Discovery Mount Etna excursion

I went on this excursion from Messina and in my opinion it is not value for money. There is a 2 hour drive each way and luckily the guide was very knowledgeable, she needed to be to talk for 2 hours!.

The problem is you only see the summit of Etna from the motorway service area where we stopped for a toilet break. Even there the view was partially blocked by electricity cables. The final destination did have small craters, lava flows etc etc but there is no view of the top of Etna :mad: This is blocked by a hill which you can walk up (hard) or get a chair lift. As we were only there for a hour there was no time to do this. It was very busy with lots of coaches and 2 restaurants with long queues for the toilets etc. I checked the excursion guide on the ship and it is cleverly worded so nowhere does it say you will get good or bad views of Etna.

Not recommended, save your money.

Interesting dave and worth bearing in mind. We did a trip to Taormina from Messina and were thrilled to get a really good view of Etna - from a distance of course. We were very lucky with the visibility - clouds appeared later around the top which masked it but from what you say we definitely chose the right trip - at least for us.

I guess now the story can be told. I had posted a couple of reviews on Trip Advisor just after our return but not the whole story. Seeing as this thread is about something we did, I feel that I can tell about our experiences.

This goes back a few years to a travel show at the Javits Center in NYC where we met a tour operator who had a table and was advertising their services. Ultimately, instead of booking excursions through the cruise line, we booked all our tours through them, including night time and next day tours of Rome pre-cruise. This saved us a fortune as what we paid was a fraction of what the RCI would have charged. The tour company also arranged our transfers from the airport to the condo we booked in Rome, then from the condo to the dock, and finally from the dock to the airport.

One of the tours we arranged was a trip from Messina to Etna, then to Taormina and a return to the dock. The six of us were picked up by a tour guide with a full size van at the dock in Messina and drove down the coast first to Etna. We did not go near the summit, there was a reason I don't remember. But we did have plenty of time to walk around a crater and attempt to buy an espresso at the road-side tourist trap before leaving for Taormina. In Taormina, the driver left us to our own devices at which time we had lunch and gelato and a walk around the town square before returning to the ship. At no time did we feel rushed nor did we feel that we were going to miss our departure.

I highly recommend arranging your own tours.

I went on this excursion from Messina and in my opinion it is not value for money. There is a 2 hour drive each way and luckily the guide was very knowledgeable, she needed to be to talk for 2 hours!.

 

The problem is you only see the summit of Etna from the motorway service area where we stopped for a toilet break. Even there the view was partially blocked by electricity cables. The final destination did have small craters, lava flows etc etc but there is no view of the top of Etna :mad: This is blocked by a hill which you can walk up (hard) or get a chair lift. As we were only there for a hour there was no time to do this. It was very busy with lots of coaches and 2 restaurants with long queues for the toilets etc. I checked the excursion guide on the ship and it is cleverly worded so nowhere does it say you will get good or bad views of Etna.

 

Not recommended, save your money.

Totally agree. We did this trip a few years ago. A total waste of time and money.

We visited Messina last summer for the third time. This time with Thomson.

If you return and you already did places like Taormina, Messina , Etna, if your cruiseline offers what some refer to as "Godfather Villages Tour" we can recommend that. We thoroughly enjoyed that Thomson shorex despite not being overly interested in filming locations from the Godfather films.

We went for the scenery which did not disappoint. We visited the villages of Savoca and Forza D'Agro both of which are also attractive to stroll around.