Day 33: Messina, Sicily
As we pulled into the Sicilian port of Messina, the Virgin Mary greeted us. Sicily is a very religious country (Catholic), still to this day. We basically had the same schedule today as we did yesterday: 8:30 meet time for a 9:00 excursion that had us back at the ship about 1:30. That gave us about 4 hours of free time in Messina for the afternoon.
Our excursion took us to the super cute town of Taormina. It has a medieval feel to it with its walls that surround the town, the narrow cobbled streets, the window flowers, and the balconies. There are tons of shops and restaurants at which to spend your money. One of the first things you see upon entering the town is the large church. Today is was set up for a wedding which was really interesting. Much of Taormina was built by the Arabs (not sure on the specifics here), so I guess there is a story about an Arab man and a Sicilian woman who fell in love. Anyway, that is what the ceramic heads out front of the church represent and it is typical to have those at a Sicilian wedding.
We walked around for a couple of hours, enjoying the beauty of the town and getting in some shopping. Lynda was on the lookout for another carry-on bag for all of the stuff she’s been buying, and found a really cute one for only 30 euro. Besides an ornament, I also bought some Italian spices and sun-dried tomatoes, and a bracelet made from lava rocks. We could see Mount Etna from Taormina, or most of it anyway. The very top was in the clouds which was unfortunate as I would have like to see the steam coming from out of the volcano. Etna is currently an active volcano and has been for about a year and a half. I guess there are even lava flows up near the top.
The other thing we could see from Taormina was Italy. The mainland part. The Straight of Messina runs between Sicily and the mainland, and only 3km separates the two, so it was quite close.
Poor Lauren has been feeling under the weather for a few days, and about halfway through the excursion, she went back to the bus to rest. It’s hard to keep up the pace of our schedule when you’re feeling awful, even when you really want to keep going. My cold lasted almost two weeks, and I was soooo over it by the time I started to feel better. I hope she gets back to her old self soon.
So the one thing we’ve really been looking forward to in Sicily is pizza. In fact, Lynda and I researched the best place to get pizza in Messina and that was high on our list of things to do today. It was starting to sprinkle on us and the temperature was dropping, so we went back to our rooms to change clothes and grab umbrellas before heading out on foot. Unfortunately, Lauren was still not feeling well, so even though she’d been looking forward to pizza for weeks, she opted out.
The pizzeria we found is about a 10 minute walk from the port. Way back when we were still planning the trip, I had printed up a street map with the restaurant marked on it, so we knew where to go. As we were walking, we began to notice that a lot of the shops and restaurants we passed were closed. It was Saturday at 2:30 in the afternoon. How could anything be closed? This had us worried about The Best Pizza in Messina. Sure enough, when we finally got there, it was closed. Noooo! We didn’t have a backup, so checking Yelp we found another pizzeria that had 5 stars. We called to make sure, and yes, they were open until 3:30. So we started walking back in the direction of the ship. As it turns out, the new restaurant Fratelli la Bufala was only a few block from where our ship was docked. Oh well.
The pizza was delicious. They don’t put a ton of cheese and tomato sauce on their pizzas here, but the crust is so good and I love the sprigs of fresh basil on top. We also shared a Caesar salad and a bottle of local red Sicilian wine. It was a great lunch.
I’d been seeing amazing looking cannoli all day, but kept telling myself I’d have one for dessert after the pizza. Unfortunately, our restaurant didn’t have any. So now we were on the hunt for a pastry shop that was open and wasn’t sold out of their cannoli. We finally found one, and bought their last two. Oh my God, it was so good. I can’t even tell you.
By this time we needed to start meandering back to the ship, which we did taking some photos along the way. Messina has been rocked by earthquakes throughout its history, and the last big one was around the turn of the 20th century which killed about 84,000 people. It pretty much leveled the city, which was just rebuilt over the top of the old ruins. There is one church that survived, and it actually sits 3 meters below the new street level.
At the port, we were able to get in a few minutes of free Wi-Fi before getting back on the ship at exactly the all-aboard time of 5:30.
We lucked out in that it barely sprinkled on us today. In fact, since Singapore, we haven’t even had the threat of rain. I hope the weather holds out and tomorrow will be a little warmer with no rain. Fingers crossed.
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