Day 20

TAORMINA! Patrizia’s husband, Alfredo (like the sauce) was right on time at 6:40 am. Guess who pops out of the car as well, Patrizia!  Wooo! This should make conversation go a little smoother. So we hug and kiss and do the typical Italian greeting, and smoosh ourselves in the mini FIAT. Off we go. 3 hours  of driving ahead of us. It is kind of silent, and CC is dozing off already, as per usual. Here is me poking her to stay awake! This is giving me flashbacks to our plane ride over here. Although it was silent for the first half of our trip, things picked up because we made a pit stop at a gas station that just so happened to have a FULL Coffee bar! WaHoooo! Espresso time! Yummm. And why not, a huge chocolate bar to boot (our excuse: we should try authentic Italian chocolate lol). So excited eating our chocolate in the car. I looked down. Oh no, a perfectly round chocolate drool spot on my white shirt. REALLY! Ugh. Its not coming out!! I look over at  CC, and she is shaking her head in disapproval as she points out yet another chocolate stain. I guess I was excited for the chocolate?? 10 minuets later I happen to move my jacket and see a huge smear of guess what? Chocolate. WTF! Clean that up, and we are almost there!

After some confusion on where our hotel actually was, Patrizia takes off down the street. Where did she go? Alfredo just asks the lady next to the car who lets us know that its down the street some more. He tells us to get in the car. CC and I are like but Patrizia isn’t here. He clearly isn’t phased. Thankfully, we pick her up mid street on the way.

We make it to the cutest hotel and run to the reception desk to see if they can print a voucher for us (yes, we can all the way to Taormina without one and prayed the hotel could print us one, allah be heb el mejedeeb (a saying in Arabic that translates to “God loves the idiots,” who just so happen to be us)! She was able to print us a voucher =) and we relax until our tour guide gets there.

We meet our guide, Ermanno (who I called Ernello and CC called Ernesso) an hour later and are off to the volcano!  He takes us on the scenic route along the coast and describes some history to us. Part of the tour is a wine tasting with some appetizers..we assumed it would be maybe a tray of cheese while we sampled 4 wines..we couldn’t have been more off

We make it to the winery  called Gambino’s that was gorgeous and are led to a dining area with a spectacular view of the vineyard, now this is a wine tasting. The people there are so charming and nice and our waiter brought us our first two wines to sample. The first was a white wine that had a light but crisp taste. It was 12% alcohol (which seems to be on lower end in Italy). This was amazing! The next wine that was a red with typical Sicilian grapes. It was STRONG (14%) and Tasty all at the same time! He poured us our glasses, but left the bottles. He left the bottles?! Arewe suppose to drink all of those?

Out comes the “light” apps…in Italian translates to HUGE meal. We look over at our waiter who is holding two HUGE platters. One platter is divided into 5 sections with olives, tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, and two different types of mushrooms all in various oils and seasonings. The other huge platter was divided similarly only with different types of cheeses and salami. That one went next to me, yum!! We also got a basket of bread and were told that we could have as much as we wanted, which means seconds, amazing. We drink our glasses of wine. CC over there finished her white in a second. Can she have more? Of course, we are in ITALY! And so she does. Our waiter then brings out our next red wine. This was full of tannins (again 14%) It was also very good. CC is liking these red wines, so they have to be good! Woooo! Yummmm! As we are drinking and refilling every so often, we see our waiter with another dish. ??? He puts it down, and we notice it is sausage and a whole heap of mushrooms. These mushrooms are indigenous to the slopes of mt etna. And let me tell you… these mushrooms are also delicious. Are you jealous yet? lol

I look across the table to see CC giggling. Oh no. I start giggling. Oh no. We now have 3 open bottles of wine on our table, and we haven’t even received the last one yet. Even our tour guide comes over and asks how things are going. Sorry Mr. we are on Italian time now. And our last wine is brought out to us. Another strong red wine! But this one takes the cake of the reds! And so we drink some more. Here we are drunk on a mountain not even halfway through our tour. The owner of the vineyard so kindly came over and talked to us about their wines. I look over at CC with her semi glazed look. She is not paying attention, but drunk me was! Cutest, actually pretty hot, man had my full attention! We decide we should buy a wine on our way out and pick the white one. All giggles, we get back into the car.

We are back on our way up the mountain! We found out that Mt Etna is the largest active volcano in Europe that just so happens to erupt every so often, sweet. Drunk and most likely not able to run from an eruption. Sweet.

Up we go! We stop, of course, for an espresso- by the needs of our tour guide. Yep, there is another full coffee bar 1700 meters up. Up we go again! The views and the lava rocks and the lava sand and the black stones are beautiful and honestly unreal. And then our tour guide pulls over. We brought sneakers; however, decided to keep on our flats. Apparently, we are going for a mini hike that turned out well and with more fantastic views.

On our drive home we pass some cows on the road, get and decide we need a nap before exploring the town of Taormina (it was 3 anyways so nothing would have been open)

We groggily get up around 5 (whoops, overslept) and go out and about into one of the cutest towns ever. This town was what you expect from Italy. It was pristine. Filled with shops, churches, beautiful views and families (the cutest little nugs you will ever see!). Also there was a piazza in the town center that was playing live classic Italian music with beautiful light posts (for some reason I really liked). A clock tower, many restaurants, and antique buildings surrounded us with the view of the sea and beach behind us. Seriously the perfect place for a wedding proposal. Simply gorgeous.

We went to dinner around 9 pm (officially on italy time) after sitting in the piazza and enjoying the sweet moments of children running and music playing. And dinner, was, AH-MAY-ZING!