Where Five Of Us Have A Pleasant Drive Around Messina, Sicily And A Fabulous Lunch. One Of Us Hoped To Hike Up Mt Etna, But Didn’t
And I Realize I’ve Forgotten To Mention The First Thing To Go Wrong
It’s always a little unnerving when there’s an envelope waiting for you when you get back from your days activities. The others had spotted theirs first before dinner a couple of days ago. We didn’t see ours until we went back to the room for the evening.
As I type this on May 23, I don’t remember which day that was. But, one of the reasons I’m in our room catching up on blogs is because of the contents of the letter.
Back on the first way we arrived, we had noticed that none of us that had booked the Norwegian “accessible” excursion to Florence including a visit to the Uffizi to see the David. We all had to make special trips to the excursion desk (open only between 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. (i.e. dinnertime)) to get the tickets printed. Susie had an especially difficult time getting the ticket for an excursion she had paid for.
SOOOOOO – the mysterious envelope waiting for us just a couple of days after all that effort? Contained a letter informing us that our Florence excursion was *canceled*.
We scrambled for several days to find an equivalent replacement. I found one that might work via Viator, and we submitted the request to purchase. However, since it was only 2 days off, it was no surprise that there were no drivers available.
We also looked at “things to do in Livorno”, the port where the ship will be docked. Any search brought up “Go To Florence”.
None of the other NCL excursions were viable. They all involved way too much walking and/or taking a chance on finding cabs or ubers exactly when we need them. Plus, the available tickets for the Ufrizi were either way too early in the morning or way too late in the afternoon.
Susie, Janet, and I have been to Florence several times before, but this was supposed to be Stefania’s first visit. Ugh.
Back to the story of Messina.
We obtained our bus stickers and headed to the bus, where, to my surprise, the seat reservation sign was waiting for me on the front seat! Except it had “Mt Etna” printed, then crossed out and “Messina” written in by hand. I guess they had printed it off for Andy’s excursion by mistake.
We started the drive along the beautiful coastline towards the strait of Messina, where we had a photo op
Our tour guide, Julia, told us the strait’s mythological creation story of Scylla and Charybdis, the origin of the phrase “between a rock and a hard place”. It’s only 2 miles from Messina to the mainland, but the tidal currents are very strong, making it difficult to build a bridge. There’s been talk of a bridge for literally millennia. Julia said the current Italian government is once again working to build a bridge across the strait.
She talked about the Sicilian flag, that has a Medusa head at the crux of 3 barefoot, running legs:
Medusa is protecting the island by threatening to turn enemies to stone. This flag is similar to the Isle of Man flag that we saw last summer.
An earthquake in the early 1900s destroyed the entire city. All of the buildings except two have been built since then. One of the big changes the city planners implemented was wide streets (by European standards, anyway). There are none of the tiny, cramped streets typical of many European cities.
The new city was built on top of the rubble of the old one. This is a photo of a church that was one of the two structures to survive. It’s several feet lower than street level – at the original level of the old city.
We next visited the Duomo. First we visited the treasure – a two room museum.
This is the main nave.
It was hard to hear her inside the church – we were not provided with headsets. I missed a lot of what she said.
Our tour was timed to make sure we were outside precisely at noon to watch the mechanical clock do it’s thing. I did record all 12 minutes of its performance. I haven’t figured out yet how to post it (maybe YouTube when I get home).
The lion on the top tier lifts his head and roars, then the rooster on the second tier crows, lastly the figures under the rooster circle around to a familiar tune I can’t remember or name at the moment. I think the figures on the lower levels dance on the quarter hour.
It was truly marvelous. And at least it wasn’t wrapped in scaffolding like the clock in Prague when we were there last.
The tour ended in there. We walked a short distance to a cafe to have lunch. Julia mentioned we should have 3 foods while in Messina: pasta with clams/mussels, cannoli, and Sicilian ice cream (I think she called it gluta?).
The cafe didn’t have an English version of their menu, so we sorta made do with google translate. The server provided us a QR code to the online menu that we could switch to English (after we figured out how to do that). I didn’t find the English translations much help.
Susie and Stefania had the pasta with mussels and clams that they said was fantastic. Janet had a pasta with a pistachio sauce that was also fabulous. I had something called braciolotto that seemed to be some kind of a hamburger like thing? The server said the meat was beef. There were serval small patties on a giant bun. I think the others had a better lunch.
I did have a cannoli. It was amazing, sorta making up for the sandwich. It was HUGE.
As we started walking back, we happened to see Andy on his afternoon run.
We were so close to the ship – we could see it hovering over the other buildings in the port, but we couldn’t seem to get there from here. I think it took us about 10 minutes, but it seemed a lot longer.
At dinner, Andy told us his Mt Etna excursion was very disappointing. Two hours of driving and only one hour on the mountain, with no hiking or walks. Several people came expecting to hike up the mountain. Apparently that would have taken another hour. Considering the entire excursion was 5 hours (most of that driving) and they arrived back hours and hours before all-aboard time, it seemed silly that the excursion couldn’t have been extended to allow for people to hike.
At this point, we had kinda resigned ourselves to a “day at sea while in port” instead of any Florence adventure. This kinda turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Tomorrow: Naples (Pompeii and Amalfi)
Maryland Meshugas 