Mt. Etna wine tour - Sara was lovely! We travelled from Palermo and they came and picked us up from the train station and dropped us back.

Amazing excursion!! - Sara met us at the cruise terminal. The directions could not have been more clear. This tour was better than any of the tours booked through our cruise. Sara assured us we would be back before the ship left, and we were with time to spare. This tour size is much smaller than the big tours the cruise offers, so we had a group of only 8 people. Toarmina was breathtaking. The vineyard on Mt. Etna could not have been a better atmosphere. The panoramic views, fresh, exquisite food, and of course renowned wine made the visit incredible.

Great winery and lunch tour. - This tour was substituted the day before our scheduled tour booked 2 months prior. Although the winery was fantastic, especially the lava rock wine cellar and lunch was wonderful, there was only 30 minutes to tour Taormina. The drive was long and somewhat boring. Our guide and her assistant talked more to one another rather than explain what we were seeing. If you are mostly interested in a wine tour it is perfect. If you want to tour the local sights, not so great.

Knowing the logistics of this experience - Overall there is not enough time to do all of these things in one day successfully. I would recommend either Etna OR Taormina but not both. We signed up for this tour months in advance as we were traveling on Celebrity Infinity and knew we had a short window to see as much as possible. Our excursion happened to fall on a Sunday meaning when we disembarked and found our tour guide they informed us that the wine aspect was not actually available. They stated they did not have our contact information to reach us in advance. So instead of the ETNA Wine and Taormina excursion we were automatically put with the Etna and Taormina group. The trip is not 100% laid out for you. You will drive 1.5-2 hours to the base of Etna. Then if you chose pay an additional 30 euro you can take a 30 minute tram up to "Etna". This is not entirely accurate. At that point you need to take a round trip 1 hour jeep ride up to the rim of Etna. With this tour you do not have the time to do that. We then went back down the tram and left for the "wine experience". We stopped for about 30 minutes to try wine, olive oils, and honeys. This was nice. Once we left we were told that we would only have 20-30 minutes in Taormina, which is super nice. Overall 70% of this excursion is simply driving. Again I would recommend picking one or the other, but not both.