We booked a tour for Etna 2 hours , Iso Bella - 30 minutes and 3 hours Taormina , starts 10:00 - 18:30 , when we started the tour they said that the tour in Iso Bella will be only 10 minutes , then they asked if we have a face mask ( covid 19 ) and if we don’t have a mask we can buy from them for 1 euro for 2 masks ( no one said anything about a mask when we booked ) when started the tour , the driver was driving like crazy , like there is no rules , we arrived to Etna and there was no tour just 2 hours of free time , after it the driver said that we will have 5 minutes stop at Iso bella , when we arrived to iso bella , the driver stoped the van on the road and said to us that we have 2 minutes for photos and thats it , then he drived like crazy to Taormina and we spent 3 hours there … the driver treat us very bad , poor tour
natalianH4563AS
22 Feb 2022
In the morning the weather was not the best to go to Etna and to visit the other points of interest, but the trip was still going to happen because the agency said there was going to be better weather in a few hours. Once we got up to Etna, first it was snowy and super windy so almost impossible to walk around, but mostly dangerous. Noone mentioned what type of clothing was needed to walk once reached 2000m, especially because it was not expected for us to find such a big amount of snow.
On the way to Taormina, we stopped in the street where we could have taken pictures from the top, pretty far and basically with no info on how to reach the beach and the actual island from up there. According to the program of the trip, there was supposed to be a stay of 1 hour and a half on the top of Etna, then three hours in Taormina, to finish with 30 minutes in Isola Bella, before going back to Catania. Because of this, everyone believed they could have visited the island and the beach later, expecting to be closer there and to easily reach these spots. We then reached Taormina, after 10 minutes of stopping to take pictures, and there the driver said after three hours we were going back to Catania. Some people of our group asked if after the three hours we were going to stop in Isola Bella as planned, but the driver said that the time we had to take pictures far away from the island was covering that half of hour supposed to be spent on the island later. He said that in this period and because of this weather there is not much to do on the island so the spot we stopped was enough. See how the weather now becomes an excuse, while before, the trip was not cancelled and it was all ok when it was not.
Talking about the experience of the taxi, the driver was a bit rude, and not the best at communicating in English, not a good thing for international tourists. He was also rude to those tourists who tried to ask about the stay in Isola Bella. Moreover, he was speeding all the time, not slowing down on the turns on the mountain and at some point, we were about to crash with a car in front because he did not stop on time. He was sometimes at the phone while driving and this is not safe at all. Also, in the van, the seatbelts were not working correctly.
In the end, for the big amount of money we spent, we do not recommend this service because of our experience, resulting not what we were expecting and what we paid for.