Etna en Taormina Tour vanuit de haven van Messina

Mario was amazing! Despite a downpour to start the day, he was so positive that our day in Messina would be ok despite other operators canceling excursions. He ended up giving us a private tour to Mt. Etna where the sun shone as well as Taormina where we had plenty of time to walk around. He pointed us to an excellent restaurant where we had the best Arancini and Pizza and finished off the day bringing us to his favorite bakery for cannoli where we bought cannoli to take back to the ship.

The tour did not meet our expectations. We got an impression that the driver and the guide were doing this tour for the first time. The driver got lost and used google maps on phone when driving and didn't always keep the safe distance to vehicles in front. So we didn't feel too safe. The guide was most of the time silent. She didn't have much information about the Etna or Taormina to share with us. At Etna we stopped on parking lot/village where we couldn't see much. We had short time there, but we were not allowed to go walking closer the extinct crater or anything - just a parking lot and shops next to it. At Castelmola, close to Taormina she brought us as a group to one restaurant which served a good food - so no complaints about that. We have small group, but still the little guidance we got was with English and Spanish. The stories were about the same in both languages so I guess the Spanish speaking guests didn't gain much more information than we did. We got back to our ship in time so that is the positive thing in addition to good meal in this tour.

We waren op reis met een tiener, dus we wilden een ervaring vinden die hem zou interesseren. We hebben allemaal genoten van de tour. Het hebben van onze gids maakte het nog beter. Hij was zeer deskundig en je kon zien dat hij graag in het gebied woonde. We werden opgehaald van ons cruiseschip en op tijd afgezet. Ik zou deze tour zeker aanraden.