Hey everyone, its Thursday already, one more day to the weekend. So from my last post, I did mention  that I would post an update on my last travel. I was on holiday in Italy.  so I thought to do an update about it as a few people emailed me to ask about my trip. I visited Panarea in Italy

 Panarea is one of the eight (8) Aeolians islands in the Sicilian coast, it’s also one of the smallest islands which can be explored on foot in about 3 hours, the island is about 3km long and 2km wide and has only recently become known as a tourist destination for wealthy tourist who explore on their yatch (well I don’t quiet fall into that category yet lol) between April and October mostly. The island is also quite expensive (but not as expensive as I was made to understand). The island is a summer only destination as the evenings where a bit chilly even in May.


Moving around
Due to the size of the size of the island, there are no proper roads that cars can drive through; hence the island can be traveled on foot or with golf carts (which are also used as taxi service), 3 wheel trucks and electric bikes.


Things to do on the Island
Hiking
Walking round the island takes about three hours as the ‘locals’ advised, but I didn’t manage to complete this because somewhere on the walk path, the road was blocked with an iron rod, so I peacefully advised myself to quit the walk, before its becomes something from a horror movie (I remember saying to my friend, we better not go pass this barrier, incase there are some activities taking place in there and because the path was quiet rocky and bushy, am like, ‘so I don’t become an island sacrifice’..lol. the kinda things we think about sometimes dou.) You also get to see the island and all its shades of beauty when you go hiking. I love the scenery here, it is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.

















 Beach day out
There are 2 beaches on the island, one is a rocky beach and the other is the sand beach which is quiet a small one. I did visit the beach almost every day I was on the island. More details and pictures in my next blog post.
Scuba Diving
There are also a lot of diving activities here but as a novice in the swimming department, I didn’t bother. So no pix.

Swimming

The hotel I stayed at, had an out-door pool which gets its water from the sea. I also went swimming a couple of times, who wouldn't? Plus I love the idea of just sitting in water all day and swimming in the shallow end, as I am still mastering the act of swimming, getting there. I also sometimes think I have a thing for water, I can stay in water like all day every day (mammy water parole, lol) but am not one of those good swimmers, I should get back to my swimming lessons soon.
Shopping
There are no shopping malls on the island, just small local shops, I can also say these shops are a bit pricey, I don’t shop when I go on holiday, I only pick up souvenirs to remember my trip and that’s about it.

Eating Out
The Island has a lot of restaurant I would say, but I went to two of the many restaurants and had some locally made meals, the meals weren’t all that to me,  but in the end I settled to have lunch and dinner in one of the bakeries that sold Pizza and bolognaise (you can tell am not a foodie when am outside my comfort zone, I like to try new things, which is kind of my adventurous part but am not into food that much), the food was really good and worth the price, I guess this was the only bakery on the island as I didn’t see any other bakeries.



Getting to Panarea Island
I have had a few people ask me how to get to the island, so I thought I would share this as well. I landed at Catania airport and then took a bus to Milazzo (this cost about 13 Euro, its advisable to take one way on each journey because different bus companies operate at different times and a return ticket might not be valid on another bus (which was one info i didn't know about). But then again, you can also take a private taxi which is well more expensive.
From Milazzo; which is the port where you can connect to all the aeolian Islands, we took a hydrofoil to the Island, again, its better to buy single ticket .


Finally,
I had such a great time, I had to leave a foot print when I saw some others.