We love coming back to Sicily. We have found a golf resort out of 'Taormina' which is situated at the base of the famous volcano, Etna. Again, after many winding roads we found the resort 'Il Picciola'. To our relief the golf course looked great, as the country we have just passed through was steep mountains and valley's with many vineyards, fruit and nut trees growing in the fertile soil. We have time to rest from our travel before going to dinner in this strange looking rundown rural town.
To our surprise it has some very modern bars and good restaurants.
The manager at the golf club has recommended 'Bocca Aperta', open mouth.
Luckily we had booked into this small family run restaurant as it was full. We have our second best meal in Italy here. We shared 4 dishes of very Sicilian cuisine with an excellent bottle of Mt. Etna red wine.
Tuesday, we started golf about 10am following a large group of Australians who belonged to the Australian-Italian golf association. They were slow, but the weather was very pleasant and so we took our time and enjoyed the outdoor environment, after days inside a car.
The course was great, with interesting holes and good greens. It is overlooked by Mt. Etna and has many fig and nut trees and wild blackberries that we nibble on the way around. MB ends up winning this round of golf to bring us to a tie in the European cup.
We met an American man Joe, during our game who introduced us to the golf pro Norman, who has worked here for about 15 years. He then introduced us to the helicopter pilot Pietro, who we hired to fly us over Mt. Etna. It is quiet cloudy at 6.30 pm when we are due to go up so we postpone it until 6.30am the next day.
JB and Mick