A Summer Evening in Taormina

A week ago (yes I'm a bit overdue on this post) Les and I spent an evening in Taormina.  The purpose of the trip was to take pictures for the Photo Club "Sweet Tooth" challenge.  I took several pictures but the creative juices just weren't flowing that night, especially with the sweets. I picked one of my pictures for the challenge, but I wasn't terribly happy with it.  It isn't that it is a bad picture, but it doesn't really catch my eye.  Oh well.  Win some, lose some, right?  Anyway, here are my pics from that evening...

Marzipan Fruits

This is the one I used as my "Sweet Tooth" submission.  I shot it at f11 to maximize my depth of field while still getting a reasonable shutter speed.  I set up my tripod across the street from this shot and zoomed in through the open door.  My shutter speeds couldn't be too long because there was a constant flow of foot traffic in front of my camera.

Ice Cream Cannolo

This was my 2nd runner up for the photo challenge. It actually grabs my attention a lot more than the marzipan fruits but I had already taken a bite of the ice cream and it bugged me that I didn't think to take a photo until AFTER I started eating.  Notice the little bite missing on the end? :)

Marzipan Figs

More Sweets

At this point I was getting a bit frustrated with my photographic ability for the day.  To try and "get in the mood" I started taking pictures of anything that caught my interest...like this hat rack:

Or little architectural details:

Or wacky shop signs:

And finally one last try for a "sweet tooth" photo:

The evening had worn late enough to where our American internal clocks were saying it was dinner time (around 6:30PM), still quite early for Italy.  However, we were in a touristy town so food is always available.  We saw the following sign and had to check the place out:

Excited? Scared? A bit of both?  I will say that it wasn't too bad.  The salsa tasted like salsa, the guacamole tasted like avocados (not sour cream) and the rest of the food was good, not exactly authentic, but good.  The best part, though, was the beer!  I'm not a big beer drinker but the beer was outstanding.  They have two varieties that they brew in-house.  Les tried the red and it was creamy like a Guinness, kind of a chocolate flavor, but not sweet and definitely not a bit bitter.  It was awesome!  We bought two (pricey but worth it) liters to bring home with us.

And that was pretty much the end of our evening.  After dinner we walked a bit more but it was getting late and the drive home was long so we headed out.  We'll be back soon!