Go ahead and indulge — it's Taormina, Italy
More accurately, I am thinking about the real-life inspiration for Lady Chatterley — an upper-class Englishwoman who had come to Taormina and carried on a steamy (think R-rated behavior in an olive grove) affair with a Sicilian farmer. Part of the reason I am thinking about this uninhibited British woman is that D.H. Lawrence wrote part of his frequently banned novel while staying at this very hotel. Another is that eating granita for breakfast feels precisely like something the woman behind Lady Chatterley would have done.
Apparently, Lady Chatterley's inspiration wasn't the only foreigner to indulge herself in Taormina. The German writer Goethe might have been responsible for putting this coastal Sicilian town on the itinerary of wanderlust-y northern Europeans in the 18th century, but it was expat artists and writers, such as Lawrence and his muse, who flocked here in the early 1900s who were responsible for transforming Taormina into (as the writer Harold Acton put it) "a polite synonym for Sodom.",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
The Sicilian town once known as 'a polite synonym for Sodom' is still a great place to enjoy life to its fullest. The granita is icy good, the scenery stunning and the sea lusciously warm.
 Tourists look out over captivating Taormina from a hillside near the Sicilian town's ancient Greek Theater. (Chris Hardy / July 4, 2011) |
Reporting from Taormina, Italy—
I am sitting on the balcony of the Grand Hotel Timeo eating almond-flavored granita (a kind of Italian sherbet) for breakfast and thinking about Lady Chatterley.More accurately, I am thinking about the real-life inspiration for Lady Chatterley — an upper-class Englishwoman who had come to Taormina and carried on a steamy (think R-rated behavior in an olive grove) affair with a Sicilian farmer. Part of the reason I am thinking about this uninhibited British woman is that D.H. Lawrence wrote part of his frequently banned novel while staying at this very hotel. Another is that eating granita for breakfast feels precisely like something the woman behind Lady Chatterley would have done.
