SICILY--Mount Etna

Saturday was the last day of our Sicily trip and we wanted to go out with a BANG, though not literally, we hoped! We headed to Mount Etna—active volcano near Catania. We were really excited for this since we had seen the Volcano on the first day of our arrival, but had just driven past it. There is a crazy amount of lava rock everywhere, but then this volcano has gone off many, many times—is does little spurts often today. The last significant eruption was in 2003. As we drove up we could see the cloud of steam coming from one of the peaks (I think it is always there, possibly to appease the tourists, hee, hee).
We drove up as far as our car was aloud--it was gorgeous to see the golden fall leaves right up against that black lava rock. We then paid too much money and headed further up the mountain, crammed into a large “jeep” with lots of other tourists. It was a very “bumpy bus ride”, but was kind of fun too.
The wind where we got off was intense and thus started the torture of Gabriel Moss by his parents who weren’t about to miss this experience, even with a terrified, screaming 4 year old in tow. He just knew he was going to be blown off the mountain and was most often either latched to my leg, or clinging to my hand and begging me not to let go. Yes, to all of you who were also on the mountain that day, without children under 10, we do believe he will thank us for it one day (or not, but it was a cool experience for the rest of us).
We all hiked out to the places that had blown in 2002 and 2003. They were steaming and so cool, but you could get freakily close to the edge and I did picture the scenerio of Eli or Adam slipping under the rope-line and sliding down into the crater. Hence the, “boys, not so close!” remark—I think that should suffice! Uh-huh.
It was so cool up there. To think of the power lying just below us, that could go at any time—thrilling!
There was a cute Italian geologist that spoke some English and took a liking to Eli, with his questions and curiousity. He found rocks for Eli and told us all about the volcano.
The coolest thing was the ground of lava rocks. When you touched the ground it felt slightly warm, but if you dug just a couple inches down the tempurature was significantly hotter—so fun. Even Gabriel let go of my hand for just a minute to crouch down and feel it. Of course, I took this opportunity to take a picture. Gabriel quickly noticed I was not right at his side and screamed to me that I was not supposed to go away from him!!

After around an hour we headed back to the vehicle and headed a little waze down. Then we took a funivia ride the rest of the way down—probably Gabe’s favorite part of the trip.

SICILY ancient castle outside the town of Siracusa

The next day we were headed for Syracuse, ancient Greek city and home of Persephane—the reason behind the seasons. We stopped first at an old Greek Castle (built 403-397 BC). Again with all the goggle-eyes looks at the size of our family. We impressed them all, and they only had to tell my kids once to get off the top of the castle walls one time (this is because we then turned a corner after which they could no longer see us). Crazy Americans—I guess when you have a large family it isn’t such a big deal to lose one when he falls of the side of the castle wall (they weren’t that high up, and it possibly had something to do with the age of the “climbing wall”, rather than their safety). Eli’s comment shortly after arrival was, “This is the coolest place to climb, ever!”
At first I thought this was going to be a slight let-down since the castle itself was almost completely demolished and seemed to be just a bunch of large stones. But soon we discovered the underside of it all. This was once one of the best-protected castles around. It had 3 seperate moats with tunnels leading in and out of each; there were long and short underground tunnels leading from front to back or inside out; there were blocked off staircases up into the castle that would have been cool to follow. We spent a couple of hours exploring and playing hide-and-scare (it was October 31st afterall).
I think this was one of the boys favorite places on the trip—it was definitely one of mine. Don’t you just hate how pictures just don’t seem to be able to capture the full experience?!

SICILY Cefalu' and Agrigento--the Valley of the Temples

After staying in Marsala a few days while David worked, we went sight-seeing. First stop was in Cefalu’ to take a little hike up a hill to an ancient temple dedicated to Diana (Greek goddess). The hike up the mountain in Cefalu’ was rather enjoyable after being in the hotel for a couple days and in the car awhile. The trial was pretty steep up and had cactus everywhere (all of Sicily does, with lots of prickly pear fruit to offer). There were awesome ruins atop dangerous precipises all the way up. When we got to the temple, I was blown away to see how old it was (5th century BC) WOW! Most of what we saw afterward dated close to this time-period.

For our boys the most memorable part of this trip was on the way down. They all had to go to the bathroom and there wasn’t one handy. There was a patch of cactus near the edge of the path, so they all (David included) did the Italian thing and just went—they did try to be discreet by stepping as far as they could into the cactus covering. This spot became the later mapping point as we looked back at the hill from a distance, “See that spot on the edge over there? That is where we went to the bathroom. Can you believe how high we were?” The statement, “you mean the place we peed?” was made more than once that day as we talked about the temple on the hill—lovely. Sorry, Diana.

Velle dei Tempii. I was really excited to see these ancient temples, especially since there were so many of them right near each other and one was particulalry well-preserved.

The boys were thrilled with all the outside time on this trip. Of course, they ran past the first ancient temple to get to prime “mountain lion” leaping and prowling territory on the old Olive tree and then the partially crumbled walls nearby.
It was such an incredible experience. The temples and walls were truly awesome. The age of these buildings was a hard thing for me to grasp, let alone the boys, but I think they understood that it was all really cool old stuff. We all loved it, and even Gabriel waited until just before the last stop to crumple to the ground declaring that he was unable to move and needed to be carried (thus david ended up with one on his back in the pack and one on his front in his arms for at least some of the walk down).