The Aeolian Islands

 

A few weeks ago, Celia and I went on holiday to the Aeolian Islands. If you don’t know where they are, they are a series of about ten volcanic islands, that lie between Sicily and Naples. The best known is the active volcano Stromboli, which is how every child draws a volcano. It’s even got smoke coming out the top. But although the islands are in fact part of Sicily, they are rather different in character.

We stayed in two hotels on two different islands; Panarea and Salina.

Panarea is an unusual island, just a few kilometres across, where there are no cars. There are just golf buggies, those funny three wheel vans and pickups, and of course scooters, some of which are electric. Even the Carabineri and the taxi drivers use golf buggies.

The hotel we stayed at was smart and very chaotic. I didn’t get glutened, but it wasn’t one I would trust, so we ate out in the town. We found an excellent restaurant/hotel called the Da Pina, where they really understood what was needed, even if their English was limited. They have a website at www.dapina.com. From the web site, it also appears they have villas and I did check out the delis on the island and eating GF shouldn’t be a problem.

Most people understand about coeliac on the island and we had an experience in the bar on the port, where when they discovered I was a coeliac, they always brought GF nibbles with the drinks.

Panarea has a reasonable sandy beach, with a restaurant called Zimmari, which is south of the main town. Except that you had to pay for the umbrellas and loungers if you wanted them, it was an ideal beach for kids in that there were no sellers of anything.

Salina is a much bigger island and we stayed at a hotel called the Signum. It is excellent, family-run and has a web site at www.hotelsignum.it. It was quite expensive, but I couldn’t fault it. As an example of how careful they were, they always provided an appetizer before meals. They would tease by saying, I wasn’t having one and give Celia a crostini or something like that. Then I would get a special one of rice or mushroom.

So we ate in the hotel every night.

One thing you ought to like if you go there is rabbit or coniglio as they are native there. I suspect they were released by the Normans, who ruled the Islands in the Middle Ages. They brought rabbits to the UK as well.

They cook it rolled up with vegetables and no bones.

So we had a very good holiday in perhaps one of the most unusual places in Europe.

We got there by flying to Palermo and then getting a hydrofoil. As you can see, we stayed in hotels, but friends had an excellent time with their family on another island, Lipari, where they self-catered. Lipari is much bigger and has a lot more to do, with many shops, a big museum, marina, castle and cathedral.

I’m going to post this to my Coeliac Diary with a few pictures.