Word: taormina
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...week's end the remnants were fleeing. On the north coast a second amphibious flanking movement of the Americans cracked their line at Capo d'Orlando and opened up a downhill road to Messina. On the east shore the British pushed up past Riposto, past Taormina, to within artillery range of Italy itself. On neither front was any major contact made with German forces-the speed of the Allied advance was hindered only by mines and demolitions...
...invasion of Sicily was not going too well. Himilco with his 25,000 men and twelve armored elephants still held Agrigentum, "the most beautiful city of mortals." But the Romans had taken Panormus (Palermo) and the legions had occupied Tauromenium (Taormina) in the shadow of Mt. Aetna, beneath whose massive weight Zeus had imprisoned the rebellious giants...
...sweet and final touch only a few hours before the invasion's jump-off, a special flight of Liberators wheeled in over Taormina and dumped heavy demolition and incendiary bombs on the San Domenico hotel, which Allied intelligence had discovered to be the Axis military headquarters. The hotel and the city's nearby telephone and telegraph building were reduced to heaps of smoking rubble, paralyzing the nerve center of the island's defense organization at least temporarily...
...came to Taormina from Syracuse in the same compartment with a Sicilian family consisting of the father with a long mustache, the mother holding a baby, and a daughter looking like a brunette version of Greta Garbo and eating salami. My time was spent between looking for Mt. Etna and smelling the salami. Before the journey was over, however, I was eating salami, holding the baby, and listening to an Italian, French, handlanguage version of the last eruption of Mt. Etna...
When we arrived at Taormina three hours later there was another family at the station to meet my companions whom apparently they had not seen in may years, for in the excitement of much saluting and kissing I too was kissed and told something to the effect how tall I'd grown! Then there was much laughing and explaining and finally my friends drove off in their donkey cart leaving me with salami and four taxi drivers wanting to take me 700 feet up the mountain where on a narrow rocky plateau rests Taormina, certainly one of the most charming...