Plan for the four days in sicily
On the first day we planned to drive to Taormina a town of the city Messina in Sicily. The entire journey would be about 433 km taking at least 5 and half hours. It would be a long and tiring drive. On the fourth hour we should reach the port “Villa San Giovanni” where we would board a car ferry for a 10 to 15 minutes trip to Messina Port over at Sicily side. From there it would be an 1.5 hour drive to Taormina. We hoped to reach Taormina by about 5 pm which should leave us some time to explore the place.
On the second day we planned to drive to the island of Ortigia, which was considered as the historic center of Syracuse. On the third day would be a drive on to Agrigento where the “Valley of the Temples” were located and on the 4th day we would visit “Greek temple and ancient theater of Segesta” before ending in Palermo city. On the 5th day we would leave Sicily.
By the end of four days
Near the last moment we had a change of plan and still managed to have a wonderful time in Sicily. In our original plan it was to visit three towns/cities and three ruins. The ruins were mainly “Greek-style” as Sicily was once colonized by Greek. After our long drive to Taormina we had second thought about visiting ruins, especially Greek ruins as we had visited Greece a couple of years ago and had seen majestic Greek ruins after ruins. So by dropping the Greek ruins visits in Sicily would give us more time to visit the other towns/cities of Sicily.
At the end of the four days in Sicily we visited seven cities/towns, each having its own characteristic, each a delight to visit. There was totally no regret for dropping the ruins from our itinerary.
The seven cities/towns we visited were Taormina, Catania, Ortigia, Palermo, Monreale, Cefalu, Milazzo.
Crossing to Sicily
Sicily was the largest island of Italy and it was separated from the Italian mainland by the Strait of Messina. To get to Sicily we drove to the port, Villa San Giovanni, in the town of Villa San Giovanni. Both the port and the town had the same name!
At the port we missed a navigational sign and ended up at a “container/truck” lane. A truck driver signalled to us and we were back at the correct lane. We saw a ticketing booth, so Yat Thong stopped the car by the lane-side and I walked over to buy our ticket. I bought a one way ticket for a car (which include a driver) and one passenger. The cost was €38. I tried finding out if there would be saving buying a return ticket, unfortunately I had problem communicating with the staff. Anyway on checking from the internet later on, the saving was just €1 for return ticket covering more than 3 days. 1-day and 3-day return tickets had more saving.
Every day many vehicles and people crossing the Messina Straits to and from Sicily so ferry services were available 24 hours. We did not have to wait long before we were directed to board the car ferry.The car ferry had two ramps, one at each end of the ferry. Cars got in at one end at the departure port and exited on the other end at the arrival port. Which meant first in and first out. The sea journey was only 20 minutes.
Taormina
Our first destination on Sicily was the town Taormina. The drive to Taormina from Messina Port was about 1 hour 20 minutes. We took the coastal roads and we passed through Taormina beach and saw the old town perched high on a hill overlooking the beach.
At Taormina we drove straight to our “stay” on the outskirt. We had been on the road for more than 7 hours and badly needed some rest. After a good rest and a good dinner we were ready to explore Taormina old town. Our host advised us to park at “Porta Catania Parking” as the old town was off limit to car. Porta Catania was a multi-storey carpark built by the cliff side just below Taormina old town.
The parking charges at Porta Catania Parking was €1 for 1 hour and €6 for 2 hour. After 2 hours it was an additional €1 for every additional hour. We parked our car at level 1 and was wondering how to get to the old town when we saw elevators. These elevators went up to the 7th level. A local sharing the same elevator as us told us that to get to the town we had to go up to the highest level. We exited the elevator at the 7th level and found ourselves in a big square.
