Hi all,
enjoyed my first snow fall ever yesterday! And no, it wasn't in Malta (no snow ever gets here).
Went on a day trip with the wife to Mt. Etna, in Sicily, yesterday. A package tour - we usually never go for this stuff, as we prefer to muck about on our own, but this time round we played lazy and got the coach and everything.
Itinerary:
0420 - woke up - ugh
0600 - checked in for SES catamaran (San Gwann, or St. John - very knights-ish) for teip
0700-0830 trip to Pozzallo harbour, the South point of Sicily, and the closest port to Malta.
0845-0900 coach to village of Pozzallo - a quiet place, had anice strong espresso.
0930 -1130 2.5 hours on the coach - aargh!
1130-ish - drive on coach up to Etna - with the odd house swallowed up by lava, and lots of spiky black rock
1200-1345 stop at Silvestri crater at 1986m above sea level. This is as far as we got - Etna is actually 3000m high. The wife considers this to have been a recce mission, in fact - next time, all the way to the top!
My first snow, my second crater (I'd seen one at Pantelleria once). Inactive, but the snow was fun. A light flurry, I'd say, but all new for me - I'd only ever seen snow on the ground before, on Ben Nevis.
1345-1600 coach to town of Modica (slept a bit here, I'm afraid...
)1600 - 1745 Modica - a baroque little town nestled in a valley, surrounded by 'upper Modica' including a small fortress. The centre of the Sicilian sweet industry - and I've to taste any sweets better than Sicilian stuff! Paste di mandorla (almond pastry), the best ice cream and granita ever (the latter is a slushy sort of ice, but the Sicilian stuff is out of this world) and chocolate - plain, bitter, with lemon and orange flavour, with red pepper (
) - and lovely hot chocolate in which you can stand a spoon upright without it toppling! 1745 - 1815 coach to Pozzallo harbour
1900 - 2100 (rough-ish swell on the sea) ferry back home.
ANd now - pics
