July 1 - Taormina

Today we drove through the region of Calabria to take the ferry to Sicily. From my vantage point, it's fairly hilly, but has some flat areas too. We're still seeing an abundance of olive trees,  but other crops,  too. We've seen corn and grapes and tomatoes and an abundance of fruit.

We've driven through so many tunnels! Southern Italy is very mountainous, and often the tunnels are back to back. Some are quite long, and some don't have lights.  Pretty spooky in those!

The good news concerning the ferry today was that we were only on it for about 20 minutes and we got to keep the bus. That bad news was that we had quite a wait to get on the ferry. We could see Sicily from where we waited in line.

We crossed at the Straight of Messina. The water was so many shades of blue!
When the bus pulled off the ferry,  into Messina, it was full of hustle and bustle of a good-sized city. There seem to be less single family dwellings and more multi-level flats with shops on the first floor.
Again,  we encountered quite a few tunnels on our way to Taormina.

Our tone in Taormina was delightful. We had lunch at a darling cafe that overlooked the bay. Lasagna and sorbet for dessert.

Then we explored the Greek Theater and head time to shop. The Greek Theater is massive and cute out of stone.  It is still used today. They were setting up for a concert while we were there.

While I was walking down the street of shops, the music from The Godfather was playing.  It was so surreal!  From what I've seen so far, they are really cashing in on that movie here.  There is Godfather everything,  everywhere you look.

The delegates hag an opportunity to learn some dances.  The first ones ate more of the salsa type,  but they also learned a tarentella. They must have spent about an hour dancing before we were back in the bus to meet the host families.

That was so much fun!  They were all excited and ramped up on the bus. And you could almost feel the energy as they waited to see who they would be with. The families were the same: Watchung the delegates and trying to figure which one (or rwo, in some cases) was theirs.

By the time we saw all the delegates of and got to our hotel ( no home stay for us) it was 9:00  and we were hungry and tired.  After a quick dinner and shower we crashed for the night. It'll be different without the delegates tomorrow,  but we'll see then for about a half day on Friday,  and then get them back on Saturday.

Sicicilan coast. View from restaurant.