Taormina - Theatrics and ceramics.

Etna is billowing wispy smoke when we arrive in Taormina. We can see her at a distance from our balcony. The hotel is slightly weird, nothing matches, it's ornate Italianate decor has seen better days but to our right we can see a hint of the Teatro Antico di Taormina, built by the Greeks in 300 BC and in front of us the sea.

The sun warms us as we walk into the centre, dry heat, bearable. We head first to the famed Roberto's where they fill your cannolo on the spot and you sit on some rickety chairs and enjoy the experience. The town is beautiful, full of amazing ceramics, in shops, on the streets, as mosaics and scenes on the walls. The heads of Elisabetta and Lorenzo stare at us from restaurants, filled with...you guessed it, basil.

We walk home via Villa Communale Parco, with views out over the Ionian sea. It was built by an eccentric Englishwoman who called herself Lady Trevelyan but by all accounts she was no true Lady. She arrived here in 1884 after a dalliance with the heir to the British throne, Edward VII. Queen Victoria was not amused and Florence was banished from the court and Britain but given a generous allowance. She embarked on the Grand Tour of Europe and ended up falling in love both with Taormina, and the mayor. He gifted her land with a view and she created gardens and built Victorian follies there. It's very tropical, palms and cactus and sweeping views of the sea and Mt Etna.

We ate one of the most memorable meals of our trip that night,(unfortunately I lot some photos with transfer to the computer so you'll have to imagine the dishes). Rosmarino is run by a family. The daughter-in-law talks us through the menu. She suggests her grandmother's ricotta fritters. They arrive, we eat, we are amazed. Mostly ricotta with a hint of cinnamon, dash of flour and deep fried. Then comes chicken, marinated in juniper berries, coriander and orange juice. Next is incredible tiny small fish and calamari and a Caponata, a traditional Sicilian eggplant and vegetable dish, flavoured with cacao. We have over-ordered but we share, absorbing all the various flavours.

After a breakfast the next day of coconut brioche, we head to the Greek Teatro built into the hillside and overlooking the bay and Etna, booking for a concert there that evening. What a position! The Greeks knew how to build for maximum impact and the Romans added their columns and sculptures to enhance it. We wander for as long as we can but the heat drives us back into the shaded alleyways of the centre. We need a granita.

Taormina seems to be all about food. We head to the Bam Bar, famous for granita but for me it's all about the ceramics. Every surface is covered in hand painted ceramics - the tables, the walls, the toilets are covered with them. They're stunning. We sit outside on our ceramic table with a coffee granita with cream for the partner and an almond one for me. The tiny streets are buzzing with tourists.

The ornate beauty and colour of the ceramics here blows me away. I love colour, the more the merrier as the old saying goings. Big beautiful bowls with lemons and figs, cacti and prickly pears, fish jumping out of platters. I'm entranced.

Later we take the cable car down to Mazzaro beach and swim in the cove, have bruschetta at a little taverna and make our way back for a nap. Exploring, eating and enjoyment can be exhausting, especially when we need to go out again for dinner!

We choose a dining location opposite the Bam Bar. As soon as we sit, they bring us free Prosecco. We share an appetiser of smoked swordfish and tuna with a balsamic cream; the partner has beef with a gorgonzola sauce and I have Chicken roasted with garlicky, creamy zuchinis. Afterwards they bring us amaretti biscuits and a liquor - also free. Then it's just a skip and a jump (well a walk as we're a bit full but not enough to forego a granita) to the Bam Bar for a pistachio one. We sit for a while waiting for the concert that starts at ten.

The Theatre is awash with light, the stage lit up for the Opera singers but it's another hour before they even arrive and being Australians, it's getting past our bedtime. We listen for an hour and walk back through the moonlit streets. Our first concert in a Greek revamped theatre.

Sicily - Catania. Of myth and legends.

We flew across the sea to Catania, Sicily. Another wild ride to the hotel, with a Sicilian driver this time. No rules seem to apply, there seems to be no markings on the road as to where the driver should keep within some sort of confine. In short, it's a free for all and we are pleased to arrive in one piece.

Our hotel is in the Piazza di Duomo. It's my first time in Sicily since I was 27 and I had arrived in Palermo with my late husband at a time when it was a common sight to see tanks in the streets. Looking at the buildings in Catania, we think the city looks unkept and dirty and could do with a scrub but then we find out that the buildings are made of volcanic basalt, a dark grey stone from the surrounds. Mr Etna, after all, sits brooding over the city.

