On Tuesday May 17th we arrived back at Diana's mid afternoon. It's still hard for us as Americans to get used to how compact everything is in Europe. I had a sunrise shoot in Agrigento, a morning shoot in Enna and Piazza Armerina, stopped six times for pictures of Mt. Etna, and had a glass of wine in my hand at Diana's by 3 PM. I did, of course, start all this at 4:30 AM. But still, whew! The entire circuit of the island took nine days. We had a great time debriefing Diana and catching up with her and Giovanni. They had spent most of the time we were gone getting the boat ship shape for the summer so it's a good thing we left town. We might have found ourselves pressed into the service of the British Navy (Sicilian Branch).  

Dinner was in Brucoli with Joanne and Larry. I'm posting their picture again so I can give them a proper introduction. I did finally figure out my captioning problem with the blog, as you can see by hovering over their image. But I'm not going back and adding captions to all the pictures. Not today anyway. 

Joanne & Larry Hutchisson with Us

We had scheduled all of Wednesday May 18th to catch our breath and pack. And get started on this blog. I also took the opportunity to get a few more shots. Okay, a few hundred more shots. The pictures on this post will be mostly from the immediate vicinity of Diana's. The majority are from her garden or the rocky beach in front of her house and Mt Etna manages to get into several of them. In the fourteen days we spent there the mountain offered several decent photo opportunities. 

The first two below are interesting because they show what an eruption of Mt Etna looked like while we were there. The second image with the helicopter was taken exactly forty minutes after the first one.

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Anybody looking for a nice used castle? "Needs work. Great view!"

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Below are two images that were not taken near Brucoli. The town is Castiglione. This is one of the towns where we were denied access due to the big bike race. I got these on an unauthorized stop and I think I actually got better shots from this spot than I would have gotten from the town itself. 

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I had a decent little shoot down on the rocks the morning of May 19th, the day we left. In fact I was having so much fun I tried throwing a tantrum so I wouldn't have to leave but Diana wouldn't defend me. She and Jeanne Marie dragged me off the beach together.

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All I need in the images below is a sailboat. Diana, don't you and Giovanni want a sailboat? They're really cool and don't use nearly as much diesel fuel.

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Slide show next with more pictures.