Mount Etna and Country Roads, Take Me Home

Since we finished the harvest early, and because Michelle and I had such a good experience renting a car the last time, we decided to take off for about a day and a half to see the other side of Sicily. Mainly, the plan was to climb parts of Etna and to visit the hometown of my great-grandparents, called Fiumedinisi. And that's exactly what we did.

It was an early-rise day again, as the bus from Calatafimi to Palermo left at 6:20am, and Angus wanted to leave the house at 5:45am to make it to town. He considers the buses to be erratic, which gave us plenty of time to hit the ATM before heading out for the day. The rental car process went much more smoothly this time since we had booked online, and we left Palermo around 8:45am. (But not before we ate our packed breakfasts and sat against the wall outside the rental car company's door like we were homeless.)

The drive was nice, despite the half hour or so of rain. Michelle and I almost have a routine for road trips at this point. Sometimes we listen to music. Sometimes we ride quietly with the windows down. Sometimes we have deep discussions. We stop for gas when it's at half a tank. (On our first trip, we figured out that "senza piombo" is unleaded all by ourselves! Big thanks to Miranda for being senza glutine at our last farm and to the Periodic Table of Elements for introducing us to Pb.) Our favorite thing to do, though, is read together. Well, more accurately, Michelle reads and I listen. For me, it's like an audio book, and for her, probably a monologue. Anyway, the book is Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers, and we both recommend it.

I don't know what we were expecting to see on our way to Mt. Etna, but we weren't expecting to be able to see the volcano for about two hours of our drive. At one point after coming out of a tunnel (There are TONS of tunnels along the autostrada in Sicily!) Michelle was reading, and I just said, "Woah!" There it was, towering in the distance; Mount Etna is huge.

We drove around to Etna Sud because we read that there were good trails on that side, so this was taken just as we went south of the mountain.

I can't adequately describe the mountain to you, and the photos Michelle and I took don't really do Etna justice. But it's all we have, so I'll let the photos speak for themselves. I just want to say that the lack of oxygen was noticeable, the ash was difficult to walk on because it was so light, and the slopes were steeper than pictures show. It was a cloudy day, so we weren't able to see the towns below Etna, which made us feel as if we weren't that high, but we most likely reached an elevation of 7,800 ft. (I don't know how high our hour of hiking got us from the Refugio Sapienza, which is 6,233 ft, but it looked to be quite far.)

Craters!!

This was the first crater we walked around, and it was made in 2001.

I'm pretty sure someone drew that crop circle, but who knows.

A nice British couple took our picture.

Look at those colors!

highway to the danger zone

Jesus is everywhere.

That peak in the right hand corner is 10, 991 feet (unless there's a higher peak we couldn't see somewhere), but we only made it to this point.

I like this view. In the background past the cable cars you can see 3-4 craters/tops blown off the mountain, and in the foreground you can see how the lava hardened the ash.

Because hot chocolate is rich, thick, and delicious!

Fiat 500. It was both totally automatic and totally manual, and on top of that,
if you didn't like the gear automatic used, you could switch it manually. We
were the last car in the lot that day. 

We got to drive down the volcano with the sunset.

We then had a bit of GPS confusion, as we had put in one city and address, and the GPS changed it to another city. Interestingly enough, in Milo--the city we ended up in accidentally--there was a church called Our Lady of Providence, and they were having a Mass that evening to celebrate the 17th Anniversary of the dedication of that church. What a great name for a church in the shadow of Etna! We didn't stay for Mass because we were supposed to be at our bed and breakfast at 8pm. Of course, we didn't make it there at that time because of the GPS problem (which involved Michelle going into a random pizzeria to use the internet in order to email our B&B host, while I fell asleep in the car outside, and a peanut butter explosion happened later). Eventually, we arrived safely and slept in an extremely comfy bed.

The next day, we headed for Fiumedinisi--the Sicilian town from which both of my grandfather's parents arrived in the United States. It was Halloween, and the cemetery was full of visitors honoring the deceased. There were many flower trucks out and about that morning as we drove there. Unfortunately, my visit was poorly planned, and I hadn't gotten the first names of my relatives. I took many photos of gravestones with family names on them, however, so perhaps I did get a photo of one of my grandfather's relatives.

Considering that this is Sicily, I probably could have shouted my last name and been introduced to five distant cousins on the spot, but not knowing much of anything else in Italian, I didn't do that. I did see the abandoned church where my great-grandparents were probably baptized, and I got a photo outside the newer cathedral as well. (CHRISTMAS GIFT SPOILER ALERT!) We stopped in a "souvenir" shop, and I was able to purchase a small ceramic bowl made in Fiumedinisi for my grandfather. There really was nothing else made in town that I could buy in that shop since the tourist season is over and because the town is quite small. The best part, however, was probably sipping a cappuccino in the bar while Country Roads came on the Italian talk show on TV. Not kidding! It was a God moment. Michelle even turned to me and said, "Is this real life?"

Before heading back to Palermo to drop off the not-scratched car and catch the bus to Calatafimi, we had a picnic lunch on the seaside, about three miles from Fiumedinisi, in Nizza di Sicilia. What a beautiful day!