We have a balcony overlooking the square and the beautiful church. In the middle of the piazza, an elephant on top of a fountain surveys the scene from on high, surrounded by people eating gelato around it's base and equally being cooled by the fountains spray. The elephant, (u Liotru) has become the symbol of the city and is said to be magical and be able to predict the eruptions of Mt Etna; which is obviously a handy thing as eruptions are hard to predict even with all the technology of our times.

The elephant's past is still unknown, it may be Roman or maybe not, it was appropriated in the 1700's to be made into a fountain, was given a marble saddle with Catania's patron saint's coat of arms on it, and then an Egyptian obelisk (origins unknown as well) was placed on top. A mishmash of cultural identity with a bit of magic thrown in.

Across the road was one of the top ten pasticcerias, Prestipino Duomo. We have to have cannoli and ,as it's afternoon, we have to have it with a Prosecco. Cannoli in Sicily are indelibly printed on my memory from almost 32 years ago when I tasted my first one in Palermo. The crunch of the fried bubbled pastry, the soft creaminess of the sheep's cheese ricotta, the discovery within of bits of dark chocolate and tiny bits of cedro, a candied thick skinned lemon of Italy. We close our eyes as we eat the Cannoli. Heaven.

The shop is full of almond biscuits in all shapes and sizes and perfect marzipan fruits that you can have boxed in brightly decorated Sicilian painted containers. Wandering around we come across a market full of amazing jewellery, handbags, clothes. The colours, the detail! Lemons, fruit, chillis , pearls and coral are the theme of the jewellery and bags. I buy earrings for the daughter and myself and am blown away by the ornateness of the ceramics.

We find a shop opposite our hotel where I find out about the story of Elizabetta and Lorenzo whose faces are on vases everywhere. Elizabetta, a Sicilian girl falls madly in love with a Saracen merchant only to find out he has a wife and children back home. Here the story verges into two. One is that Elizabetta decides to kill Lorenzo so that she will have him with her forever, the other is that her brothers murder him. Either way, she decides to keep his head as a souvenir, plants it in a vase and grows basil on top (as you do when you find out your lover has deceived you). The vases show the heads of Elisabetta and her lover, as a set of two, or one on either side. When I moved in with the husband, there was one such vase in the garden and it used to freak me out so I hid it until one day, I discarded it (meaning it accidentally was thrown into the bin) but now I know the story of it, I would have treated it to a better location in the garden and grown basil in it.

The shop owner also explains the image of the Trinacria or the three bent legged Medusa. The Greeks named the Island after it's three capes and it's triangular shape plus the fact that it's surrounded by the Tyrrhenian, Mediterranean and Ionian seas. It's become the symbol of Sicily and after finding that out I buy earrings for the daughter because she has a fondness for the feminine power of Medusa.

The hotel owner recommended a restaurant, and of all the amazing places to eat in Catania, this sadly was one of the worst. They forgot us, they ignored us and then brought us food that was only just edible. I should have looked on Trip Advisor. You live and learn. The partner got some cigars in memory of his dad and we sat on the balcony, listening to the singer in the piazza, the smell of the cigar sweetening the air.

We head to the pasticceria for breakfast. I have my favourite pistachio brioche and a darkly, deadly macchiato before we have a quick look at the famous Catania markets before we leave for Taormina. The markets are beyond belief, there's a balcony where Catanian men lean over watching the spectacle of the fish sellers below, they are wreathed in cigarette and cigar smoke. We are transported to a medieval world, a cacophony of Sicilian dialects shouting about their produce; swordfish heads staring us down; the fish so fresh there's hardly a smell in the market; the sunlight turns the scales to silver iridescence, to burnished corals and pinks of the delicate prawns and crustaceans.

The partner loves anchovies and he's treated to a small plate of them, carefully deboned and laid out and covered with a paste of parsley, oil and a splash of lemon. They tell us to go to a shop that sells good bread to have them with. The bread shop is in the middle of the vegetable markets - cheese, bread shops and all manner of spices are displayed in the tiny meandering streets. We are entranced but have to leave for the train to Taormina.

Blue Lagoon - Paradise and lost belongings.

It's not easy getting around in Malta but once you realise that buses and ferries are the go, you start to relax. We take both to Blue Lagoon, walking the rocky pathways past the little stalls selling food and drinks (alcohol allowed!), in Australia we're not trusted to drink by the sea. We wander up the hill past saffron puffs of wildflowers and lilac flowered bushes and then down to the lagoon. We find a small patch of rock to leave our towels, having left our valuables in a locker at the top (recommended). It's like swimming in liquid aquamarine! White sand beneath us, we swim to the other side and climb up onto the rocks to stare back across the expanse of crystalline turquoise.

