For Christmas leave, we went to Sicily!  Our first stop, after driving all the way to the toe of Italy for about 6 hours, a ferry to Sicily, and our super cute AirBnB in Giarre, was the lovely town of Taormina.  Taormina is a decorated, touristy town with lots of cute shops.  After exploring there, we drove up above Taormina to a town in the mountains, Castelmola, where we watched the sun set behind Mount Etna (a live volcano, with smoke and lava and everything)… from the ruins of a castle.  Let me repeat that:  We watched the sun go down behind a live volcano, with smoke and lava, from the ruins of a castle…. how cool is that?!?!