Taormina, the most beautiful town in Sicily: half sea water, half fire

Taormina in Sicily is a famous tourist mountain town, facing the Ionian Sea and Mount Etna. The Ionian Sea is a bay in the Mediterranean Sea. Its deepest part reaches more than 5,000 meters, making it the deepest point in the Mediterranean Sea. The town of Taormina has a long history. It was a Greek colony in 400 BC and came under the jurisdiction of the Roman Empire in 212 BC. People praise Taormina as the most beautiful town in Sicily: "If you can only choose one destination in Sicily, then Taormina is the right one." We positioned ourselves here because of this recommendation, come here The story of this experience that is "half sea water and half fire".

After we parked the car, we walked tremblingly through the steep and seemingly endless steps, squeezed sideways through the narrowest alley I had ever seen, and came directly to the heart-shaped shell. At the foot of La Island.

When my eyes met the intoxicating blue water, I was shocked to realize that all words were just noise. Here are some photos:

This is the blue of the Mediterranean! Sitting in such a luxurious blue, outsiders can't help but feel resentment towards creation, and secretly wonder: We are all descendants of the earth, why can't we share some brightness and intensity with us? As a tourist, I just want to greedily let my eyes absorb this intoxicating blue, fill it with memories, and take it home to slowly digest it. When facing the continuous rain in England every day, I extracted a little bit of dark blue from the memory basin, mixed the gray and blue into green, and brought a touch of fresh comfort to life.

The sea water here is so deep that it is a bit solemn. Even the parasols and deck chairs on the beach are all uniformly colored (different operators should be used to mark the business scope), which is more solemn than delicate. Sitting here in a daze, I should be thinking about the meaning of life and the eternity of time.

After looking at the sea for a long time, your eyes will unconsciously search for the flowers and trees outside the hotel, or let your eyes climb to a high place to see the swaying palm trees to relax the eyes. the tension caused.

The April 9th ??Square and the Greek Theater were naturally crowded, with tourists enjoying themselves. I secretly photographed the happy couple as if they were in love, and wished them eternal love like bright summer flowers in this place facing the sea.

Another attraction that Taormina has to launch is Mount Etna. Mount Etna is the highest mountain in Sicily, the highest active volcano in Europe, and one of the largest active volcanoes in the world. According to historical records, it has erupted more than 200 times; since the 21st century, it has erupted 11 times, the most recent one in 2022.

Taormina is the best place to view Mount Etna from a distance. Our B&B faces the sea and Mount Etna. The owner of the B&B grandly launched the sea-view balcony, pointed to Mount Etna in the blue in the distance and said: "Look, this is my beauty! It's not clouds above, it's volcanic smoke." We solemnly accepted this grand ceremony of pride. It is said that the volcano erupted in February this year and has been smoking ever since, with lava still flowing out from time to time. So, we stared at the changes in the crater with great interest. After all, this was the first time in our lives that we saw an "active" volcano. So I took pictures of the blue sea and rose-colored clouds.

At night, against the backdrop of the night, we really saw the red volcanic lava!

After I came back, I checked the information and found out that Mount Etna was also recorded in the ancient book "Zhufan Zhi": "There are deep caves in this country, and fires appear in all seasons. From a distance, there are morning smoke and dusk fires. If the fire is so intense, the Chinese will throw a big stone weighing 500 kilograms or 1,000 kilograms into the hole, and it will explode in a moment and break like pumice."

The situation of "breaking like pumice" can only be solved. You can only know it if you look closely. In Catania (the second largest city in Sicily), we experienced walking into an active volcano. After driving for more than an hour from Catania, we arrived at the abandoned car boarding area. The trail was easy at first and I was caught by a kind of white tree. This kind of tree is called a birth tree. It is said to be a unique tree species here, but the color and trunk look like the birch tree in the Northeast.

It was a dry and hot weather of nearly 30 degrees below the mountain, but the wind and rain in the mountains were unpredictable. In the blink of an eye, it was rainy and miserable, and the wind was strong. A vivid Chinese landscape painting appeared in the distance - amid the epidemic, it was very difficult to return home, but I didn't expect that my homesickness would find some solace here.

The crater like the top of Mount Fuji in the distance is where the smoke comes from, but you can't get close to it. You can only watch the clouds and mist drifting. I only regret that I don't have the lightness of the clouds to float up and take a closer look.

Everyone climbed to the top like camels climbing the sand dunes.

So after hard work, we saw the volcanic crater. There is a large crater on the outside and a small crater on the inside, with large pits within small pits.

I saw volcanic ash stone that was "as broken as pumice". According to the tour guide, there are two forms of volcanic activity. One is to erupt upwards with a certain point as the center. After cooling, the volcanic ash that falls is fine and uniform, as big as a fist or a fingernail. The flowers blooming on this soil express a decisive and stubborn vitality, as if stained with blood.

The other is the flow of volcanic magma. These are huge, rugged rocks. As they flow, they are scars on the surface.

Taormina is such a place that is half seawater and half fire. Its beauty is its daily life, but it can make our daily life beautiful.