Taormina-Giardini — Attraction in Taormina

The man behind the counter is as useless as he is arrogant. After buying tickets from the automatic machine, 45 minutes of delay on our train were announced. In Italy that means the next train will depart earlier than the one you have ticket for. Going to the counter to have a refund or at least explanations, the “man” behind the counter, in a very arrogant way said “you should have bought them here instead of the machine, now you can only keep them”, with hands firmly stuck inside his pockets. Which is ridiculous since the first thing you see coming from Taormina old city are actually the machine and you would never go all the way inside the station to ask for ticket when you find a free machine first. Everything could have ended in shrugging shoulders, instead there was a little man trying to make a point of a pointless and dysfunctional...

If you need to take a bus from this station, be prepared for chaos. Bus tickets aren’t sold at a machine, but by a woman standing on the street — and she spent most of her time talking on the phone while a line of people waited. She ignored everyone for a while, then finally sold tickets, saying the bus would arrive in 10 minutes. It didn’t.

She disappeared after that, and no one could get any information. When a bus eventually arrived, it was already full and didn’t let anyone on. We had to wait again, with no idea if another would come. Finally, after about 45 minutes, another bus came but could only take 7–8 people. The rest were left behind once more.

The station itself is an old building with a beautiful interior, but the overall experience — especially for bus travelers — was incredibly frustrating and...

As an “elderly” couple, we looked for information on a Saturday afternoon in mid October. There were crowds of tourists everywhere going to and from Taormina. There was no information, no ticket office and nowhere we could get any drink or food. To top it off the local police were asking for ID. Small coins needed to use the toilets, get a token (no info how to do this), which although cleanish had no soap in the dispenser. You can’t buy Intercity tickets as passport is needed, so we waited 1.5 hours for a Regional train. The station building was tidy and we managed to find a seat and wait but overall zero help and security overkill. I would call this completely misdirected funding and very difficult to navigate. We had traveled through Sicily for 7 weeks by buses and trains and this was the worst...