Springtime in Sicily Part 1: Taormina, Catania & Siracusa
I just recently retuned from one of the best vacations I have been on in years, and I know I have been privileged to go on some pretty amazing travel vacations over the last couple of years. You can read about my big 2024 Trip to Joshua Tree here and my 2023 Trip to Newfoundland here and here. Those were both truly amazing trips, but I hadn’t left our continent in a quarter century and I hadn’t been to Europe since 1996. I am not sure of the entire decision process exactly, maybe it was the stories that we had heard from friends, or some travel videos, but we decided that we would go to Sicily for two weeks. While there, we would keep to the south east part of it mostly. In retrospect, even that small portion of Sicily was a lot for two weeks. And because it was a lot to see, I decided to split this travelogue into two parts. This first one, is on the three coastal cities we visited. I will write a second one soon on the three cities in the Val di Noto we visited: Noto, Ragusa and Caltegirone.
If you are flying to Sicily, you will likely end up in either Palermo or Catania, and for us that meant Catania. Catania is a fairly big city on the east coast of Sicily which is dominated to the north by Mt. Etna, really though, I would say that Mt. Etna hangs heavy everywhere we went on this trip. For some sadistic reason, the first day after our arrival, we had planned a daytrip to the north of Catania to a smaller town called Taormina. (Just a note as you go through, each city has two galleries. One for portrait orientation and one for landscape. I have been finding that combining them either crops one or makes one smaller than the other)
Taormina
Taormina is just under an hour to the north of Catania by train (we travelled almost exclusively by train while we were in Sicily). The train station is right next to the sea while the town centre is quite a ways up a mountainside, so you have to hop on a bus. The bus winds its way back and forth on these incredibly tight S curves all the way to the bus terminal. Rather than go into town from the bus terminal directly, we hopped on a second bus to take us even higher up the mountainside to a smaller village called Castelmola. Again there were the tight S curves and we even got a little stuck on one of them as we came face to face with a second bus coming down. About 45 minutes after leaving the train station, we finally arrived at Castelmola. This small mountaintop town was originally built by the Greeks as the acropolis for Taormina (which sits directly below it). You can go up to the top and see some ruins though the signage was lacking as to what you were actually looking at. Still, with its amazing vistas of the Mediterranean and Mt. Etna; its tiny winding streets; and its beautiful people and buildings, it is clear why we had been told to make the extra effort to come up here. A second benefit is that there is a foot path that you can take down from Castelmola back to Taormina and we did this as well, but not before trying our first arancini at a small restaurant. The walk down takes about 30 minutes and it is so worth it as the views of the Mediterranean were beautiful. We were almost the only people on the pathway as well which made it quite peaceful.
When we got into Taormina itself, I was quite surprised by the volume of tourists. I guess I shouldn’t have been as this is one of the biggest tourist destinations in Sicily, especially after being featured in The White Lotus, and you can tell. Once we got through the old city walls, we were nearly shoulder to shoulder with the other tourists. It nearly made me want to head back up to the relative quiet of Castelmola. That said, there was also some sort of springtime celebration going on and it was also just a week before Easter so it may not always be as busy as this. That said, it was easy to see why it was so popular, with its tight main shopping streets, beautiful churches and the glimpses of sea vies every couple of blocks. While we were in Taormina, we also visited the ancient Greek theatre which is quite an impressive structure, especially with the views it has of Mt. Etna. We only did a day trip to Taormina so we didn’t get to see much more than the main sites but it was definitely worth it.
Catania
As I said at the beginning, Catania was where we arrived and spent a couple night at the outset of our trip and one more before heading back home. It is a big city, with a regional population of over a million people and as you would expect, fairly busy. Despite its size it also feels very safe and the locals we interacted with were all very friendly. That said, Catania was absolutely covered in graffiti and we had heard that it was a bit more dangerous than other parts of Sicily. Still, Sicily on the whole is quite safe and I expect that the concerns over Catania are relative to that, as I didn’t feel unsafe at any point in the city day or night. I do wish that I had spent some more dedicated time in Catania. It definitely had its more touristy parts, but it was also nice to see a real city just being a city that was mostly full of locals going about their day. We mostly walked around, however there is an extensive rapidbus system here including from the airport (there is also a short subway line, but I didn’t use it). On arrival at the airport, we were able to jump on the AliBus and get to within a 7 minute walk of our hotel. Something that even now Victoria doesn’t have.
As I said, we did not have a huge amount of time to explore Catania, but of where I did visit, I would recommend Via Santa Filomena which is an amazing alley that is full of restaurants at its northern end and apparently quite a few bars at its southern end. We also walked along Via Etnea a lot, which is Catania’s main walking street. Parts of it are pedestrianized for parts of the day though it is still used by the occasional car so you do have to keep looking out. It full of great shopping, cafes, and bakeries. At the southern end of Via Etnea is the Cathedral, a large piazza and apparently the fish market, it was closed the one day we were down at that spot though. Next time I am in Sicily, I will be sure to include more time in this exciting city.
Siracusa
After visiting Catania, we took an hour and a half train ride south to Siracusa. Also known in in English as Syracuse, Siracusa was the one place on our itinerary I really wanted to see. I could remember reading about it as a teenager, as the city looms large in Greek mythology. I was aware that you could visit some really impressive ruins and that the city itself now was also quite beautiful. We ended up staying here for the longest portion of our trip and I definitely don’t regret it, it was a truly magical place. We stayed in Ortigia, which is the old medieval / ancient part of Siracusa and also a separate island neighbourhood. Ortigia is also the most touristy part of Siracusa and with good reason. The streets are narrow and wind all over the small island giving it a bit of the same feel as Venice, especially when you pop out of a small alley at the edge of the water. The streets are full of restaurants, cafes and stores, and we even visited a puppet theatre for a show. I most enjoyed just getting lost wandering around and seeing what I could find, though this also led to me taking far too many photos. Perhaps one of the most amazing things to see in Ortiga is the Cathedral in the Piazza del Duomo. The building was originally a Greek temple dating to the 5th century BCE and then in the 7th century CE the spaces between the columns was filled in and a cathedral was created. It is stunning to see the Doric columns semi enclosed in the brick. One of the best parts of Ortigia is that a lot of it is very limited access for cars and for the most part is exclusively built for people to walk around. You don’t really understand how freeing this is until you get to spend the day with only the worries of a passing scooter.
One day we did walk across the main part of Siracusa to the archaelogical park which is absolutely massive and contains structures from both Greek and Roman eras. It was really my first time seeing Greek ruins on this scale. Unfortunately, with Easter just around the corner, the Greek amphitheatre had been covered over in wood to allow it to be used for a concert which did impact the aesthetics a bit. There was a lot more in Siracusa that we didn’t get to see and it was just such an amazing setting and urban environment, I would love to go back again.
I will be writing a second article on my visit to Sicily focused on the three cities in the interior of the island that we visited. That will be coming out soon, in the meantime, I would love to hear if you have visited any of these places in Sicily and spots that I might missed seeing.
Also just so all of you are aware, I am once again going to be participating in the Fernwood Art Stroll. Make sure you mark June 7th and 8th in your calendars, I would love to see you there. I am artist 7 on the map this year.
