ETNA above all

As our fleet of Fiat 500s bounced around the hairpin bends, bright as buttons, we were a rainbow motorcade rattling through the streets as if in a screenplay

The sun was suspended in the hot still air, as the tiny lizards dodged from one cool shadow to another. The midday campanile rang out from the tiny baroque church on the hillside, followed by the plangent strains of Ave Maria. Incongruous yet strangely moving, the music echoed around the steep valley, stopping everyone in their tracks, for there were many visitors to this little hamlet in the hills as it was Savoca – location for the seminal movie The Godfather.

We had driven in the suffocating heat of high noon to visit