Bill versus the volcano (III)
Not much to report on this day, most of it being taken up with travel, so I'll be brief. There's a nice photo coming at the bottom, however.
We got up ridiculously early to catch a taxi out to the Naples airport, where we caught a flight on AirOne, Lufthansa's discount line for travel in Italy and environs, to Catania. Logistics on this ran absolutely smoothly, due partially to the fact that we were on the road long before any Neapolitans with a lick of sense were awake, let alone on the roads. Since the crowds inside the terminal aren't any thicker at 6 a.m. than they are on the roads, we zipped right through to the gate for a brief snooze before boarding the 7 a.m. flight south. The high point of the flight was looking out the window at a little island in the middle of the Mediterranean with an occasional puff of smoke coming from the mountain in the middle -- Stromboli, one of our primary destinations on this trip. Etna is a far larger mountain, but seeing a volcano that's actually erupting has a certain thrill to it. All routine from there, into and through Catania's very tidy and easily-negotiated airport, where we met our van, operated by an outfit called COMEDAS, that would take us to Taormina, our destination for the night. (More of COMEDAS later; they generally acquitted themselves well on this trip, with one significant glitch that I'll get to.)
Taormina is a pleasant, if rather upscale, little resort city on the Sicilian coast that offers nice views of Mount Etna, another of our destinations. Our lodging here was at the upper-end Villa Diodato, at which we arrived so early that they were still serving breakfast! Bless their hearts, they let us dig into the breakfast buffet even though we hadn't checked in yet, and it was much appreciated -- tremendous food with squeeze-it-yourself orange juice, and Etna looming outside the window. Between the early start, the huge breakfast, and some residual jet lag, the boys and I were happy to vegetate in the lounge staring out at Etna for the rest of the morning and much of the afternoon. Emily and WGMIL, however, wanted to see it all, so they headed off to Taormina's best-known landmark, the Teatro Greco -- ruins of an ancient amphitheater that, despite its name, is more Roman than Greek. Here's what they saw:
Taormina, Etna, and amphitheater
Later in the day we met Marco, our Volcano Discovery guide, and D and Z, the two other members of our party, a couple from just outside London. Marco is an interesting guy: a Ph.D. astronomer, he moonlights by guiding these volcano-tourism trips, which meant that he fit in just like he was family. (His astronomical "day job" would turn out to be memorably relevant later in the trip, too.) A walk down to the Taormina town center (a bit touristy for our tastes), a serviceable but unexceptional dinner, and back to the Diodato (which really is a very pleasant place to stay), then an early bedtime to recover from the remnant jet lag and morning flights -- OK, not the most exciting day we had on the trip, but it still had lots to see, and meeting the people we'd spend the next week with was also interesting.
So tomorrow, on to the volcanoes! Web Site du Jour: http://www.nps.gov/archive/yell/oldfaithfulcam.htm -- if you can't watch a volcano erupt, check out the world's greatest concentration of geysers instead. The National Park Service recently moved this webcam so that it not only shows Old Faithful, which is what most people visit it for, but the whole shebang of Geyser Hill in the background. You can watch this thing for hours if your net connection lets you -- not to mention your boss!
