Mt Etna

Saturday morning we decided to drive up to Mt Etna and check it out.  The roads up are narrow and windy, and the clouds were thick and dark.  The temperature dropped at least 20 degrees as we went from our house up the mountain.  I have to say the drive was beautiful, but freaked me out.  I do not enjoy narrow, windy roads that seem to be just inches from the edge of a cliff.  It brought me back to a drive we took from Florida to Indiana through the mountains in Tennessee when my dad thought it would be fun to stop at a scenic overlook and get a picture with Trisha and I standing at the edge of the cliff, not fun for me!  Turns out Tommy enjoys this kind of drive as much as me.  Put those narrow windy roads in Italy where people think the line in the middle of the road is just a suggestion, and it becomes that much more fun.

When you get a ways up the mountain, you come a cross this little village of stores and restaurants, and the scary drive is almost forgotten.

 This is a map of the mountain. You can see at the bottom of the map is the parking area where we were.  There is a lot of mountain above us!

You can take these gondolas up the mountain a little further.  We didn't, but might at a future date.

Here is Sam with some lava rock behind her.

There were a couple of craters you could walk up.  This is the small one that we decided to walk up.

You can't really tell, but Sam is sitting on a rock at the edge of the crater.  You can kind of see a dark spec to her right, that is a person in the bottom.

This rock and the one next to it had been 1 large rock up until about 3 weeks ago.  Originally it was shot out of the largest crater.

Mike and Sammie hiked around the entire edge of the crater.  Tommy didn't want to, so I stayed with him.  The picture above is of Mike and Sam on the other side.

We made the kids hike to the bottom, they are in the center of the picture.

Here they are posing for us.

After walking around, we had to make the drive back down the now wet (since there was a down pour while we were walking around), narrow and windy roads.  And if the Italian drivers were not enough to have to watch for, there was a herd of sheep in the road.  

They all stayed together in the lane and only crossed over when they saw a break in the wall.  You have to be careful with sheep in the road, because if you hit one, you have to pay for it.

This is just a picture of the roads through the little villages.  This is not the narrowest of roads we went on, but it was still a little close, especially when there is a car coming from the other direction.  If people are parked on the sides, that just adds to the fun and excitement!

Saturday night we went to another agriturismo for dinner with some neighbors.  I didn't take pictures, but it looked like what you would expect an Italian villa to look like.  It was up on a hillside and had a beautiful view of  a hillside town across the way.  We sat out on their large patio under a perfectly clear sky.  The food was amazing, and way too much to eat! There were about 10 appetizers, then pasta, then soup, then chicken done 2 different ways and salad, then dessert.  No kids, just adults.  It was really nice and relaxing.  Definitely not looking forward to getting my scale next month!