A Birthday and Taormina

Yesterday was Angus' birthday which basically meant a heady mix of food and booze interspersed with the occasional dip in the sea and a rowdy few bombs in the pool which was cut short when we were told that the pool was closed between 2 and 4pm by a polite but unimpressed neighbour.

We started drinking at 10 and eating at 11 and didn't finish until about midnight. Actually I have no idea what time we finished but I awoke with a mild, but surely unrelated headache this morning.

Full marks to Ariane who did the bulk of the cooking all of which was delicious, topped off with some killer wines Angus had picked up in France. More than anything else though, I just loved the opportunity to spend Angus' birthday with him for the first time in five years.

Today we were off to picturesque Taormina. A rather well-to-do Baroque town that accommodates the rich and famous during the summer months. We had a bit of a wonder around, got something to eat in a little courtyard and generally tried to duck out of the way of large tour groups. Dodging the same tour group's buses up and down the winding road up to Taormina also proved a challenge.

Ariane is keen to find the right Sicilian 'Moors heads' to send home so we spent plenty of time in some rather impressive ceramics shops. The same heads litter the balconies of the boulevards of Taormina as illustrated by Ariane's photos.