One of the best trips of the holiday was to Mount Etna. I'd been looking forward to this being rather a fan of volcanoes. Unfortunately the weather was pretty grim this day, lots of mist everywhere and especially at Mount Etna. There had been the option of going on the ski lift and then in a jeep to the very top but because of the mist it would have been a waste of money as we would have seen nothing. But at the first level, where we stopped, was the newest crater formed during the eruption in 1986. We were given some free time to walk around it. This really did feel like a proper volcano, unlike Vesuvius which we visited last year. There was lava everywhere, big boulders of it and it felt very atmospheric. The temperature, we were told, was 12 degrees but with the wind chill factor it felt much colder and my hands were frozen. Every so often the mist lifted and we were able to take photos. The views even on this day were brilliant. We were encourage to take some lava home with us and we came back with several pieces. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.
After our brief visit to Mount Etna we wound our way down to Taormina which has a main street and lots of little side streets with many steps. It is pretty and there are some wonderful views of Giardini Naxos. While there we visited the Greek Theatre which is still being used as a music and performance venue. Many of the old seats are worn and have crumbled and new seats and benches have been put in. Despite the weather, which didn't improve much that day, though the mist lifted eventually, the visits were great.
I previously talked about the church dedicated to St Peter in Agrigento which we visited another day. From here we travelled down to the sea front for lunch in a restaurant and then on to The Valley of the Temples where we had a guided tour around the Temples of Hercules, Juno, Hera and others. Most of the tour party felt that we would have been better spending longer here as the guide had one and a half hours to do the tour so if you stopped more than a few minutes to take photos you found she's walked off and you missed a lot of what she said. There were times we felt rushed and that the tours could have been better planned. There was one other day when we went to Monreale to see the Byzantine cathedral. This was a very pretty place and the cathedral beautiful. Afterwards we rushed off to Palermo, the capital of Sicily but it was jammed packed with traffic and our guide wanted to show us places we could visit if we came back by train, so we drove around the city getting stuck in every traffic jam. By the time we stopped we had a half hour at the Cathedral (which was better from the outside then in!) and then we had to leave. So my images of the holiday are lots of time in the coach nodding off and being rushed.
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| Cathedral in Monreale |
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| Inside the cathedral in Monreale |
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| Cathedral at Palermo |
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| Cloisters at Monreale |
One of the nicest days was a free one when hubby and I walked up the big rock overlooking Cefalu to visit the Temple of Diana and the castle. It was a physically demanding walk but so worthwhile for the scenery and the views were wonderful. Later we bought slices of pizza for a street shop in town - lovely - and walked to the harbour. On the last free day we walked into town and visited the Cathedral cloisters. We bought a load of fruit - cherries, strawberries and a Sicilian fruit that looks like an apricot and tastes a little like an orange and pigged out on these overlooking the sea then walked a pathway by the megalithic walls right by the sea. We saw the old wash place where Arab women used to wash clothes on the stones.
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| View from the rock |
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| Diana Temple |
The weather was brilliant most of the week. The exception was the day we went to Mount Etna and the first morning when we were at the meeting held by our holiday rep when clouds rolled in from the sea, the wind got up and there was thunder and lightning. The parasols on the terrace began falling over (we were inside!) and one of the hotel staff had to go out and rescue them. Boy did it rain! Then by late morning it all cleared and there was blue sky and sunshine.
So, the holiday was quite a mixed bag. We certainly had some laughs and met some nice people. Enjoy the photos.
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| Wash house, Cefalu |
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| Marina, Cefalu -  - - |
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