18. Home

Saturday & Sunday, Oct 26th & 27th.  Today we headed home.  We have an early flight out of Catania so we had to have our bags packed and set out for the bellman by 3:45 AM.  They had a continental breakfast set out for us and then we were on the van headed to Catania airport by 4:40 AM.

Remember when I pointed out that there was smoke and steam coming out of one of the craters on Mt. Etna?  Well, Mt. Etna put on a farewell show for us by erupting.  Here is a photo that my brother-in-law Neal was able to take.  Looks like a blowtorch aimed at the sky.

And here are a couple of images I was able to download showing the eruption.

Luckily the winds blew all of the ash and smoke away from Catania so we had no problems departing on schedule.  Arrived in Rome on schedule only to find that our flight to Chicago was going to be about two hours late.  That meant we would probably miss our connecting flight from Chicago to Tampa and that's
exactly what happened.  American Airlines was on the ball and already had us booked on a flight first thing Sunday morning, had a hotel reservation set up for us, prepaid, and vouchers for dinner and breakfast. Having been up for over 24 hours we grabbed an early dinner and  called it an early night.  Sunday everything ran on schedule and we were home in the early afternoon.  It was a great trip and we would recommend it to anyone but it sure was nice to get home and sleep in our own bed.

I hope you have enjoyed this blog.  They are fun to do and this is now the third one I have done.