I’d been in Sicily for just two hours and I already made somebody mad.

Not being familiar with the Catania airport and arriving from an overnight flight, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get the 9 a.m. bus to Milazzo, a coastal town where one takes ferries to the Aeolian Islands, my destination.

I bought all the necessary tickets online ahead of time. But we arrived early in Catania and, as it turns out, the airport is small and easy to navigate.  So I’m full of adrenaline, I’m in Sicily, it’s hot and sunny and I have to wait two hours for a bus.

I found the information booth for the bus company and asked the rep if I could switch buses. She did something on her computer, wrote an “OK”on my ticket and said, “Buon Viaggio.”

Now the crowd was starting to grow around what we believed was the bus stop (no signs).  That’s when I started to worry about getting a seat since I was an interloper. The bus arrived, I went ahead and threw my suitcase in the bottom luggage hold, got on the bus and showed the driver my ticket. “What are you doing? This is for the next bus!” he yelled, in a Sicilian dialect that I did not understand. I told him it was OK’d but if he wants me to get off the bus, I’ll wait. And then he just yelled something else, shrugged and let me on. (And there were plenty of open seats.)

Welcome to Sicily.

For the first time in two years, my Italy vacation didn’t involve hiking a mountain trail or riding a bike through the countryside.  I was going to be a tourist, discovering new parts of the island and visiting my cousins in my mom’s hometown. The last time I was here was 2015, when I spent eight days with them over Christmas.

The first part of the itinerary was four days on Salina, one of a group of seven volcanic islands that sit north of Sicily in the Tyrrhenian Sea.  I chose Salina, and the village of Malfa, on a whim. The hotel was the second listing on Booking.com and it was very very nice.  My friend Paola, who lives in Bologna, met me there.  She took the overnight ship from Naples. I was still two hours away when she sent me a photo of herself at the hotel pool. 

At Milazzo, a busy port town, I went to the boat ticket office to change my ticket and get on the earlier ferry. It was a breeze and no one yelled at me. Now the adrenaline was really kicking in. I got on the hydrofoil boat with rows of seats below deck and planted myself by a window. Salina is the third stop, after the islands of Lipari and Stromboli. Good thing I don’t get seasick. It was speedy ride, up and down, sea spray on the windows. And I was pumped up anyway on a few espressos I’d had in the past three hours.

Finally, we arrived and then it hit me. The sea, the trees, the homes on the hillside, the scooters – it was unreal and fantastic, like an island movie set. The hotel – Hotel Punta Scario – was exquisite and had an infinity pool where it looks like it’s about to fall over into the sea. I checked in, found Paola at the pool and gave her a big “Ciao!”

Fighting sleep and jet lag, we decided to eat lunch at the hotel and I had my first experience of Aeolian cuisine: a salad with capers, potatoes, anchovies and tomatoes. I would soon learn that just about anything you eat here includes capers in some way.

Then we walked into the center of town, which was up a hill from the hotel. Everything was up a hill.

The main street had your standard restaurants and souvenir shops but also shops full of wonderful ceramics, made locally. The tourist season goes from March to the end of August. And apparently, Salina is the place for families to go and relax. It’s the second largest island, after Lipari, which, I learned, is the place to be for the big nightlife.  

Back at the hotel, we did the prerequisite aperitivo (happy hour) at the upper patio bar with a few spritzes and waited for the pretty spectacular sunset.  Then I crashed.

The next day we decided to explore the island via the hiking trail to Monte Fossa delle Felci, the island’s highest point. I seemed to have misunderstood when the hotel people explained that this was a “leggero” hike, meaning not too difficult. We had to get to a place called Val di Chiesa, or the church valley, and the trail started behind the church.  We walked up to town and then up another level of town to catch the bus to take us there. We missed it by ten minutes and the next one didn’t arrive for another hour.  We decided to walk.  

Then the adventure began. Not only were there no directional signs to where were going, we were walking on a winding uphill road with no sidewalk and we were relying on my Google GPS skills. I held the phone in the wrong direction for five minutes. But it didn’t matter. We knew we had to just keep going up, make a turn, keep going up, make a turn. Twice we stopped and asked someone if we were going in the right direction. They said yes, followed by, “You know, it’s far.” Yes, we were starting to understand that.

Finally, after a two-mile walk, we see the yellow church in the distance. Paola got out the map for the trail and we saw how it was one big zig-zag hike. We asked some people at the church if we were at the starting point. “You two know this is a tough climb, right?” they said. There was a sign (finally) that said “impegnativo” which means “tiring.” Apparently, you can get to the top another way just by walking up the road. That must be the “leggero” part I heard about. And we were nowhere near it. 

So we started the the climb. It was steep. We went up about 700 meters on craggy rocks. The views of the sea as we went eased the grind. At one point, there was a sign for a refugio which is a place to stop, refuel and rest. (Yes!) What the sign didn’t say was that it was a refugio from the 1800s and it was just a relic to be admired.

We finally got to the aforementioned road, rested for a minute and saw a sign that said we still had 5K to go to the top. Paola and I looked at each other and decided that we would do that 5K another day. 

We hiked back down and found the bus stop to take us to the small village of Rinella. We’d get there, relax and have a nice meal on the beach.  And, of course, we missed the bus by 15 minutes. Well GPS said it’s just a 25-minute walk. Let’s go!

When we arrived at the outskirts of the town, we saw the sea in the distance but it just wasn’t obvious how to get there.  We asked two people who told us to just keep walking toward the water. Now, imagine just walking down a maze of steps and walkways flanked by walls and gates with people’s homes on either side. We had no idea which way to go.  We could see the water and the pier but it never seemed to get any closer. 

Finally, thanks to a nice gentleman who came out of his house and pointed us in the right direction, we arrived at the pier and made our way to the one restaurant on the beach that’s open.  The beach itself wasn’t what I expected, read: no sand. All rocks. One brings a chair or rents a big air mattress to lay on the rocks.

We ate lunch and laughed at the madness of the day.  What would have then been ideal was calling a taxi to take us back to the hotel. Not happening. It was an hour wait, if we even found one. OK. We’ll just take the bus back to Malfa. And, drumroll. . .the next bus arrived in an hour. Perfect! We got back to Malfa, stopped and picked up cheese, olives, bread, wine and ate in the room. We watched the sunset again and then called it a night. 

The big plan for the next day was to go down to the beach just below our hotel, hang there for awhile and then visit a winery in the early evening. We geared up for the beach and walked the 20 minutes down the steps and ramp under a massive rocky cliff. These photos give you an idea of the path:

We arrived at the beach, saw that it was all rocks (even bigger than the day before), took a photo and walked back up to the hotel pool.

The winery we visited was the Fenech winery and it was up the hill about a mile away. Great! More hills. At first I thought we missed it. The entrance is non-descript. Just a farm with a nice porch seating area for guests to enjoy the wines. The owner, Francesco Fenech, is a character.

The next day was our last day on Salina and we booked a boat trip that went around the island. We hopped in the cool water, saw where some scenes from the film “Il Postino” were filmed and saw the majestic Mt. Etna in the distance, spewing smoke. We were on the boat with about 20 other people, who were from all over Italy. When it was time to head back, Paola and I were the last ones off. I immediately hopped in the pool at the hotel.

For our last night, we ate dinner at one of the more popular restaurants in town, ate some delicious fish and toasted our wonderful stay with some crisp, cool Salina white wine.

The next morning, we bid Salina a fond “arrivederci” and took a hydrofoil to Palermo, where the adventure continued.