The most accessible is through Catania and a speedy highway trip up the southeastern shore of Sicily that gets progressively more picturesque before a hilltop fortress appears on a distant hilltop in the backdrop of a sometime-smoking Mount Etna that is the historic town of Taormina. Its name is virtually unknown to most Americans, who prefer Positano or Capri. But to overlook Taormina is to miss one of Italy's most beautiful wonders, a mountaintop topography with majestic Roman-Greco ruins and a lazy cable car that links it to a seaside paradise of secret swimming coves and offshore natural reserves untouched by mass tourism.
Confusing signs, and roads shared with pedestrians take you to the edge of town near the entrance of Taormina's historic Teatro Greco ruins. There, you'll find the atrium-entrance of the larger and more opulent of Orient-Express's two newest hotels acquired this year. They were closed for a complete overhaul and brought up to 5-star standards.
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