A Stroll and a Walk With Snowshoes

In the days when ladies of independent means could wander around Europe, find an idyllic spot to settle down in and spend their time establishing a garden, Florence Trevelyan Trevelyan (given her surname twice so that she would keep one of them on marriage) travelled with a cousin, settled in Taormina, married the local doctor and created not one, but two gardens (all after having a brief affair with the married and future Edward VII).

One of these gardens opened to the public after Florence’s death and is lovely, but could be made even lovelier, especially when we learn that it is the second most visited tourist attraction in Taormina after the Greek Theatre.

The gardens became well known for a series of ‘follies’ that Florence designed herself and are built out of stone, cloth, pipes and anything else she could get hold of.

The garden has had many famous visitors, including Oscar Wilde, on his release from prison.

We had a more energetic day yesterday, joining a group trip to Etna where we learned all about volcanoes and had a walk wearing snowshoes (that was the exhausting bit).

The views were stunning and Etna was kind enough to blow off a little while we were watching.

Apparently, no flames are visible as the walls of the crater are so high.

Our guide, a keen volcanologist, was certainly bent on teaching us as much as he could in a short space of time. I am afraid I lost a little interest at one point when we were all standing on a ridge, in a gale, while he was scrabbling around in an old lava flow to find small rocks containing the different crystals found therein.

Etna is looked upon benignly here (one name for her is ‘Big Mama’) as she supports the local economy bringing in tourism, fertilising the soil (the lava is very rich in minerals) and watering the summer crops with melted snow.

We’ve now come to the end our four-week sojourn in Sicily and what a diverse number of things we have seen and done. I think we need a holiday to get over it all!