We left our free parking spot fairly early and took a somewhat faster route south to Reggio Calabria and decided to look for a campground for a day or two rather than try to get a ferry to Sicily right away.

We passed the city, taking note of where the ferry terminal was, and tried to locate one of several campgrounds we’d looked up.  Alas – it was a couple of hours of back-and-forth, up-and-down and all around.  

The only one we finally did find wasn’t open.  We gave up and decided to head straight to Sicily, so on to the ferry terminal we went.  Alas again – there is only passenger/walk on service from the city – the car ferry goes from the town of Villa San Giovanni several miles north.  The ticket guy did write down the name of the company to look for.

Arriving back at Villa San Giovanni – that we’d passed by hours earlier – we found the ticket office for the car ferry.  Having purchased the ticket we then drove through part of the town to get to the actual port – kind of weird system.

We did get on the next ferry after only a short wait – a nice little open deck boat that was packed.  I took a walk around and up to the top promenade area – lots of people, and almost all considerately wearing face masks, as was I.

The crossing to Messina took only about 25 minutes – I finally made it to Sicily!!  The Shark of Messina doesn’t live here anymore so we didn’t bother to stop in Messina and were quickly on our way south.

We stopped several miles south of Taormina at a campground about 300 meters from the sea – Mt. Etna looms over all, but is quiet at the moment.

The beach at the end of the road has the usual ‘private’ areas where you can rent lounge chairs and umbrellas – for the bargain price of only 13 euros a day – not sure if parking is included.

We had a lovely lunch one day at the restaurant right on the sea – there are beautiful flowers everywhere and fantastic views up and down the beach.

Sunday  morning Mo and I were up at 6:30 and took a walk to the beach – even at that early hour there were a few folks there, but only 3 hours later the place was packed.

Mo quite likes my tent, and Henry pops in for a visit from time to time.

We really liked our stay at Almoetia campground – it’s actually quite large and at this time of year there should probably be about 100 campervans or more – sadly there were only four of us.  Hopefully if all continues to go well here their summer business will improve.

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