Sicily

Can you 'review' a whole island by visiting it for a week? - When your as dismissive and rash as I am, you can probably do it via Google Images.
In a few words- the west is crap, the east is ace.
We flew into Trapani (nothing there, a typical ridiculous RyanAir destination), and made our way to Palermo. Palermo is the capital, and is therefore much bigger than anywhere else. We found a few redeeming features- notably the food markets, fresh squids lay in ice, buckets of little fish and weird fruit and veg were shouted about by enthusiastic Italians- food doesn't come much better than this. There was a few sculptures, and fairly decent art exhibition, but on the whole its fairly lame. Theres hundreds of cars, garbage fills every street corner, the bars were trashy and the restaurants filled with immigrants selling keyrings. Theres almost no reason to be in Palermo, you might as well go to a city in mainland Italy.

We spent a day in Agrigento on the south coast- its fine, got a few Roman/Greek temples and stuff, but they're everywhere, better than Palermo, but still only 6/10.
Passing Catania (which didn't look great, but we only saw a bit) we then went to Taormina, and more specifically Castelmola, which is up in the hills behind Taormina. This place was in my top few places I've been to- the views were insanely good, looking over the sea and villages. Theres a few shops and restaurants there but its the views that make it (picture above). Its a bastard of a trek down to Taormina, theres a steep winding path, but you feel fit after doing it, and if you need a reason to buy ice cream, this is a good one. Taormina is a really nice town, big enough to keep you happy for a week, small enough not to piss you off with the amount of people. Strangely I bumped into one of my mums friends- little village in Sicily, off season, shops are shutting- and I bump into someone I've know for 20 years. Weird.

We spent a day up Mount Etna (above, I know it looks like a whale or something, but its not, its a volcano). There's no colours, the sky was white, the snow was white, and the rocks and road were jet black. Its like being set in a bleak Bergman film, where everything has been obliterated, and your left in black volcanic rocks, clouds and snow. Etna was defo the highlight, I cant imagine a stranger landscape to be in- Castelmola was a cracking reminder our planet can be neat, but only 70 odd miles away lay this indescribable post-apocalypse landscape. How all these so vastly differant places are all on this small island i've no idea.