MILAN TO TOARMINA
My second morning in Milan went smoothly. Breakfast at Hotel Brunelleschi was a huge buffet that could last me through the day. Then I took more photographs in the Duomo square and came back and picked up my bags and took a taxi to the train station where the train left almost immediately for the airport and terminal 2, a huge EasyJet hub but with simpler facilities than high price airlines (my ticket for a 2 hour flight was $41). All my fretting amounted to nothing, my bags were slightly oversize but I had a plan to slim them down if necessary by suiting up and stuffing my pockets as if it was winter in the middle of summer and looking completely ridiculous. But I didn’t need to. The other passengers all had carry on bags bigger than mine and didn’t seem concerned. No one official paid any attention. The EasyJet threats were all a bluff, this time anyway.
I slept most of the way to Catania without knowing how to get to Taormina, but asked at the information desk. There was a shuttle for 7 euros just outside. The ride was pleasant. Things were going so well that when I got to Taormina and didn’t see a taxi I decided to walk the 23 minute Google estimated walk to my airbnb, a mile and a half. It was the longest 23 minute walk I’ve ever made, almost all of it up hill with a heavy backpack, getting heavier at every step and dragging my carryon bag. When I finally had to make a choice at a V in the road whether to go up or down, I was so tired that I chose down, which led me to a cul de sac and a long climb back up. And when I did get to the right spot, the Google blue dot on the red dot, I couldn’t find the place. I wrote to the owner who said to look for the blue door, I found the blue door, but there was no place to enter the access code. I was bushed. There was a little grocery store beside where the airbnb should have been and I bought a bottle of tomato soup and sat outside for awhile and drank the whole thing cold and then went in and showed the boy working there the address. He was too busy playing a video game to even look up. He shook his head. Never heard of it. It turned out to be thirty yards away. I reentered the address on Google. Google, without hesitation, moved the red dot a quarter of an inch and I finally found another blue door, with four flights of steps still to climb. In India I will get into a taxi or a motor cycle rickshaw or a cycle rickshaw without thinking twice. But for me a taxi in the United States or Sicily is too big a leap to make, even though I had done it twice in Milan and it worked out well, a similar 23 minute walk according to Google which turned out to be 23 minutes in the taxi. I slept very well my first night in Taormina, my 86 year old body aching too much to even turn over.
Here are a few more photos from morning from around the Duomo.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 