pringles and CNN

This is a picture from one of the train rides yesterday. Waking up at 6 am = no makeup - glorious. There is also a picture of me with the view from our hotel (also, a video of the view from yesterday evening). Today we slept in til 8:30 and were planning (apprehensively, to say the least) on renting a scooter and exploring the island on the "panoramic view" road around the coast of Lipari. We walked down to the main street to the scooter rental place, where, to our dismay, NO ONE spoke English. suprised? no... but when we found one place that spoke "un poco" (and by un poco, they mean maybe.... 5 words) of English, he asked if we knew how to drive a scooter. Us? No... so then he said, "Oooh, NO. Dangerous!" sooooo now what? we stood around for a little while trying to figure out what to do. We asked numerous travel agencies/tour companies about seeing Stromboli by means other than boat, and NOPE, no one spoke English well enough to understand, AND there weren't any simple night excursions. By some chance of luck we went into one travel agency and they spoke enough english to organize a taxi driver to take us on a tour of Lipari (basically the same as we wanted to do on the scooters, but a LOT safer) and it was BEAUTIFUL. I can't get over how the blue the sea is. Our tour guide Daniele spoke the best English of anyone here and explained interesting things about Lipari to us. An old volcanic eruption left tons of pumice and obsidian all over the island, and until September three years ago, that was the main source for jobs here. Now, however, the "green people" have stopped the excavation of the pumice because of its detremental effects on the island. We got some pumice and some obsidian from the beach, though, and concluded our tour back in main Lipari. We grabbed some food from "mangia e fui" (recommended by Daniele) and sat at a cafe to get coca-cola light and a cappuccino. We got some nutella from the supermarket and bought some pringles, bobby pins, water, etc... and are back at the hotel to relax a bit before going to the archaeological museum this afternoon. We found CNN on tv! In ENGLISH!!! The first english tv i've seen since here... crazy! tomorrow we are headed back to Ortigia and school starts again on Monday. We still haven't planned our next weekend, but hopefully we'll find something exciting to do! I think I may head down to lay by the pool for a bit before the museum.