I decided to book the TravelNet day excursion to Sicily from Malta, which included a visit to Tourmina and Mount Etna! It was a wonderful experience to see Sicily! Tourmina is a lovely picturesque town, typically Italian in style. Seeing Mount Etna was amazing! It really is an ideal trip if you want to do a bit of sightseeing.
The day is very long. We decided to get the hotel pickup, so had to be up at 3am to get the mini bus at 4:30, which took us to the port along with a few other people. The ferry crossing is about 90mins, so not too long. Most of the day in Sicily is spent on a coach and there are no toilets on board so you do have to wait a long time if you need the toilet!
Our tour guide didn't speak good English, so it was very difficult to understand him. It did annoy us when we stopped it Tourmina, because he ferried everyone into a restaurant for lunch, which did not look very appetising. Luckily we had taken our own lunch with us, so decided to go off and do our own thing. I felt sorry for everyone else, who sat in the restaurant missing out on the famous Greek Theatre, which was an unmissable experience, with fantastic views of Etna in the distance. The tour guide only made the others eat in the restaurant, as its the stopping point for all excursions. I would suggest taking your own food, and go off touring around the town yourself. There are some lovely shops as well, which are unmissable. You stop in Tourmina for 2 hours so there is enough time to see the Greek Theatre and to quickly stop in a few shops, if you eat on the coach before you stop.
Next stop was a toilet stop in a honey shop, which gave people the opportunity to taste honey, plus taste a few wines as well. This was good; however the time spent here, wastes valuable time up at Etna.
Once up at Etna you have an hour. You can either spend 45 euros on a round trip on the cable car, 65 euros to go up the cable car and near the peak via a jeep, or you can take the free option of walking around the inactive craters further down, with the guide. We opted for this as there wasn't much time to do the others. By the time you get up to Etna the cable cars do close within about 15/20 mins of being there, which was annoying as we wanted to do a round trip on the cable car which didn't take too long, and could have been done along with the tour of the seven craters with the tour guide, if we had been there a bit earlier.
Overall I would recommend the trip as it is an amazing opportunity; however don't follow everyone else like sheep and try to see as much as possible off your own back! The food at the restaurant looked horrible and I felt sorry for everyone who had missed out because they didn't know the Greek amphitheatre existed. Do your own research before hand and you will have a lovely day! Make sure you take a lot of food and drink and eat before you stop in Tourmina so you can go off and explore properly!
