Sicily

• On the Ship where every one knows your name
• Paris is perfect, if you ditch the men! - France
• An appetite of Venice - Italy
• Party time in Tapas Central - Spain
• Croatia uncovered! - Croatia
• I'll have the state room please - Portugal
• Seeking Spain's hidden gems - Spain
• Let's tryst again - Sicily
• Dallying with Delia - Majorca
• Wax gets the works - Majorca
• B&B at the Palace - Italy
• The Golden Oldie - France
• Amazing Amalfi - Italy
• Follow the Stars - Europe
• Tuscany - Italy

WHO KNOWS WHERE THE FEELING of everything being right with the world comes from. Sitting at dusk on the balcony of a room in Taormina’s San Domenico Palace Hotel in Sicily is a gigantic clue.

Six hundred feet below, breakers crashed on to the beach in a boiling strip of surf.

Out in the bay a lone fishing boat lit up the water to attract fish. Far away to the left, on the Capo Taormina, car headlights loomed around the coast road. To the right, Mount Etna disappeared into clouds.

The purple of the bougainvillea faded and the scent of honeysuckle surged. It was more than 70 degrees in November, there was a huge slice of almond cake in front of me and I was with my partner on an Italy For Lovers tour.

At Avis in Catania airport, the official observed that the surnames on my driving licence and passport were different while yet a third surname appeared on my companion’s documents. I could see his elbow itching to nudge me as he wished us a ‘good time’.

The 45-minute motorway drive to Taormina takes you on Mafia concrete. But better to be on it than in it, we thought.

At Taormina, there are, in descending order, a Norman castle, a Saracen castle, a Greek amphitheatre with Roman additions, and then the town itself, a mishmash of medieval houses on an Arab street plan.

In Taormina you’re never far from a restaurant. We feasted at the excellent Cyclope on a carpaccio of swordfish with shaved parmesan, red mullet and a lot of cake. Then we strolled, or was it rolled, down Corso Umberto, Taormina’s main - and pedestrian - street, to drink coffee on Piazza 9th April to the strains of Frank Sinatra, the lights around the bay twinkling below. Later that night in the sumptuous bedroom, the orchestra consisted of the waves below.

Frankly, that would have done it for me - but then there was dawn. It appeared through the open balcony doors in the shape of a huge red sun on the horizon that seemed to be surfacing from under the sea. We breakfasted on the view, then on coffee and cannoli, brandy snap stuffed with ricotta, chocolate and candied fruit.

A Twenties guidebook says the Germans came in February, the English in March and the Americans in April. This was probably a good system, given the mayhem in 1944 when they were all here at the same time.

Elegant cloisters

Once a monastery, the San Domenico lost its virginity 105 years ago. It shed its cloistered existence, though it kept its cloisters, which are now elegantly walled in glass.

The public rooms are huge, storeys high, with polished wood staircases and floors.

The corridor outside our room was 75 yards long, enough for a morning jog without leaving the comfort of my bathrobe.

But, for me, it was outside the hotel where Taormina really excelled. The Greek theatre is so breathtaking in its location - Mount Etna is the backdrop -that I could have stayed all day sitting and gazing and drinking cappuccino.

The walk to Castelmola offered even finer views and above the medieval castle, a path takes you further, up the Monte Venere to a cemetery.

The guidebook describes this path as a ‘gomin’ walk. Neither of us knew what ‘gomin’ meant, but my love interest suggested it came from the French ‘gamin’ and meant ‘small and awkward’.

After an exhausting half-hour on this steep path, we consulted the guidebook again. A more detailed examination revealed that the word ‘gomin’ was in fact, a poorly printed ‘90 min’. Feeling rather foolish, we turned back at once.

My companion was worried that he wasn’t going to get me through all the books about Sicily that made up his luggage. I wanted to paint, so we came up with the solution that I painted him reading.

We chose as a location an acre of beautiful gardens on the Via Bagnoli Croce. An English woman, Florence Treveleyan, planted these gardens at the beginning of the last century, around the time D.H. Lawrence stayed at the San Domenico, and the bougainvillea, lemon and olive trees are broken up by brick follies on the point of collapse. It is a lovely place to read, paint and neck.

The place to stay

I would have been quite happy to spend all five days in Taormina and on the beaches below. The Villa Sant’ Andrea is the place to stay in the Isola Bella Bay below the town. The beach is pebble but the colourful fishing boats pulled up on it and the Isola Bella itself are charming.

But the eyes of my friend were already turning towards the mountains inland, so we decided on an expedition. We settled on a two-hour journey south to the centre of Sicily.

The Villa Casale, near Piazza Armerina, is the most impressive location of Roman mosaics in the world. Three-and-a-half thousand square metres of mosaic pictures and design, it is an extraordinary depiction of Roman nobility at play.

The weather turned from the heat of Piazza Armerina to a near gale back on the coast. Etna was obscured, whitecaps appeared out at sea, then large rollers. It even rained for a few seconds.

A piano tuner was preparing one of the hotel’s grand pianos for what turned out to be impromptu karaoke later that night. In front of a blazing fire, the octogenarian piano player rolled out the hits for elderly Americans and Japanese to dismember successfully.

We dined at a small fish restaurant, the Grotta Azzurra, where the waiter, who had served extensively in London, fondly remembered Treasure Hunt and then impersonated a helicopter.

On our last morning, my partner discovered Taormina’s library, in which there are more English books than Italian. All seemed to have come from a single collection donated in 1943 and had early-century titles such as Sidesaddle through Arabia and Abreast with Kilimanjaro.

He told me he could quite happily spend the winter reading there. I could easily ‘winter’ in Taormina myself.