Night location: Lipari

Our love affair with Lipari continues! Beautiful skies and bright sunshine greeted us as we followed our host through the old pedestrian lane ways lined with closely knit coloured buildings that were draped with ancient frescoes and tumbling flowers. We were lead to the Marina Corta that has many local fishing boats bobbing next to the piazza where we enjoyed a simple Italian breakfast of coffee and a pastry.

One of the main sites of Lipari town is the ancient Castello that currently houses a Benedictine cathedral and archaeological museum. Access to the Castello is via a steep and long set of death stairs (meaning that the stairs are angled and uneven). Due to this Amber and David stayed below to go shopping while the others slowly ascended. The main features of the museum were a collection of Ancient Greek Bronze Age ceramic amphora and beautifully decorated urns used for burials. The Castello also had a Greek theatre overlooking the sea and a fantastic view over the port and the town.

At this point the group split as Gareth and Dad chose to go on an 8 hour tour to Stromboli via some other islands. They plan to watch Stromboli erupt at night as it puts on a terrific show approximately every 15 minutes. For the rest of us we chose to spend our afternoon lying on a magnificent beach in Canetto which is the next town around from Lipari. The beach overlooked Stromboli and Panarea and we could clearly make out the smoke puffing from the volcano. As is most often the case in Italy the beach is made of rocks but as these were volcanic (lots of obsidian and pumice) they were not as smooth as the traditional limestone. Amber struggled to get in the water, however as she left her sandals on so as to not grip with her toes, she did considerably better than David and Gemma who were barefoot and falling sideways. They were meant to be Amber's support team, but failed so she duck dove into the shallow and swam away. Gemma had to get out by sitting in the shallow and shuffling up the beach! We're sure the locals enjoyed the Australian spectacle! To be fair, we're used to very fine white sand!

For our return trip to Lipari, we hired a taxi to drive us around the island and show us the panoramic views over the neighbouring Aeolian Islands. He was a character who at one point abandoned us without explaining where he was going, only to return with three massive blocks of obsidian as a gift for us. We kindly accepted these but due to baggage restrictions Gemma and Amber's will have to go in Mum's bag on the way home!

Tomorrow we return to mainland Sicily and transit to Palermo. We are sad to be leaving as it would be easy to spend two weeks exploring these Islands.