the pace picked up yesterday.   Craig decided to do a shore excursion to Taormina and the Greek Theater while I did my shore excursion to Mt. Etna.   We both had to be out the door at 8 am.  

I always get a little nervous doing shore excursions because they tend to be pricey and then you find out when you get off the boat that you can do most things by yourself or for ½ the price.   This is one time I’m glad I did shore excursion…it would have been nearly impossible to have done Mt. Etna by myself.    We started in Messina city and as we drove by the guide explained it was the 3^rd largest city in Sicily and was completely destroyed in 1908 by an Earthquake/ Tsunami that killed 100,000.   As we drove up the coast he pointed out the land slide that killed 30 people last week.   The drive was very scenic with castles and villages built upon the cliffs.   He also explained about the Sicilian Mafia and the filming of the Godfather here in Sicily.   The drive to Mt. Etna took about 2 hours….up the longest and narrowest road ever.   Mt. Etna is about 9000 ft up and is actually a series of several volcanic craters combined.   The most recent explosion was 2001.

We toured some of the lava flows and then had a chance to hike up to one of the craters.  I almost didn’t do it as it was 60 degree slope with loose volcanic sand and rock…but I love hiking and volcanoes and did….So now I’ve been to the top of 8 active volcanoes!!

It was pretty incredible.  I just love volcanoes for some reason….there is always so much force and power and starkness which is truly the birth of new life, new earth.   After hiking up to the crater…we got back on the bus and headed back down the hill.     We got back to the ship about 2 pm.   I then went off on my own and toured around Messina which was actually quite quaint but everything was closed because of the funerals and at this point it was siesta time. 

I got back on the boat and decided to go to the gym and lift weight for an hour.  By then it was 5 pm.  I met up with Craig and we went to our sit down dinner.  During dinner the ship had left at 5 pm and about an hour into it…the boat stopped…we found out later that two people were left behind and didn’t get on the ship in time and was piloted out.   After dinner we gambled alittle as we sailed by Stromboli the active lava volcano which was cool…it was pitch black out and all you could see was the eerie red orange glow of the lava spewing forth.    We have a fun day at sea and then three ports in a row..Barcelona..Monaco/Monte Carlo…and Florence.    I really wanted to do the tour to Monte Carlo Casino and Hotel Paris so we signed up for the excursion for that.   We also found out that you do have to get dressed up to enter the Casino.   Both of us have been to Florence before and I had been to Pisa…so we decided to splurge and we booked ourselves on a 10 hour excursion to Tuscany which includes a lunch at a local farm and visiting some of the villages of Tuscany as well as the sites from “Under the Tuscan Sun”.   Which will be our last day before coming home.  I’m already getting sad.