Capri gets more and more gorgeous the nearer you get to it – until you actually get to it. Boat loads of back-packing tourists disgorge themselves at the port every half-hour and then wander randomly from one pizzeria to another. There is a high street stuffed with over-priced designer boutiques, and packed buses and open-air taxis crawling up the mountain roads. After the peace and tranquillity of Positano and Ravello, it was too much to bear. We headed straight back to the mainland.Sally Ann Lasson travelled to Naples with Exclusive Destinations (01892 619650; ). It offers three nights at Le Sirenuse and three nights at the Palazzo Sasso from £1,055 per person based on two sharing for departures from 1 May.
This includes return flights from Lon- don Gatwick to Naples on British Air-ways, B&B accommodation and private transfers to and from the airport. REMIND ME WHERE IT IS
REMIND ME WHERE IT IS
Legally and politically, part of Italy. Yet Sicily is often more Greek than Italian, and, in parts, more African than European. It’s a mountainous wedge of land off the toe of Italy, whose three sides are lapped by the Mediterranean, Ionian and Tyrrhenian seas.
It is the largest island in the Mediterranean, the most southerly part of Italy and only a short hop from Tunisia A trip around the coast is a distance of about 550 miles. Surprisingly for an island, the beaches are not its greatest attraction, although there are some pleasant stretches of coastline to the east of Cefalu, and down the east coast below Messina. Instead, tourists tend to visit Sicily for its sights, both man-made and natural, concentrating on the east coast, for visits to Taormina and Syracuse, the western corner around the capital, Palermo, or around Agrigento in the south. The eastern half of the island is dominated by Mount Etna, snow-capped for much of the year, but still active and frequently belching out black – and sometimes white – smoke.SOUNDS LIKE CARDINALS CHOOSING A NEW POPEYes, and as in the Vatican, white smoke heralds a momentous event: in the case of the Sicilian volcano, an imminent eruption. The most recent was in January this year.HOW CLOSE CAN I GET TO THE TOP?Until the eruption of 2001 it was possible to travel right up to the crater by a combination of cable-car and a fleet of four-wheel-drive vehicles adapted for the terrain.