The grass doesn't get any greener, only the crazy guys get crazier!

Thursday, 30 June

It was a magnificent morning as the curtains were pulled back revealing the stunning views of Taormina from Miss Elena's house. We had only seen the view at night as we arrived so late the day before, but wow!! We woke up at 5 am to see the sunrise, but dozed off again until 7.30.....had to get ready for breakfast prepared by Elena. Great breakfast - eggs, tomatoes, the whole shabang. A day can't really start any better than that.

Today's plan was to go to the best beach in the area, the islet Isola Bella, a marine-life sanctuary. What a treat! Crystal clear water with schools of fish swimming everywhere, not too crowded either. The peace was only interrupted by two calls the two of us had expected this day; the oh so exciting and terrifying promotion/bonus call. Priscilla was first up, and not too happy. I think everyone at Isola Bella got a good understanding of why she deserves better remuneration at PwC and what the goals are for next year, she ended the call with a "thanks for nothing you fuckers" face, however her normal happy camper face appeared after a while when the initial disappointment faded away.

Even though you're never supposed to be happy with what you get in calls like that, we were pretty content when sitting with our feet in the sand looking out at the sanctuary. No need for complaint.

As fish were swimming around our feet I really wanted to get a closer look. I went for the snorkeling gear for 6 euro and not 45. I guess I should have taken the hint when the guy selling it to me quickly put the gear in my bag while he was looking nervously around to see if anybody else saw the transaction. I went happily strolling back to the beach..but as expected water filled the mask from every possible opening, but I guess it was my fault, the instructions clearly said that the mask could break when exposed to water...much better to spend time on teaching Priscilla how to swim I guess. As soon as she understood that the legs should be moved in circular motions and not up and down, she was a star!

After a long day we decided to go home and relax on the terrace with some food and wine. Wine was already waiting for us at home, bought in a local store in Naples; food on the other hand was gonna be a problem. Apparently all the stores close between 4-7 during the hottest part of the day..something my red burned back completely disagrees with. Anyways, all we had to do was to wait. I knew this was gonna be a challenge when Priscilla already said she was hungry at 3. Desperate situations require desperate measures, as the crying for food got louder my creativity was tested and stretched to the limit..come on Anders! Think! What to eat!? Of course, the two beers in the fridge!!! Yes! After spending 10 minutes convincing Priscilla that beer actually contains nutrition, her calls settled down as the bottles were emptied.

When the time piece showed 19.00 food was again a priority. We ended up eating at a nice restaurant downtown to celebrate today's event. The food wasn't that good, especially for the price of 130 euros, we ended up discussing whether to tip or not again, Priscilla with the non-tip argument won.

After dinner we went to find a Sicilian treat, granite - home made sorbet, delicious!! We came quite late and the place started to empty out, just the two of us left. We'd already paid, so we just sat there drinking our wine when this guy on a table behind us started to speak to us. Do you speak english? A brief yes from us was apparently enough to trigger his life story. After 15 minutes of listening to his monologue about his Finnish wife who had cheated on him numerous times, with both friends and colleagues and his family restaurant in Taormina, I managed to get a word in edgeways in the split second he needed to breath..I'm sorry sir but we need to go, very nice listening, I mean talking to you. Before we went, he insisted that we should check out his friend's bar close by. We quickly said yes and pretended to walk in the direction of the club he pointed out. Around the corner, we took the road opposite of what he told us to get away from him. 1 minute up the road we heard his voice again, Guys! It's this way!! My god...he's a freakin crazy guy!! Come follow me, out of stupidity we followed him after giving some lame excuse for why we went the wrong way. He took us down the main street for a while, before he wanted to go down a dark alley. By the insanely hard squeeze Priscilla gave me my hand, I took the hint and said we really needed to meet our friends and that we would check out his friends place tomorrow. He started almost arguing with us saying it was a really short walk, but we held our ground and managed to again walk the opposite direction from him. Who is this nutjob!!??? I'm pretty sure we could have beaten Usain Bolt on the way home as we were navigating through the narrow streets on the way to the b&b. We were looking frantically over our shoulders trying to spot this potential mass murderer behind us...luckily the number of hours put down in the gym came to good use and we lost him.

We found a place to take a couple of drinks to talk about the traumatic experience, before we still quite startled made our way home up the dark city streets to Villa Sara.