Southern Italy 2008 Part 5

This morning we had a city tour of Taormina including the Teatro Antico Taormina.  Franco took us to the English park that was next to our hotel.  Franco was the complete opposite of Claudio.  He was quiet & unassuming.  No pointer.  (Oh, forgot to mention that Claudio's phone rang constantly.  His ringtone was of a person whistling, a little like the Andy Griffith show kind of whistling.  Can't get more eccentric than that!)  We had seen a lot the night before, when we took our passegiata through Taormina post-dinner.  

Our final stop was at the ancient Greek theater.  As soon as we got inside we remembered it was the same theater that Andrea Bocelli performed in during one of his PBS specials.  As we climbed higher & higher we had some spectacular views of Taormina, Capri & the Mediterranean sea, with the coastline.

We worked up an appetite after the tour and returned to Vecchia Taormina for MORE pizza and MORE white house wine.  Yes, it was as good as last night.  In fact, it was some of the finest pizza we've ever had.  This time it was still light for our passaggiata, so we could window-shop.

Due to scheduling conflicts we had to take our Godfather tour today.  Let me warn you that the drive up in the mountains far surpasses the drive along the Rocky Mountains & the California coastline.  I spent the drive on the floor of the bus.  It was bad enough having to hear everyone comment and cry out over the height and the countless hairpin turns we made in our tour bus.  When that drive was over, we had Liborio to thank for safely returning us back to our hotel.  The tour took us to a lot of the spots that you see when you watch Godfather I & II.  We went to Savaco & Forza d'Agro.  These places were remote, hill top towns, where most of the young have left for bigger cities.  We were never so happy when we returned to ground level!

We stopped at a pasticceria, La Botte for espresso (we should have had it correto) and bought some pistachio cookies.  We ate them on the balcony later that night when we got back from dinner.  Later we had our aperatifs and met up with our group again.  Tonight we returned to the Sicilian white we had fallen for, bianco d'alcamo.  We ate around the corner from our hotel at a third generation ristorante, al Giardino.  Nonna lived next door.  She was the lady we waved to every time we passed by.  Their specialty, surprise, was seafood.  I had my usual spaghetti aglio olio, Wayne had a mixed seafood pasta & Nikki had salmon risotto topped with crushed toasted pistachio.  Thankfully our friend, Phyllis, ordered cannoli and amaro.   Each was truly wonderful.  We ended with some limoncello, compliments of the owner.

One thing about the cannoli in Sicily is that it is not nearly as sweet as I've come across back in the States.  The shell is crunchy on the outside, but soft inside.  They cannoli is plain not with chocolate chips and such.  The most that seemed to happen was that there would be cannoli dipped with crushed pistachio like we had for dessert.  Heaven!