My husband and I arrived in Rome on a sunny Friday morning, bleary eyed and jet-lagged where we caught the il treno to Termini Station and were immediately roused from our daze to the sights and sounds of a city bursting with vitality. This was our second consecutive trip to Italy to explore more of Tuscany, Greece, Puglia and Sicily and the majority of our research and bookings were done on the internet, with some last minute decisions regarding the Greece component.

Cortona – our first week again was ‘delicious’- for me there is no other way to describe Cortona – I love it and we became familiar again with the food, countryside, transport and endless walking.

Week 2 – now accustomed to being out of our comfort zone – we flew from Rome to the Greek Islands and spent a couple of days each on Santorini, Naxos and Corfu. Unfortunately, bad weather followed us, which made it particularly hard to enjoy the beaches that we were longing for and our ‘island hops’, frustrated us as we were spending more time in airport terminals choking on cigarette smoke fumes, waiting for connecting flights.

Week 3 - Ostuni, Puglia – incredibly we almost missed our ferry from Greece at 4.00 am in the morning, and we were relieved to be back in the south of Italy that same day. Puglia was not what we were expecting and luckily we had ‘wheels’ – scary!, but lucky as it felt like we were doing time in Puglia.

Week 4 – on our way to Sicily!!! Our train was, of course, delayed – 14 hours later - we arrived at Taormina train station at 9.30 pm exhausted and hungry – the usual trepidation and nervousness – “Is there a bus or taxi?” – “How far is the hotel from the station?” – and of course the language problems again. Surprisingly - there were taxis waiting to take passengers to their destinations that were friendly and understood exactly where we wanted to go!! Mama Mia we were happy!!

We arrived to a very warm welcome by staff at Villa Carlotta and for some unknown reason, immediately upgraded to the ‘Tower Room’! After being shown around the hotel we were introduced to ‘Alfio’ – our friendly barman, who we got to know quite well over the next four days and could make cocktails into an absolute work of art!

Taormina - despite bad weather, we wandered through the streets admiring the fine shops with their distinctive Sicilian products or walked along beach after catching the cable car down to Lido Spisone, and every moment was memorable.

Our day tour to Mt Etna was something that I had been looking forward to, with the recent activity in the volcano a month prior to our visit. The day started out gloomy and did not improve, with Etna giving us a show of snow! - –we felt fortunate!!

Our last day was spent at the beautiful beach island Isola Bella - and then another delightful meal at the restaurant Bouganville – where we sampled another mouth-watering seafood meal. As we packed on the last morning, the usual unease clouded over us about our next destination – Sryacuse – but that is another story!!!

Submitted by Janelle McCosker