Catania Fontanarossa, also poetically named Vincenzo Bellini. Italians love an artsy touch, don’t they, not that many others would know that, for example, Roma Fiumicino is also called Leonardo Da Vinci, nor does the state of the contraption live up to the might of its namesake.

Catania Fontanarossa is however a not overly grand, but pretty clean and functional terminal, and it has flights connecting it to most of the major European destinations- Wizzair has services from Budapest, Bucharest and both Warsaw and Katowice in Poland, while Alitalia, should you trust them with your luggage, offers several transfer options through Rome and Milan. Those of incredibly adventurous disposition can also travel by car and catch a ferry to Messina from Reggio Calabria on the continent- several Italian governments have harboured pipe dreams of building a majestic bridge over the straits, but every now and then a desperate Italian scientist will bludgeon some sense into them referring to delicate details about how the area is infested with active volcanoes and pretty earthquake prone. Or, more realistically, they simply realize they can’t embezzle enough money and leave it at that.

How to get around. The answer is simple: by car. It seems everyone of driving age has one, usually some slightly battered Fiat model, with a few of them looking like they served well their first owner, a Roman centurion who catered for them alongside a horse and a donkey. Trips to the greengrocer’s, butcher’s or the children’s kindergarden located on an adjacent street will all be done aboard a vehicle, more often than not with a gesticulating arm flailing through the open window. Should you ask directions and confess that you wish to make the dangerous five minute journey on foot, much referencing of Jesus and the Madonna will ensue and your counterpart will then admit with a sigh that the thought never crossed their mind, therefore they can be of no help whatsoever. Scenes of absolute despair unfold in front of ubiquitous mechanic’s shops, where harassed gentlemen run around informing devastated owners that the car might just be ready by tomorrow’s mass or outing to the cemetery. Might, but not for sure. In Sicily, nothing is really quite sure. Car rental offices are therefore plentiful, both around the airport and in all major resorts, and prices are generally fair- it’s best however to ask a local beforehand and most hotels will have a list of recommended places.

Should you, for no good reason really, opt for a car-less holiday, like we did, you will have to rely on buses and trains. Transport in Sicily has a generally fragmented nature- two major cities relatively close to each other will be connected directly, but in case you want to embark on a more complicated undertaking, you will most probably have to switch rides at some point. Sticking to the Ionian coast you will however be pretty well catered for by the Interbus network- it even runs almost on time, with the occasional quarter of an hour delay on longer connections. In such situations the most important thing is not to panic or wish for clarity- nobody knows why the bus is late, nobody knows when it will arrive, but it will be soon (the local definition of which might be slightly different to yours) and you should just calmly accept your fate. Tickets are available for purchase from the drivers, but it’s advisable to buy them in advance and you should also be prepared for popular connections to be completely full when they arrive at smaller stops. A good option for the Taormina-Giardini Naxos area is the daily 10 euro ticket, which allows you to travel between several beach areas and all the way to the gorges of the Alcantara river.

Certain longer connections, for example the Messina-Syracuse one are, ideally, better by train. Fragmentation is a major factor here as well and due to the rail network being focused mostly around the coast, some trips will take you on detours along less modern lines. Regional fast trains (RV- Regionale Veloce on Trenitalia boards) are pretty comfortable and affordable but could, might, and will be late. In smaller stations the ticket counter will often be closed according to whimsical schedules, but you can nevertheless buy tickets from the self-service counters and, naturally, the café-bar. Tickets must always be validated prior to travel at the designated machines: should you board the train with an untouched ticket you will most likely be fined- a recent campaign aimed at cutting down on people re-using tickets has made controls stricter and train conductors are reluctant to be lenient even when one claims touristy folly.

Although they are rather handsome devices, RVs will however malfunction every now and then, generally when you’d most need them not to. And thus it happened that, already a bit prickly about an hour long delay on a two hour connection (reasons, evidently, unknown), we were unable to leave the train at Taormina station due to the door not working. The allotted time of maneuvering in and out of the carriage at that particular stop is of 30 seconds, and I really wish to offend no one, but I find it hard to believe that the Swiss or the Germans would be able to complete this operation successfully, so Italians stand really no chance at all. But, due to some wishful thinking from Trenitalia, 30 seconds it was, and by the time we made it to another, possibly functional door, we were already hurtling through the scenic coastal region towards Messina. Led by a boundlessly revolted Northerner we located the capotreno who, with a Cheshire cat grin, informed us that we are essentially morons who can’t operate primitive systems such as doors and that we shall therefore be unceremoniously disembarked at Letojanni, from where we should find our stupid way back home.

Thus we learned from a completely bewildered local that taxis are unheard of in Letojanni- naturally, since everyone is aboard their own private minute Fiat, and we should just pray to the Madonna that late buses are still running as during high season. They were- or weren’t, since the bus driver, equally bewildered by our presence gave us a ticket which had ‘Bus 99-Infinite’ written on it and hoisted us up to Taormina, from where we could take the normal connection back to Giardini Naxos.

This long odyssey of mysterious names might require some explanation: the jewel of the Ionian coast, Taormina, to the further bewilderment of tourists, Italian and foreign alike, is actually not by the sea, but perched on the rocks above the shore. It therefore has no beaches itself- this role is fulfilled by the beaches of Letojanni, approachable by bus, and Mazzaró, which is connected to Taormina by cable car- the trip lasts a five minute maximum. These beaches are however pretty expensive, so a safe bet is to choose the homelier sister village of Giardini Naxos instead- accommodation and food are both cheaper here, and there is a long stretch of enjoyable sandy beaches as well. Even higher up the rocks you can find Castelmola, the sole real purpose of which is to provide great views of Taormina and Etna on the horizon.

