I always thought that August was the only crazy tourist season in Italy.  Even thought it is now September, Taormina is still “contaminated” with tourists (a phrase from one of the guidebooks).  When we arrived a week ago, we went for a stroll to check out the town of Taormina, and the main street was shoulder-to-shoulder with tourists.  Jamb packed.  My head almost exploded as I thought, “Oh, my, we shouldn’t have come here, this is too much.”  However, our stay in Taormina is Week 3 of our trip. It’s all good.

Whenever Chad and I take a long vacation, our rhythm follows a pattern.  Week 1 – Woo-hoo! We’re on vacation and so energized to do things and explore!  Week 2 – Wow, there’s still so much to see…What should we do today?  Week 3 – Meh, I’m not doing squat except for relaxing and maybe going for a walk…and if I’m feeling ambitious, I will take a morning nap AND an afternoon nap. 

We spent our Week 3 in Taormina.  Our apartment totally rocked.  Life is good.

First of all, here’s our apartment:

Now you know why we don’t feel bad about just being lazy or reading books or cooking dinner at home.  This apartment is a great place to chill.  It’s also a great place to spend the evening looking out at the town.

We’ve also spent time exploring the nooks and crannies of Taormina that tourists don’t usually see.  We’ve noticed that 99% of tourists do not venture more than a few feet off the main street of Corso Umberto.  For us, this means that there are many parts of the city that are quiet and quaint and worthy of our time, such as a cute little square, an out-of-the-way city park, or a narrow alley of steps going up the mountain.

We also ate at a restaurant called Maffei’s, recommended by Mario Batalli.

We also spent time just sitting and watching the activity in the town.  One of our favorite places was a bar called Daquiri with excellent cocktails.

On the day I wrote this post, we made lunch at home, which turned out to be a good idea, because a storm rolled in and there was lightening and thunder and rain for a couple of hours.  Even though we were on vacation in a beach resort town, I was totally fine with an afternoon thunderstorm because it gave me time to relax and nap and catch up on the blog.

As I wrote this post, I looked out at the ancient Greek theater on the hill across from us, and the thunder was booming all around me, echoing off the mountains.  I wondered if the ancient Greeks thought the thunder was the sound of their gods rolling boulders around on the mountain tops, because it was so loud and mysterious and it seemed to come from every direction.  And then it dawned on me that this booming, echoing thunder sounded exactly like it did in that baseball scene in Twilight.  So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to log into my Netflix account and watch New Moon because I see that it is currently available on streaming video.