Infinitesimal Travel

And, of course, Mt.Etna

When you visit Sicily, you must see Mt. Etna. It is the biggest volcano in Europe. Can you imagine returning home and when everyone asks, “How was Mt. Etna?” you say, “Well, we didn’t go there.”

This is one of the issues of “slow travel” or in our case “infinitesimal travel.” We have limited ourselves to southeastern Sicily. We are seeing everything there is to see within a 2 hour radius of Siracusa.

This means we will not see The Sistine Chapel, The Roman Coliseum, Florence, Milan and Tuscany. We will see the Rome airport on the way to Istanbul where we will change planes for Cape Town.

We see all kinds of tourists.

Formal hiker

There are the cruise ship groups following the leader with the flag, there are the student groups on a field trip talking among themselves, there are the three German guys, the two French couples and the American couple on their honeymoon. And there is this guy at Mount Etna who prefers formal dress when hiking between business appointments.

Many come to Siricusa for the day, some for the week and some for two weeks. We have yet to meet a visitor here for a month let alone three.

The great thing about infinitesimal travel is we have down days when we just read books, eat lunch, take a walk, eat dinner and go to bed.  Then we get up and go somewhere.

We are traveling this way for two reasons. One, it is much more cost effective. We have the rent from our house to offset costs.  And two,  the airfare from country to country  is much cheaper than if we did round trips to each country. And, oh yes, this is the most intense and relaxing way to travel.

Close to the crater

So, yes we did see Mount Etna, hiked the rim of the crater and were amazed by the power. We met a Canadian couple on the tram down the mountain who were here for a week. She had Italian ancestors who came from Sicily, a common quest here, and spoke fluent Italian. Speaking the language of the country you are visiting does enrich the experience though vigorous pantomime and has gotten us a long way.

Now I am going out on the patio to read, The Leopard, then we’ll have lunch, then we’ll take a nap. There’s always domani.