A: The title of this entry refers to the museums set in "The Chimneys" which used to house the sulphur works of Catania. The area now houses a cultural precinct, and we visited three museums this morning. (They all close at 1pm so we made sure we got there when they opened at 9). The Museum of the Landing (Museo dello Sbarco in Sicilia 1943) was our first stop and we paid our four Euros each and were given a guided tour in English at the commencement of ou...

A: We were collected right at the door as arranged in the four wheel drive for our tour of Mt Etna. Our guide was Gianni and there were two Catanese girls (M: Who had never been on the mountain) and an American man and his grandfather (M: Tennessee and Kentucky, y'all) also on the tour. Our guide was fantastic and the other four were really nice people and we got along really well all day. Gianni is an electrical engineer and has lived in London but has a pas...

A: Breakfast in the flat - delicious local bread with the marmalade and honey we brought from Malta and also cheese and tomato we picked up earlier this morning from the markets. It is handy having them so close. Mick had emailed `The Etna Experience` about a trip to the slopes, but due to the intermittent state of our internet we were not sure if there was a reply so we walked about twenty minutes to the site which was at a B and B where we were welcomed warm...

M: I slept for nearly 11 hours (better then the 4 the night before) and the worst of the cold seemed to have passed. The first task is usually to check the emails. That went fine in the morning. But brace yourself for further developments. The weather forecast was for showers, then worse tomorrow and better on Thursday, so we decided to try an Etna excursion on Thursday. We sent an email last night (Monday) and await a reply - probably later today (Tuesday)....

A: Up at 4.45 for the 7am ferry to Pozzallo which Alex very kindly offered to take us to- we had to be there one hour beforehand as we had luggage. The previous two nights in our Battery Street flat had been very windy and so the trip across proved a little bumpy and some people got sick. (M: Not we hardy seadogs, though!) The staff were very attentive and the catamaran was otherwise comfortable. A two hour bus trip took us into Catania but dropped us at the dock...