As soon as the morning shoot in Agrigento was finished we hit the road eastbound, back to Diana and Giovanni's. It was only two hours to go straight there but we wanted to make a couple of side trips. Plus I knew we would have good views of Mt Etna on the drive and might want to stop for a picture. Ya think?

First was the hilltop town of Enna. We'd driven past it in 2012 and couldn't stop that time so we wanted to check it out. The other place was Piazza Armerina. We went to Enna first. It's a good size town with a large fortress and I would have liked to have done the tour but we didn't allocate that kind of time. Next trip.  _8508228

Off the north side of the hilltop we had great views of another town, Calascibetta, pictured below.

_8508232 This German couple was having fun with their selfies and I was having fun with them having fun.

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_8508258 Looking due east you get a pretty good view of Mt. Etna. 

_8508280-Pano-Edit I zoomed in here so you can see the business end of this beast. That's the best look of the active crater we got on the entire trip.

_8508280-Pano-Edit-2 We then headed down to Piazza Armerina. We visited here in 2012 and didn't have time to see everything we wanted to then so it deserved a little side trip. The big attraction of this place is the collection mosaics from a fourth century villa, Romana del Casale. This was the residence and court of a fairly high ranking official and this set of mosaics are the largest, and most varied collection from the Roman period, in existence. We saw them in 2012 and pictures are included in the slide show at the bottom. Our objective on this trip though was the cathedral. 

It is perched so beautifully on the high point of the town I just had to see the inside. And it is indeed impressive. After visiting a couple of dozen of these big beautiful churches in these little bitty towns we were getting a little cathedral fatigue. But we were very glad we stopped for this one.

Piazza Amerina town

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It was time to turn back east and head for home. Diana was waiting for us, with a glass of wine ready, and we would join Larry and Joanna (the other Americans) for dinner. Mt. Etna was off our left the rest of the way and we were able to stop for a few shots. Included in the slide show are a few images from 2012. That trip was in late October so you can see how the entire island reverts to earth tones. Not a wildflower in sight. But beautiful all the same.

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