Where to Stay.  There are plenty of options for accommodation and the mid-range ones are particularly good when it comes to value for price. Generally speaking, Sicilian prices are affordable- scared by the decrease in tourists during the crisis, locals opted to keep them down in the hope of attracting more people, which seems to have worked out quite well for both sides. Most international booking sites will have a handsome list of small hotels, many of them family run (‘bed and breakfasts’ typically have a maximum of four rooms, while a ‘pensione’ is somewhat larger, but still not a full blown hotel).

Taormina is of course the priciest, the affordable options being usually hidden away in small alleyways without the best of views- for that, one might opt for Castelmola instead, whereas Giardini Naxos provides views of the Etna and the closeness to some fine beaches. You could probably choose to stay in Messina or Catania as well, but why would you really- they are both worth a one day visit in case you have plenty of time on your hands but for a one week stay they are cities you can skip without deep regrets. 

Into the South- Sicilian Holiday Part One

It might seem odd, but for a country which is, insert super useful info here, a peninsula, I had never associated Italy with the sea. Or, more precisely, the sea was never the first thing I associated it with, nor the second, and probably not even the tenth. Somewhere in my heart of hearts I knew Italy has plenty of seas, but more immediate realities such as football and pasta always seemed to obscure this fact. Since I am not a big fan of over decorated churches, putti and Biblical themed paintings either it might be so that two of the main elements in Italy's tourist image were lost on me almost completely. 

I did notice the sea at Venice, it's hard not to, but it was yet again more of a backdrop for perfect shots of boats rocking gently on the waves or the source of the blessed breeze which cleans away the canal funk when it gets too intrusive. Rome, on the other hand, pretty much pretends not to even have a sea, and tries to conquer you with more elemental things such as how it was the capital of this giant empire which shaped the world as we know it. Other times I visited Italy I was mostly land locked, which you can do quite successfully in the North, where in winter I would peer on the snowy peaks of the Alps and it made total sense to me that Italians would be great skiers, but I got slightly surprised when it dawned on me they were good at swimming and water polo too, though with the latter seas don't seem to be a prerequisite, as Serbia and Hungary have proved it plentifully. 

So this being said, while I do not wish to minimize Italy's momentous accomplishments as eye candy and tourist bait, when I think of seaside holidays, I flash forward to a sun drenched Greek island and get stuck at that. I would therefore have been more than happy to do a repeat performance this year too, but the blog's alternatively lazy or industrious co-photographer demanded that we boldly go where we haven't gone before, so after excluding several shores which we have already explored, we ended up with Sicily. I promise to keep Greek parallels contained as much as possible, but I could not help but notice how one of the seas washing Sicily's shores, namely the Ionian, is what I would decidedly consider a Northern Greek sea, hence with the likeliness of some weather disturbance in early September, but then again travelling during high season is worse than death and scattered showers bundled together. And scattered showers we did have for a couple of days, with the bonus of observing how insular weather is basically on fast forward, with undisturbed baby blue skies being suddenly overwhelmed by heavy clouds setting up the scenery for a minor biblical deluge, closely followed by yet another bit of ridiculously radiant and hot sunshine. 

Since I promised I wouldn't do many Greek parallels, I will now mention how one fundamental difference is that Sicily does cater for a lot of domestic tourism, as opposed to Greece, where local travelers are a rarity. My super scientific work of lying on a chaise longue and listening to banter around me (you can do a lot of that in Italy provided you're familiar with a couple of regional dialects too) led me to assess that almost, if not more, than half of those on the beach were Italian, mostly coming from the North. This entailed a couple of things-mainly that almost without exception their tone when talking about the South in general and Sicily in particular was condescending and they made some sort of excuse for why they are indulging in southern seas at all, mostly themed on how 'il nostro mare', their sea, is cold, possibly a bit dirty-ish, industry and all, and the beaches not so sandy. The logical jump would have of course been that all in all, the Sicilian sea is better, but this was not voiced quite as clearly as one would have expected. 

I will come clean and say that distrust of the Mezzogiorno was somewhat built into me as I learned Italian- just as learning Finnish will come with the Easter egg of disliking Swedish for no good reason at all besides some historical animosity which you were not part of at any level. Mentality wise I do however feel alienated from most Mediterranean people in general, and the loud and seemingly senseless but sometimes borderline menacing interactions they have, so it was hard not to jump on the bandwagon, but hopefully I did my best. Being Romanian, and therefore not having high levels of popularity either on account of similar bad press around the lines of stealing local jobs and the likes, might have made me more understanding of the South's trials and tribulations- one odd adventure was when the host in our Venetian accommodation, noticing my accent, remarked I was not from around those parts. Well, no, I am Romanian, I said, waiting for her reaction. Oh, no worries, at least you're not from Naples, honey. I assume she meant it as some sort of a compliment, so I tried not to convey just how insulted I felt both on my own behalf- and that of the city of Naples. 

Knowing the local language of course shapes one's experience- you see, or more exactly hear more on some level, but you also see less on another. You also come with different preconceptions, maybe of the worse kind- you assume you know some things as a fact because of your status as an almost insider. There are positives as well though- if I started by saying how Italy was not necessarily a sea country for me, in Sicily I came to the odd realization that I have an immense wealth of sea related terminology, mostly learned unconsciously from the news reports I was religiously watching in my teens- I was waiting for the football, yes. I will therefore try to bring it all into balance for a hopefully (almost) objective and useful travel account in the next installments. Until then you may revel in the first batch of shots, which include the Etna, the resort of Giardini Naxos, Taormina and two rebellious Sicilian cats.