We drove out to a beautiful Roman hunting lodge in the middle of the island which is full of spectacular mosiacs...more about that in another post...
On the way home, the sky got very dark, and we heard what we thought was rain starting to hit the car...BUT the windshield wasn't wet ! Then we thought it was sleet or hail...BUT the windshield wasn't wet ! We stopped at the local market to pick up dinner and, to our amazement, the car and the road were covered in a fine, black grit...turns out Etna erupted in the early morning hours today, and this was the ash falling to earth...we had been ETNA-ed !! We've never seen anything like it...the small grains of ash were in our hair, our clothes, on the streets...yet no one seemed excited...is this what happened in Pompei with Vesuvius ?? You just can't make this s*** up !!
Hugs, Chris and her "let's not get buried in a lava flow" husband
Amazing! I got to feel an earthquake and viewed a smoking volcano (Mt. Saint Helen) from afar, but never experienced falling volcanic ash. I was going to tell you that you're probably not missing the cold weather here (around 37F today in DC; colder in Buffalo), but I'm not sure that volcanic ash is better.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the price of gasoline there, by the way? It's been rising sharply here -- now around $3.75 a gallon (figure a buck per liter).
--Bob
Hi Bob,
DeleteJoe here.... The volcanic ash thing was amazing to experience, but wouldn't want to go through it on a regular basis. It leaves a fine, black, powdery dust on everything, it was even inside my jacket pockets! When we got back to the villa, I swept the stairs and some of the terraces, but I guess in general you just wait until the next rain to wash it away. I'm kind of bummed that we slept through the actual eruption, although there are quite a few videos of it on youtube, just search for Mt. Etna postings the last couple of days. The videos are quite dramatic.
As for gas prices, they are around $1.75 per liter, and I haven't noticed any increase lately, but have not been paying much attention. We are driving a Ford Fiesta, and I quite like it. It is gas powered, whereas most cars here are diesel. Other than a couple of the Alfas we've rented, I like it better than any other rental cars we've had. My only complaint is that it needs a 6th gear for Autostrada driving. Seeing a lot more GPL pumps at gas stations - Italian for LPG, or propane. More and more cars are powered by it.
Joe here again... just realized I made a mistake reporting the gas price here in Italy. Gas is around 1.75 Euros, not dollars, so the cost in dollars is about $2.45 per liter. So, at 3.78 liters per gallon, that's about $9.25 per gallon!
DeleteI guess I should stop whining about the cost of gas!
ReplyDeleteI don't think that I mentioned to you that I got to drive an electric Ford Focus in September... LOTS of off-the-line grunt and eerily quiet.
--Bob