Saturday, July 30, 2005

SICILY, ITALY (JULY 2005)

As I begin this post two things in particular come to mind. The first is that Albania is amazingly geographically located and is a wonderful doorstep into so many different European countries, allowing one to experience vast cultural and geographical changes by only travelling short distances. The second thing that comes to mind is the fact that I think Italy has just about the best food on the planet...at least the best I have tried thus far.

On July 20th, Chris, Jozi and myself boarded an overnight ferry from Durres, Albania to Bari, Italy. From Bari we made about a 6 hour ride to the southern tip of Italy to what is known as Reggio de Calabria. From there we took the 1/2 hr ferry ride to Messina, Sicily, Italy. From Messina we traveled about another 1/2 hr to our first destination, Taormina. Our initial plan was to tour the island and over the course of our 2 day stay travel to some of the major Sicilian cities, but unfortunately Chris' bike had some unforseen problems so we spent our time in Taormina primarily, with some short travels to nearby cities for the purpose of trying to get his bike repaired. We had hoped to visit the Godfather in Palermo but obviously that didnt quite work out. On our last day there, after spending the morning finishing fixing the bike, we spent the afternoon and traveled to the nearby active volcano, Mt. Etna. It was a beatiful ride and by far was one of the highlights of our time in Sicily. Mt Etna is one of the worlds most active volcanoes. Its last sizeable eruption was in 2002! After visiting Mt. Etna we returned to the hotel and prepared for an early morning departure for mainland Italy so we could catch the ferry back to Albania.

So here are some of the pictures from our journey. Enjoy!

Sicily map
island of sicily

SICILIA
exit for sicily

waiting for ferry to sicily
preparing to take the ferry to sicily

ferry to sicily 2
ferry to sicily

taormina sicily 1
just arrived in the city of taormina

taormina sicily 2
taormina, sicily by night

taormina beach
beaches nearby taormina

giardini naxo sicily 1
nearby city of giardini naxos. the city up on the hillside is taormina

passenger style
some passenger jozi picked up

mt. etna
mt. etna

mt etna sicily motos
sean, jozi, chris at mt. etna

mt etna sicily sean moto
mt. etna had brilliant colors and landscape

mt etna sicily road moto
riding down from mt. etna

ferry to mainland italy sean motos
on the ferry back to mainland italy

sean ferry to mainland italy
ferry to the mainland. city of messina, sicily in background

boys ferry to mainland italy
a good laugh can always be had. the wind was quite strong that day.





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