At some point over the Christmas holidays when I was searching for cheap bank holiday getaways, I found relatively inexpensive Ryanair flights to a place called Lamezia in Italy. I had never heard of Lamezia before, but when I googled it I found it was in Calabria; one of the few regions of Italy which we've never been to. I booked the flights, originally with the plan that we would spend a long weekend in Calabria itself. But when I started researching I realised that it would be possible to get from Lamezia to the northern tip of Sicily and then from northern Sicily, to the Aeolian Islands... Once I started reading up on the Aeolian Islands I was hooked and our bank holiday in Calabria started to morph into a bank holiday in Sicily.

What I hadn't realised at the point I booked the flights was that I would be spending the week leading up to the trip working away in the Isle of Man.

The Isle of Man was very scenic and the weather was exceptionally good for most of the week, but with my flight back to the UK scheduled for 17.15 on Thursday evening and my flight to Lamezia at 09.00 on Friday morning, I was really cutting it a bit fine. Thankfully, everything did go to plan with my homeward journey and I got back to Nuneaton around 20.30 last night. That just about gave me time to unpack my bag and repack it for Italy, though didn't leave a lot of surplus hours for sleep. We left home at 04.30 on Friday morning.

The journey down to Stansted was uneventful and our flight departed with only a slight delay. The sky was quite clear as we flew across Europe and at one point we had a beautiful view of the snow-covered Alps.

Lamezia is really very far south in Italy and so the flight took almost exactly three hours. We landed in Lamezia at 1pm local time and immediately saw that it was a tiny airport of the Ryanair shed variety.

We had a bit of a queue for passport control, though no awkward questions when we finally got to the front. The airport is a bit outside the town centre of Lamezia Terme itself, so in order to get to the main train station we had to catch a bus. Conveniently, it was sitting waiting outside the terminal at the point we stepped outside. Tickets only cost a couple of Euros though, unusually, it was only possible to pay in cash. Luckily we had some!

We arrived at the station with just under an hour to spare until our train, which gave us time to eat a couple of slices of pizza at a cafe outside the station. Then we had a journey of just over an hour on a regional train, taking us south to the town of Villa San Giovanni. There were a lot of tunnels on the journey, but in places it was very scenic as we travelled along the coast.

The reason for taking a train to Villa San Giovanni was that it is situated on the Strait of Messina, just across the water from Sicily.

When we got off the train we had to walk a short distance to the ticket office of the ferry company. Although we'd bought train tickets from Lamezia Terme to Milazzo, those didn't include the cost of the ferry. Luckily it was only an extra €2,50 each and a relatively quick journey of 15 minutes or so.

Before too long we were getting off the boat on Sicily and looking back across to mainland Italy.

The boat had taken us to Messina, from where we had another 30 minutes by train to the town of Milazzo where we are staying for the next few nights. Milazzo is one of those strange towns where the railway station is on the outskirts, so once we arrived we had to catch a bus for 5km or so into the town centre. The bus dropped us near the port, from where we had a walk of a further kilometre or so to our apartment.

The place we're staying is really comfy and has a balcony with a great sea view.

It was around 6pm by this point so we'd spent over 12 hours travelling to get here. Time to relax and enjoy the sunset  

After yesterday's early start we had a relaxed start to the morning in Milazzo today. After breakfast in the apartment, we set off for a stroll round the town. Our apartment is really close to the sea, which was a beautiful shade of blue this morning.

When we turned around here we could see up to the castle above the town. It looked higher than I felt like climbing today!

Instead we strolled across town, soon finding the main square - Piazza Roma.

On the far side of the square we came to a long seaside promenade.

The views here were gorgeous, with mountains in one direction...

...and the town in the other.

We were due to catch a ferry from the main port at 12.30. We were strolling up and down to kill some time before then when we heard a loud bang and noticed a small white cloud which had appeared in the sky.

We realised they must fire cannon from the castle at midday! In the video below you should be able to see the little white clouds appearing (and hear the bang a few seconds later).

At 12.15 we went to start queuing for our ferry, which was taking us to the island of Lipari. The journey took just over an hour. It was one of those boats where you have to sit inside, so we didn't get a lot of views until we arrived and began exploring the island.

Lipari is the largest of the Aeolian islands, located around 30km off the coast of Sicily.

It has a population of around 13,000 people, so it isn't a huge place.

It's very pretty though and we enjoyed wandering through the little streets of the main town.

Some of them were pretty narrow. Luckily there didn't seem to be a lot of traffic.

Eventually we came round in a circle, back towards the coast.

It was beautiful here, with a little church out in the sea and a castle on the hill behind.

There was a pretty church in the other direction too...

...and rows of colourful houses along by the harbour.

We walked along a little pier out to sea to get a better view.

I think it was seeing pictures of views like these that made me want to book a trip here  

The views out to sea were lovely too...

