Bed and Breakfast Etna Taormina

Randazzo

by jeffmartinartist

In Taromina (Giardini Naxos actually) my wife and I had heard about a small train that went around Mt Etna and would deposited us in Catania. Two years earlier we couldn’t get anywhere near Mt Etna as it was erupting. We were very excited about this little trip, as we had recently come down from standing on the side the active volcano on Stromboli.

That was until the school children turned up on mass, at the same time as the small train and with our backpacks we didn’t stand a chance of getting a seat. The typical children were loud and we were annoying tourists to them. At one stop three young boys decided to get off the train for a quick smoke and we sat down. Well........... when they got back on they were vile and I was not about to give up my seat. They positioned themselves directly in front of us and stared at us and in some dialect I could only just make out were talking about American tourists. At this point I decided to try to turn a bad situation good by interacting with the youth of today. I stared by correcting the young boy that assumed I was American by telling him I was an Australian and then I asked him if he knew Melbourne? …. you know the Grand Prix? and Michael Schumacher?. Of course he did, but he wasn’t going to give me any ground. Then I got out my secret weapon a pile of photographs from the Ferrari Pit during the Melbourne GP. Well ten minutes later all three carriages had moved into ours, everyone spoke fairly good English and the questions were flying thick and fast.

When the boys got off at their stop I gave them a few spare shots and they waved us good by as we continued to enjoy our trip in peace.

There are a few shots from the GP in an album on my VT homepage.