Mt. Etna

I must admit that before we moved here I was very skeptical about moving to the base of what is considered to be one of the most active volcanoes in the world!  I told Kevin that I wanted to live in a villa at on the beach so that I can jump on a boat if it's blows up!  Well, reality settled in and we're living on base, still about 30 minutes from the real base of the mountain and 30 minutes from the beach, but we've learned to embrace it.  Since we've been hear she's actually blown several times which is unusual and one evening we watched it.  Thankfully, we are on the opposite of the way that she notoriously blows.  The crater faces north, we're south.  So we don't actually see as much as those folks living in nearby towns to the north.  We've made some contacts and hope that next time she blows really high, we can head up the mountain to watch it.  Mt. Etna is the first mountain that has been successfully diverted to avoid towns.  She always blows into her crater, so she is rarely a threat. 

Some advantages to being near a volcano, the soil is rich which means the veggies and fruits are incredible, and the produce healthy as they eat from the land.  A lot of local business' made furniture out of lava rock, it's doesn't break and it doesn't scratch.  I've seen beautiful dining room sets here and it's hard to believe that you can have class and style with wrought iron and lava rock but you can.  It comes at a price, but that is the one big purchase we want to save for here.  We're hoping for a large dining table with chairs and a buffet.  Other beautiful things are made with it.  We look forward to seeing what's out there as we travel across the island. 

She is almost always blowing off steam at the very least. 

I've attached some shots we've captured since we've been here.

 This last one was just taken today, we're were driving up the side of the mountain and this is all I saw, smoke billowing out of the huge white clouds that were already rolling it.  It was incredible.