Salina 1

Secondborn and I caught the bus from Catania to Messina as Firstborn and A were on the train there from Palermo and our rendezvous in a cafe opposite the ferry terminal was impeccable. Huzzah! From now, if anything goes wrong with my well-laid plans for our week in the Aeolian Islands, at least we deal with it together.

We discovered that the first mistake was booking the ferry from Messina rather from Milazzo - the ferry went via the mainland and took ages. I'd chosen the Messina ferry because I'd assumed we'd all be converging from Catania, but since Secondborn and A had come from Palermo, Milazzo would have been much better. No matter. We had a chance to catch up with each other and to look over the boat rail at Stromboli - the volcano/island that motivated this whole trip (extra).

I've pushed the boat out (sorry) for this next week and once we'd got to Santa Marina, the port and largest town on the island of Salina, all of us were a bit wowed to find ourselves in a hotel with a swimming pool.

We swam, lazed, explored the town, admired the tiles and the low-key signage, ate out...