After discovering the Supermercato, just up the hill from Piazzo S. Antonio at the far end of Corso Umberto, I sometimes avoided restaurants completely. This “supermarket” could be fitted into the produce section of the store I’m used to at home, but provided snacks, fruit, cheese and more at prices paid by locals. One day I came back with “insalata di mare,” a sealed plastic container with bite-sized bits of seafood not necessarily known to me, treated with olive oil. Delicious. Another day I stopped in a little food store where the proprietor was cutting prosciutto for a customer. She wanted it thin, thinner, thinner yet, and given a pinch to taste did so almost like a kiss, handing on some to her husband to share. I bought a bottle of Sicilian red wine for about $7 and also had the pleasure of watching the prosciutto transaction.

Watching is a fine pastime in Taormina. Street life keeps happening, morning to night, locals, visitors, all ages, especially on the pedestrian-only main artery, Corso Umberto. It runs a level course east/west with streets angling steeply down hill to one side and steps leading up to the parallel street on the other. Why, I wonder, has this precarious location been a town for so long? Greeks founded it, Romans took it away from them, it was the capital of Byzantine Sicily in the 9^th c. and seat of the Sicilian parliament in 1410. I can only think these various peoples liked the view. Now Taormina is one of those artificial towns with a floating population of tourists and shops ranging from flotsam to high elegance. Grownup visitors eat ice cream cones at 10:30 in the morning and buy things they may never use, but the core of medieval buildings is real and the views can rightly be called divine.

My peak of people-watching probably came on All Hallows Eve, from the terrace of a restaurant I had often seen lively but that night was free of other tourists. Staunchly Catholic, Sicily pays attention to Halloween and earlier in the day I’d seen a group of school children in dark costumes, their faces smudged with black. Now, from my spot at this intersection of pedestrian walkways, I watched the local scene. A very young imp carrying a plastic pitchfork had to be taught how to frighten people, as his first impulse was to be frightened himself. Then a group of little girls wearing witches’ hats and accompanied by their mothers tumbled around the corner and into this restaurant, where they all had supper. I felt as though the strangers all were gone, except for me, and that I was practically invisible.

My corporeal self enjoyed the gorgeous spread of Public Gardens, developed by a wealthy Englishwoman, Florence Trevelyan Cacciola. She left London in the late 19^th c. in a cloud of scandal and contented herself in Taormina with her English love of gardens and by marrying Signor Cacciola.. The Gardens! Quite near Hotel Elios, they are lush bordering on overgrown, set on descending levels, enchanting. Paths are paved in brick and pebbles and multi-storied romantic follies are in romantic disrepair, their open rooms framed by Roman arches. Just inside the main entrance two figures in bronze sit on a stone bench. I made out the Italian of the plaque as “Angels in Our Time.” Their 20^th century-style clothing somehow accommodates wings. The man has set down his bronze brief case and the woman put aside her bronze handbag, their heads tilt back, their smiles are beatific. Are the Public Gardens a sort of heaven?

Perhaps. The view from my window was itself a sort of heaven. One night I saw a crescent moon above the crescent bay, and off to the right was Mt. Etna with a streak of red lava coming from its lip. By day the sea was awash in delicate colors, its surface shimmering like stretched silk. If you stepped lightly enough, I wondered, could you walk on it?

About that theater – was Greek would be more accurate. The Romans, those tireless remodelers, renovated it, throwing up a rear wall to the stage that blocked out the view of Etna. Some centuries later much of the wall fell down, restoring the Greeks’ view for Goethe and for the rest of us. Lucky us.