EV ICON ITALY 2 – VILLA ALBA
We left a couple of steps behind, always in Giardini Naxos, still enveloped in The Sicily, a land capable of enchanting you with it’s light. After Villa Triscele, read here about our trip, our path led us to Villa Alba: a name that encloses the promise of a beginning, a new day, a new peace, an emotion to be lived and treasured.
Giardini Naxos isn’t just sea and beaches, but a rythm that captures you slowly. Walking through the alleys, we can still hear the ancient beat of the first greek colony in Sicily , that is’t surviving just in the archeological sites but also in the way the city breathes: between the fish market at dawn, the fisherman’s boats that slowly come back ashore, and the citrusy scent that spreads in the hottest hours of the day. The unlimited blue, the dark rock, the light that changes and continuously sculpts the surrounding landscape: it’s a place that reminds you that beauty doesn’t need clamor and ostentation, but silence and care.
Day 1 – Arriving at Villa Alba
We arrived late in the evening, when the sun was about to glide down the horizon. Villa Alba opened before me like a theater of glass and stone: vast windows that invite the sea enter, terraces that lengthen endlessly.
The deep blue of Ionic sea was one with the pool. Silence was broken only by the singing of the cicadas and by the crashing of the waves on the nearby beach. I unpacked my luggage slowly, without any hurry, as I was alredy lerning how to live at a different pace.
The interiors immediately captured me with their athmosphere: a large lounge, welcoming, with a fireplace and fine details that smell like care and refinement. From the kitchen, equipped with every comfort, you could see the extrerior porch, the perfect meeting place between the domestic intimacy and the strenght of the surrounding landscape.
The night fell, accompanied by a bright sky full of stars that at Giardini Naxos seems nearer than they are. I dined under this sky, in the porch overlooking Etna and the sea, with the smell of wood, the oven, and the seasalt in the air as a seasoning. It was the Sicily that I know and that surprises me each and every time: Intense, authentic, vibrant.
Day 2 – Saying goodbye to Villa Alba and Sicily
The waking at Villa Alba has the soft hue of sunrise reflecting on the sea: a delicate pink that becomes orange, then gold and finally explodes in the blue of a new day. I sipped my coffee in the terrace, while a light zephyr moved the curtains, bringing the brackish sea smell.
I’ve passed the morning between the panoramic pool, surrounded by palm trees and the english lawn, and the beach just a couple of steps away. Here times seems suspended: Ionic sea that unveils before, Etna towering behind me and, a little to the side, the elegant profile of Taormina that appears like a painting suspended between sky and rock. Each corner of Villa Alba amplifies this beauty, making it nearer, more intense, almost tangible.
In the evening I let myself be pampered in one of it’s most special rooms: the suite with jacuzzi. The hot water, the view that hugs both sky and sea, the light that softly filters: it was a pause that erased every thaught, gifting me the illusion that time could really be stopped.
When sunset came, different but with the same magic, i understood that this place has a rare blessing: that it can transform simple moments, in memories destined to last. Leaving Villa Alba wasn’t easy. It was the last sicilian stop of this trip in “the island of the sun”, but it’s right from here, between light and sea, that starts the path heading north, to new stops, news landscapes, new stories.
