Hardly a soul is in sight when we arrive at the ferry dock in Catania, where our daughter Katherine and her friend Leah are scheduled to arrive on the overnight ferry from Naples. I am bursting with anticipation, and it seems like hours before the ferry finally appears, backing in to the dock with an ease that makes Rick envious. Finally, Katherine and Leah appear on the gangway. A happy moment!



After a quick drive-by glimpse of Catania's grand baroque buildings, we head up the coastal road toward Taormina.In the back seat, Katherine and Leah are bubbling with excitement as the stories of their adventures in Rome, Pompeii, the Amalfi coast and Naples spill out. The scenery along the coastal road is glorious, with lush vegetation, palm trees, baroque buildings, lava cliffs and jagged rocks contrasting with the intense blue of the Ionian Sea. Sicily is at its best in spring, with wildflowers and shrubs providing splashes of yellow, red, pink and white. But eventually the traffic forces us inland to the highway, where we pick up speed to arrive in Taormina by mid-morning. We drive up, up, up, gazing at the amazing view of Mt. Etna vigorously puffing out smoke in the distance. Rick threads the car through the narrow streets and with only a few wrong turns we eventually find the Porta Catania carpark, located conveniently close to the town. Then we head straight to Billy's café, where the cost of a cup of cappuccino and a cornetto is more than double what we normally pay in Ragusa. The ambience makes it worth the price.



Our Blue Guide Concise Italy claims that "Taormina is thought by some to be the most beautiful place in the world". Whoever said this had probably never seen the Cape Breton highlands or Lake Louise (and may have been referring to the Taormina of a century ago) but the view is inarguably breathtaking. We had been warned that we would likely be sharing Taormina with shoulder-to-shoulder hoards of other travelers, but in mid-May the crowds have not yet reached their peak. We wander through the streets of the town, where the sun illuminates the pastel colours of the buildings. Flowers tumble from window boxes; even the inevitable restaurants and tourist shops somehow manage to look charming.

The most famous site in Taormina is the Greek theatre. Built in the 3rd century BC, the Greeks had designed the theatre so that the stage had only the view of Mt. Etna and the water as a backdrop. It was later enlarged by the Romans, who inexplicably obscured the view by adding a colonnaded backdrop. Thanks to the ravages of time, the view is again mainly visible, and in any case it would have had to have been a large stage indeed to hide Etna, which at 3,350 meters (give or take a few eruptions worth of height ) is the highest active volcano in Europe.



Leaving the theatre, Katherine is visibly limping. She is suffering from a painful ingrown toenail that has become infected and refuses to heal. I take a look at it and become alarmed- this clearly requires more than just soaking and ointments. Fortunately, we are in a country where one can walk into a pharmacy and buy almost anything. We buy a package of ciprofloxacin at the "British Pharmacy" but after some sober second thought we decide to look for a doctor instead of relying on my rusty pharmacy knowledge. We eventually find the "Tourist Doctor" in a cavernous hospital-like building at the top of a steep street. She is completely alone, sitting quietly in an almost-empty room behind a desk that has only a single file folder on its top. She does not speak English, but a glimpse of the toe is all that is needed. She pronounces the ciprofloxacin to be "perfetto" and ten minutes later we are on our way to lunch, the toe neatly bandaged and my professional conscience clear. The bill for her services? "Niente" (nothing). I love Italy.

For lunch, we choose the terrace at the restaurant Granduca, where we can enjoy the view of Mt. Etna and the sea as we eat our pizzas and gnocchi. Now we have to decide our itinerary for the rest of the day. We had considered spending the night in Taormina, but the idea of paying for two rooms in the most expensive town in Sicily while simultaneously paying for an apartment in Pozzallo and a berth at Marina di Ragusa is rather unappealing. Instead, we decide to drive up Mt. Etna, then return to Pozzallo for the night.

Etna is puffing out smoke as we drive up the winding road toward the cable car station. This is one of the world's most active volcanos and lately it's been really letting off steam, having already erupted several times in 2012. The black ash had even reached Aisling's decks in Marina di Ragusa, but at least we weren't in Catania, where we'd been told that cruisers in the marina had purchased leaf-blowers to blow the coatings of ash off their decks!

"I hope we're not going to end up in the Darwin awards" says Katherine, looking nervously at the summit. "At least we're not as dumb as Empedocles" I say. Empedocles jumped into Etna's crater, believing that the gasses from the volcano crater would hold him aloft. (This is quite possibly the world's best example of a fatal error.) Leah can't understand how a famous philosopher would do something so illogical. "Wouldn't you think he'd have tried throwing a rock in first? A nice big Empedocles-size rock?"

We drive through the charming village of Zafferana and continue upward until the road takes as around the mountain and we can no longer see the summit. Olive trees and lush gardens are giving way to a moonscape of black lava and ash. It is already after 4 p.m. when we reach the cable car station at Nicolosi. It seems that Etna is a ski hill in the winter, with chair lifts and pomo lifts as well as the cable car. We quickly pull on jackets and sweater and rush to the ticket office. As we climb the stairs, we are all huffing and puffing with the effort, since even here the altitude is over 2000 meters. At the ticket office, we are told that the trip up the mountain will take 15 minutes and the last return time from the upper station is 5 p.m. The price is 29.50 euros each, which seems a bit expensive for a quick look. We turn away and go back to the parking lot, where an elderly man is strolling with his walker. "You really should go" he said. "It's been over twenty years since I went up, but it was definitely worth it". We realize that if we don't go up, we will always regret it, so we turn back, buy our tickets and hop into the rickety cable car. It will not carry us to the summit, but it will carry us another 500 meters higher. When we disembark, there is really little to see other than snow and lava. Even the view is obscured by a smoky haze, but the feeling of being this high on Etna's slopes is, if not priceless, at least worth 29.5 euros.



We walk up higher, but Katherine and Leah are getting nervous that we will miss the cable car. Rick checks the altitude on his phone at the highest point and it shows 2840 meters (9, 230'). We collect some bits of lava, take some pictures of each other in front of the blackened snow banks and take the ride back down to the car. It's interesting that some of the lava rocks are very heavy and some are very light, yet they all look the same to our untrained eyes. Before driving back down the mountain, we walk along the edge of an extinct crater. (I'm sure I read somewhere that the same crater never erupts twice.) Finally, with the day growing later, we return to the car and drive back down the mountain, deciding, after considerable debate, to retrace our steps rather than follow "the road not taken".

It is nearly eight o'clock when we arrive back in Pozzallo and after unloading our bags at the apartment we are all too tired to even contemplate finding a restaurant. Fortunately, we have everything we need. Fresh pasta, sweet cherry tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, parmesan cheese and chilled wine combine to make a delicious dinner. We eat well, and tumble into bed early. Tomorrow would be another busy day!