The apartment is in a beautiful location. The owners have done a beautiful job with the property. The view of both the water and volcano are breathtaking. The location was a great base to tour the area because it was an easy driving distance to Taormina, Catania, Mt Etna, etc. The pool was a great benefit and very convenient to have with kids. The apartment had all the kitchen basics (dishes, pots/pans, utensils), but other things like oil, sugar, salt, dish soap, etc was based on what previous people left behind. Communication with the owners was quick and easy.
Unfortunately, we didn’t really like the layout of the apartment. It was 2 stories but the second story had excessively sloped ceilings and it was really uncomfortable being there. We kept hitting our heads and had to move to the 1st floor bedroom, leaving our kids upstairs alone. Even our 4 year old hit her head on the ceiling when using the bathtub, so we all ended up using only the bathroom downstairs. Because we were on different floors, we kept the doors to the stairwell open so we could hear the kids, but we were disappointed to discover that the stairwell was shared with other apartments below us. It was an odd design. Others couldn’t access our floors (doors from the stairwell were locked) but we could see their part of the stairwell and hear them, and vice versa. This meant there was no privacy in our apartment with the door was open to access our part of the stairwell - but we couldn’t keep it closed when our kids were upstairs.
Overall, we enjoyed everything about this place but would not recommend that specific apartment. If any of the other apartments offer more privacy, they would be a better choice.