White Almond Sicily

Beach Life in Giardini Naxos This year we are celebrating ten wonderful years since we bought our Sicilian home. We first visited Sicily in 2005 after I saw an article in a UK fashion magazine about alternative Valentines Day weekends away which featured Taormina. With my love of all things Italian and my husbands love of gangster movies it seemed like the perfect place for us to visit. After a lot of research I booked our flights to Catania and the charming Hotel Villa Sirina which is nestled between Taormina and Giardini Naxos. As soon as we first glimpsed the peak of a smoking Mount Etna through the airplane window and our feet touched the tarmac at the airport we had already fallen in love with the island. Our host and hotel manager Salvatore had arranged for a car to pick us up and on arrival at Villa Sirina he immediately made us feel welcome. Once we had settled in he telephoned his friend to come and drive us up the mountain in his vintage Fiat 105 to see Taormin...

and so The Puppy Road Trip continues ….. Day Two After a delicious croissant with coffee and a last stroll around Dijon to stretch Daisy’s legs we drive to the Port of Genoa to board our 20 hour ferry to Palermo, Sicily. Mont Blanc We drive down through Burgundy and the French Alps towards the Mont Blanc tunnel. The views of the Alps are spectacular especially if the mountains are dusted with snow, we start to pass road signs displaying Geneva, Milan, Turin. Mont Blanc beckons us like a huge iceberg in front of us becoming larger and larger. There are strict rules for driving through Mont Blanc after a fire in the tunnel in 1999. Speed restrictions are strictly kept at a minimum 50 km/h and maximum 70 km/h at a minimum distance between vehicles of 150metres.  You can feel  the 126 surveillance cameras that line the tunnel watching your every move. On entering we say “Au Revior” to France and a big “Buon Giorno” to Italy on the other side. Onc...

One March day in 2011, whilst working at Ruth Kaye Design in Primrose Hill in London a lady who we knew fostered rescue dogs for a charity called All Dogs Matter walked past with a tiny 8 week old puppy that had just been abandoned that day, she was all wrapped up in an orange Ikea blanket. The puppy was gorgeous and she knew it. I went home that evening and told my husband, we checked the All Dogs Matter website and found her. My husband made an appointment to meet her and it was love at first sight for both man and dog, we called her Daisy. We vowed that we would never leave her and that meant taking her to Sicily with us. Therefore twice a year we make the long journey to Sicily by car, it has come to be known as The Puppy Road Trip. The Puppy Road Trip starts at the Eurotunnel with an overnight stay in Dijon in France then through the Alps and the Mont Blanc tunnel down to Genoa in Northern Italy to board a ferry to Palermo which takes 20 hours in the comfort ...