SICILY’S BUBBLING HOT!
Thrilling volcanoes, ancient history and gelato galore
HAVE you ever looked down on lightning? Well, I now have. And doing it near the top of one of the Earth’s mightiest volcanoes — on one of the ancient world’s most action-packed islands — makes it easy to imagine what it was like when Zeus hurled those bolts down from Mount Olympus.
Nearly 10,000 ft up Mount Etna, we stand shivering on the black granules of volcanic stone and watch as a storm swirls below us.
We’ve climbed up here in vast moon buggies with tyres 5ft high, picking our way uphill from the ski station between vents in the mountainside from which steam pours. Should we tell the children, I wonder, that a mini- eruption nearly vaporised a BBC camera crew here just a few months earlier?
We have flown to Catania to explore the ancient sites on Sicily’s east coast. The question is: can we drag our children Mike, 14, and Alice, ten, around the amphitheatres and temples without them wanting to sacrifice us to the gods of boredom?
We start at the south-eastern corner of the island, in Syracuse, once capital of Magna Grecia — Greater Greece — which made it a prime target for Roman invasions.
One civilisation after another knocked the preceding one out of the way, meaning there’s lots to explore, with the 10,000-seater ancient Greek theatre cheek by jowl with the Roman gladiatorial amphitheatre next to the vast Altar of Hieron II, nearly 656ft long so that 450 bulls could be slaughtered on it.
Unsurprisingly, this fires Mike’s imagination. He is also taken by an astonishingly slender cave more than 60ft high called the Ear of Dionysius, so- named because an ancient despot is said to have enjoyed listening to the echoes of his prisoners’ screams as they were tortured.
Naturally, Mike and Alice stomp straight inside and howl at the tops of their voices, listening to the ringing echoes with some satisfaction.
Barely a mile long, at the heart of the ancient city is the island of Ortigia, with its mixture of narrow streets, some chic and expensive, some whiffy and a touch foreboding, which all seem to funnel you towards the central square. This opens out to display the magnificent white cathedral which, naturally, also houses the ancient Greek Temple of Athena, as well as Islamic inscriptions.
We stay at the Grand Hotel Minareto, a smart joint at the very end of the coast road across the bay, with a private beach and glorious views of the city.
It’s in the water here that I tread on a sea urchin and then spend an hour flat on my face while Mrs Daniels chisels out a dozen spines which have snapped off under my skin.
Two hours or so north up the coast motorway is Taormina, whose hilltop amphitheatre has seduced writers and artists for centuries. We lodge at the Atlantis Bay, Bay a dramatic hotel clinging to a cliff-face, with its own beach and swimming in the bay. The hotel ( not cheap) is a hop and a skip from the cable car running up to the town of Taormina proper, which is full of people, restaurants, ancient archways and glorious gelaterias. The drive of an hour or so from here to the higher slopes of Etna is unforgettable, like clambering into an Elon Musk rocket and disembarking on Mars. Etna is not the only volcano in Sicily, though to see the others we have to take to the water to get to Lipari, one of the Aeolian islands — an hour or so by hydrofoil off the north north-east east coast coast. Our hotel, the Mea Lipari is uphill from the port, and we sit outside on warm evenings, gazing across to the floodlit castle and feasting on Sicilian specialities of squid, octopus, mussels, shrimp and scampi. There are several charming little beaches on Lipari, but we are here to see a volcano — and that, to landlubber Mike’s dismay, means a day-trip on a cruiser a mile or two across the island water of Vulcano to the neighbouring (the clue’s in the The name). ¤100 bill (£88) for the four of us is well worth it. We hike 1,500ft up to Vulcano’s foreboding crater, then yomp back down and ease our aching limbs in a stinky natural volcanic sulphur pool. After rubbing on the gloopy, gritty mud, Alice says her skin is as soft as a lamb’s, while my wife struggles with stinging eyes for half an hour. At the next- door beach, we wade out a few metres and, waist- deep in the sea, stand while warm jets of water bubble up from volcanic fissures in the sea bed. It’s as though the whole island is alive beneath our feet — and not a sea urchin in sight.