Honeymoon Day 10: Greek Theater and Giardini Naxos

The only thing that in Taormina that was a must see for me was the teatro greco, the ancient Greek theater.  A lot of the theater is brick so they think the Romans rebuilt on Greek foundations.  Either way I wanted to see it.  After a Sicilian breakfast on the terrace at the hotel, we headed to the town center on the shuttle and walked to the theater which is just outside of town.  It didn't take long to walk through the ruins but it was definitely worth the time and admission fee.

Sicilian ruins

Greek theater

View from the theater

After exploring the theater we wandered around the downtown area of Taormina before sitting down for lunch.  Over lunch we discussed what to do with our afternoon.  We had made reservations at the hotel for dinner, hotel Villa Ducale does not have an actual restaurant but for guests they offer dinners by their chef.  We decided to take a bus down to the beach since the day weather was warm.

Meats and cheeses

Penne for lunch

The bus terminal in Taormina is a short walk from the town center.  We asked the surly attendant at the ticket office and he suggested we go to Giardini Naxos, the buses ran about every hour.   Once we got on the bus our adventure started.  The bus was a city bus what went to another town and the beach was just a stop along the way.  There were only a few of us on the bus and the stop for the beach was not as obvious as we thought it would be.  In fact we never saw anything that looked like a beach.  After about 20 minutes I was getting worried that we were on the wrong bus.  An elderly woman at the front of the bus noticed we were on it and said something to the driver.  He stopped the bus and told us to turn right and we would find the beach.  I assumed we were a block or so from the beach.  We started walking through a neighborhood that was clearly not touristy or near the beach.   At this point it was getting close to 2pm, when shops start closing.  We found a small bakery where the guys there spoke very little English, but we finally communicated to them that we needed a taxi.  After about 20 minutes a very sketchy cab driver arrived at the bakery and offered to drive us back to Taormina but we convinced him to take us to the beach as originally planned.

Needless to say after all that we were grouchy and still unsure how we were going to get back.  I was starting to think we were going to have to shell out 100 euros for a ride up the mountain.  We finally were on the main street of Giardini Naxos and able to appreciate the view of the Ioanian Sea and Taormina from below.  Since Giardini Naxos is a beach town and it was November, there was not a lot open.  We stopped in dirty little beach front pub to get use the bathroom, get a beer and formulate our plan in that order.  The expat who owned the bar told us there were buses to Taromina that stopped along the main street but she didn't offer much more help then that.  We decided to walk along the beach for awhile before finding our way home.

View from the beach

The beach was surprisingly dirty

We waited awhile at a bus stop and miraculously a bus stopped that was headed where we needed to go.  This entire adventure was less then two hours but it was the most stressful part for me of the whole trip (other then the train ride on the Circumvensia.

Once we made it back up to Taormina unscathed I realized we were leaving in the morning and hadn't seen the main square of Piazza IX Aprile.  We did yet more shopping and bought some Christmas gifts before catching a cab to head back to the hotel.

View from the Piazza

Piazza IX Aprile

 We arrived back at the hotel in time for the hotel happy hour.  Every evening the hotel provides free appetizers to go with drinks.  We enjoyed our appetizers and drinks on the terrace before feasting on a homemade Sicilian dinner of seafood with fresh cannoli for dessert.  It was the perfect end to our two days in Taormina.