Etna
That isn't Mount Etna in the top picture, it's just the site of a side eruption through a vent on the slopes of the great mountain. Most volcanoes are far more complicated than the infantile notion of a cone shaped hill with an opening at the top from which red hot molten lava occasionally flows. Mount Etna in the north east of Sicily is the biggest active volcano in Europe. Steam was issuing from the peak as we approached it from the south. The mountain's current altitude is 11.014 feet and its basal circumference is 87 miles. It covers an area of 459 square miles. It is certainly a big sucker. Our hotel was sixty miles south of Etna. We boarded the tour coach at 8.15 in the morning, joining Italian and French tourists before bombing along the coastal motorway to the suburbs of the city of Catania. Then we climbed upwards along winding roads passing hundreds of humble blocks of flats where most of the ordinary citizens of Catania seem to live. Then we were passing ...