Day 3- Friday 29 June

Today's plans of visiting a beach were somewhat thwarted by further issues with getting the house running, namely the fact that handypeople are about 50% likely to show up when they say they will, and half the time they do show up they come at a different time than planned (I guess it's just their way). Notable things about today: A cute kitten followed Bill and I around when we were watering the plants this evening (there are a good number of stray cats and dogs around, but more I'm told are in the bigger urban areas like Catania) and I took a walk to a lava field up the road a ways, voila, here you can see it looks like it's raining on Mount Etna, the local active volcano, it's had a lot of clouds around it lately which is unusual, but there aren't clouds anywhere else, as you can see in following pictures:

 We live on a hill, part of the incline to the volcano, here you can see Nicolosi and beyond it other neighbourhoods/towns (still not sure which one we live in (or if there's even a difference)) (it hasn't really been clear yet, but if it were you'd be able to make out the thinnest strip of sea in the distance):

How cute are these little gate-door-things? This is on our street just up the hill:

I'm not sure how long it's been there, but I think our neighbourhood (forgive the British spelling, my computer has never gotten over visiting France) is comparatively new because prior to technology being able to divert lava away from civilization, I think the area we live in was periodically destroyed. I'll confirm tomorrow, though ....