We get the boat back to the island of Gozo and a taxi to it's capital, Victoria. Beautiful craft shops, bars and restaurants in old stone buildings. Again, such a mix of European and English shopkeepers and waiters. We lunch on a platter of tiny fried seafood, we wander the tiny streets eating jammy figs and soft strawberries that we buy on our walk.

We take a taxi back to the ferry. The partner accidentally leaves his wallet in the taxi and it takes off before we realise it. The partner runs one way after it and I go the other as it's a loop that the road takes, but we miss it and end up breathless in front of a travel agent. The partner is hopeful they'll know the driver whose name he has asked, being an inquisitive soul. I'm skeptical but being a Libran, he's assured of a nine lives policy attached to his persona and I'm right. One of the men knows the son of the driver and rings him; he then calls his dad and within ten minutes the driver returns smiling, wallet in hand. We make the ferry within minutes of it leaving with the impression that the Maltese are an honest race and very helpful.

We return to shower and have dinner at the Baker Maltese cafe. A rich rabbit stew with bay leaves, nutmeg, red wine and tomatoes and an octopus one that is flavoured with capers, olives, red wine, lemon zest, peas and potatoes with the weird broad bean dip as a free starter, all washed down with a lovely light Maltese wine. We speak to the owner who tells us that it is only in the last seven years that Valletta has come alive with tourism, before it was a ghost town. Slowly they are restoring the beautiful old stone buildings with their arched roofs and colourful balconies and doors.

On our last day with get a taxi to St Peter's pool. The taxi drivers all seem to be Maltese and a chatty, story telling bunch. This one drops us off seemingly in the middle of nowhere and tells us it's a short walk to the famed pool. This, we find out, is one of his many far fetched stories. Luckily it's early in the morning and the heat is just starting to gather as we wander past the prickly pear cactus that are starting to fruit; fig trees with branches of fat unripe fruit that seem to attract white snails that are dozing in the early morning sun; past ramshackle houses, dogs dozing; dry fields blanched in the heat, and finally after a half an hour walk, we come across the pool that's slightly dirty with human debris of plastic and paper which is a bit of a disappointment. The locals have set up camp with sustenance and loud music. Still we make the most of it and swim and then get directions back to the village as there's no reception and no taxis waiting to return us to civilisation.

Marsolokk village is stunning, a small fishing port where colourful boats are moored in clear jade green waters full of schools of fish. Hot and slightly bothered from our walk, we sit at a restaurant near the water and order a huge lunch. Prawn patties (Polpetties), made with tiny sweet prawns and a dusting of flour to hold them together with a hint of garlic, fried in butter, the waiter told us; mussels in wine and garlic and sea urchin pasta in a delicate sauce of garlic and parsley to allow the deep orange agate coloured urchin meat to shine.

We wander the dusty back sleepy backstreets to walk off lunch and back down through the little stalls along the water selling colourful crafts, hats and clothes. Going for a cool drink at another waterside cafe, we ask about taxis and the Maltese owner gives us free mineral water, orders us a taxi and waves us on our way.

Back in Valletta, we do some last minute shopping. There are Maltese glass shops everywhere and I dearly want to take home a beautiful glass pumpkin but it's too heavy to carry throughout the rest of our journey. We visit St. John's Co-Cathedral to see the famous Caravaggio painting, The Beheading of St. John the Baptist. The cathedral was plain and austere once but that was before the Knights went to Rome - they came back inspired by Baroque and every surface was covered in different decorative finishes and techniques. Ornate is an understatement.

Caravaggio was a master of light and dark - chiaroscuro. He was an Italian artist, with a terrible temper who was always getting into trouble with the law. He had to flee Rome after getting into a brawl and killing a man and he reached Malta hoping to seek protection through the Knights of St. John, which they gave to him as they must have been excited about having such a famed artist from Italy suddenly arriving on their island. They commissioned him to paint the above painting and he briefly attempted a spiritual life but came unstuck after another fight with some of the knights. He escaped quietly but was expelled from the order. He did however, leave one of his largest and only signed paintings (his signature in St John's pool of blood, came to light in the 1950's when the painting was restored), on the island. The painting is an altarpiece and is overwhelming with intensity and differing emotions: "Death and human cruelty are laid bare by this masterpiece, as its scale and shadow daunt and possess the mind." (Jonathon Jones). It is considered to be one of the most important works in Western painting.

On our last night here, we decide to eat at the first cafe we ate at on the staircase. At dusk, the light is beautiful, delicate fairy lights cast a suffused glow over the stone buildings, the glass chandeliers are glowing, a guitarist serenades us as we have codfish patties with a hot chilli sauce and sweet potato chips. Malta, you are returning to your former glory.