CityBySee is well named, because you are not going to hear much of any value from the audio guide that we managed to access at our sixth try, having tried five outlets that didn't work. This was after the driver (there was no human guide) had not bothered to offer us any headphones - perhaps he realised the folly of trying to use them. Once having made a succesful connection we too realised that folly, the commentary consisting of many silences plus occasional quotes from a guidebook to Sicily that bore no relationship to the sights we were passing at the time.
More irritation was to follow.
We were on the bus red route, boarding at the Recanati terminus hoping to change at the Taormina terminus to the blue route that would take us to our destination, Castelmola. When we arrived at the chaotic Taormina bus terminal, two members of staff boarded the bus. One of them urged us to leave the bus, another advised staying put. It became apparent that the reason we were being urged to leave the bus was that our bus had been redesignated as a blue route bus and there were several somewhat angry-looking people waiting to board. Our exit from the bus would have made room for them. Learning of the redesignation, we stayed put. Subsequently our bus pulled out of the terminal and took us to our destination.
Another irritation was that despite being advertised as "hop-on hop-off", the opportunity for "hopping" was somewhat curtailed by the behaviour of drivers, who stopped at a bus stop only when a passenger stood up on the swaying bus and made for the exit. There were no buzzers or bell pushes on the bus to request the driver to stop.
As is compulsory, it seems, all drivers drove alarmingly fast on hilly, twisting roads. Whilst exciting, this did no favours for those of a nervous disposition.
For this excursion, we paid €20 per person. We had originally intended to travel on a similar service run by Etna Interbus but were charmed by the CitBySee rep who had stationed himself a few yards in front of the Etna Interbus booking kiosk. Perhaps we should have stuck to our original plan!
We subsequently chose service buses costing a fraction of the price charged by CityBySee, I think €2.