Hi,<BR><BR>We are going for the 2nd time to Sicily, last year we did Palermo area, this year we will be staying in Giardini-Naxos from 28 September till 5 October. Has anyone experience with the weather there that time of the year. We can't go earlier, and we wonder if we will still be able to swin in the pool without freezing.<BR>Does anyone know the hotel "Hellenia Yachting", we will probably be staying there.<BR>Any other tips and suggestions for that area are more than welcome, like nice restaurant and bars in Giardini-Naxos or Toarmina.<BR><BR>Thanks,<BR>Ann

I don't know if I can help much, but we were in Taormina in May last year and it wasn't quite warm enough to swim. It may be about the same the first of Oct. There is a good restaurant called Angelina's on the pier in Giardini-Naxos that had the best mussels we had in Italy. Very reasonably priced as is most of the food in Sicily. Because we had no advance hotel reservations in Taormina, we stayed in Mazzaro near Isola Bella, which was near the sea. There is a tram that you can take up to Taormina from the beach area which we did even though we had a car. Don't miss Castelmola up even further than Taormina. If I was going back, I would stay in Castelmola. The views are incredible and it is less crowded than Taormina. We are going back to Sicily this September, but we are doing the west coast which we've yet to see. Hope you have a great time. We love Sicily.

We stayed in Taormina near the end of October last year and the weather was great, even hot. Plenty of people at the beach, although we didn't go, so I can't comment on the water temp. I'm not sure if we had unusually good weather, but I would think it wasn't that unusually since Sicily is so far south. I'll try to find the names of the restaurants we really enjoyed. There were two that amazing and one was touristy but good and the owner/chef was very interesting to talk to.