...and overall it seems greener in this part of Italy than I expected, although I guess that might be because it's so early in the year.

We were feeling hungry by this point, so found a restaurant on the seafront where we had enormous pizzas and wine

It was just a nice temperature to be able to sit outside and eat; about 24 degrees.

Afterwards we walked back through the narrow streets of the town to catch the ferry back to Milazzo.

Our first Aeolian island visit has definitely been a fun one. Tomorrow we're planning to visit two additional islands; fingers crossed they're as impressive as Lipari  

We were signed up for another boat excursion today but we didn't need to check in for it until 12.00, so we had another slow start to the morning in Milazzo. I was particularly excited about today's trip because it involved visiting not just one Aeolian island, but two: Panarea and Stromboli.

I'd booked the trip online months ago, so our first stop was to check in at the offices of the boat company to receive our paper tickets. We were then able to board the boat not long after 12.00 and given green wrist bands to wear for the rest of the day. The boat set off promptly at 12.30 and soon we were leaving the harbour of Milazzo behind us.

The first stage of our journey took around 90 minutes, as we sailed past the island of Lipari which we'd visited yesterday and onwards towards Panarea. After a while I could see what looked like a huge mountain looming on the horizon. 

That must be Stromboli!

We got some good views of the island, which is home to one of Italy's four active volcanoes, as we got closer to Panarea.

And before too long Panarea itself began to come into view.

Before pulling into the harbour outside the island's main town, the ferry took us to a rocky bay.

The photos aren't perfect because I was taking them through the window of the ferry, but there were some interesting rock formations here.

Once we'd had chance to admire those, the boat finally docked in Panarea's main harbour.

We had a two hour break here, which ought to give us time to explore a little bit and get some food.

From the harbour we had a good view back towards Stromboli and I realised that I could see smoke emerging from the top of the volcano  

Stromboli is a volcano that continually erupts at a low level and so it isn't unusual to be able to see smoke, but I was nevertheless very excited  

We set off to explore Panarea.

The town on the island is quite small and we soon found we were in danger of walking out of it.

We walked as far as a little church, partway up the hillside.

There was a terrace in front of the church with an amazing view down towards the sea.

And every so often we'd get another view of Stromboli too.

When we climbed back down the hill from the church we strolled along the town's little promenade.

I loved these pots filled with cactuses!

Then we got a table at one of a handful of the available restaurants. While I played it safe and ordered a lasagne, Tim was more adventurous and ordered an arancino, a deep-fried ball stuffed with rice.

For dessert, I went with tiramisu...

...while Tim was more adventurous again and ordered cassata.

Before long it was time to head back to the harbour to catch our boat.

The next part of our trip was an hour of sailing towards Stromboli.

I think the direct trip to Stromboli was actually only 30 minutes, but we took a diversion to sail past another very rocky island.

Again, the photos aren't perfect because they were taken through the window of the boat.

But we passed some really interesting rock formations and caves and the sea was an amazing shade of blue.

Eventually the boat pulled into Stromboli.

We had a bit over two hours on this island to explore.

It was immediately obvious that the island was volcanic from the dark black colour of the sand on the beach.

There seemed to be more flat paths to explore on Stromboli than there had been on Panarea, so we set off for a walk. We passed lots of amazing cactuses growing by the side of the road...

....and had occasional views up towards the volcano itself.

After a while we came to a second beach, covered in black sand.

It's so strange to see!

These signs were also a bit strange to see - warnings telling us what to do in the event of a volcanic eruption  

Luckily the volcano looked nice and peaceful as we headed back towards the island's main village.

We found a quiet cafe and sat down for a drink. I was quite impressed to find our order came with free snacks!

And when we ordered a second round later, we got even more!

We'd been told to get back to the harbour at 19.05 to re-board our boat.

It was going to be a late return back to Milazzo, but the most exciting part of the trip was coming up as we got to spend half an hour sailing around the island of Stromboli. Almost immediately after we set off we could see smoke emerging from the top of the volcano. 

We were sitting outside on the boat this time to make the most of the views.

The boat took a detour around a large rock out at sea.

One of the rocks was supposed to be shaped like a sea-horse, but I couldn't quite see it!

I was far more interested in looking at Stromboli!

As we began to circle around the island, we could see smoke emerging from the side of it...

...and we realised we could also see it descending diagonally down the side of the mountain.

Wow.

Having made it to the far side of the island, the boat stopped for a while so we could wait and see whether there would be another eruption.

We could certainly see lots of dark smoke.

But every so often we got a tantalising glimpse of lava too!

When eruptions happened they were sudden and without warning. But we managed to capture one or two on camera

The most dramatic eruption came right at the end - wow!!!

We weren't going to top that one! The boat turned around shortly afterwards and began the long journey back towards Milazzo. It was about 10pm by the time we finally arrived so it really was a long day. But definitely worth it