Let's see....how can we make this blog post the shortest one ever? Hmm..well, we docked in Messina, Sicily at 8 am and we left at 2 pm. That's only 6 hours in port, so of course, it would have to be the shortest post out of the whole series of cruise posts.
It was Easter Monday.
For the longest time, I was hoping that maybe somehow we'd find an awesome tour for us all to go up to see Mount Etna, the active volcano on this Italian island. The tours were expensive, but most of all, none of them promised to take you all the way to the top, but merely to the place where you could get on a train or something and pay 30 euros extra for that. And there was no guarantee that the weather would be good enough to see the volcano anyway.
I am so glad we did not sign up for any tour as the weather was very rainy and gloomy. The problem was also that we couldn't even see Mt. Etna from a distance, which was quite disappointing, especially to Alex. We also opted against going to Taormina which is apparently a beautiful little town nearby, but it takes a train ride and a bus ride of an hour and a half to get there...it would be cutting it way to close to our boat leaving time.
Instead, we had a hearty breakfast, prepared our umbrella...oh wait...we had lost the umbrella in one of the security check machines, we think...or somewhere else on the boat...but it was never turned in at Lost And Found. ANYWAY.
We put our rain gear on and headed into Messina which was a few meters away from the boat. That day we got to hang out with the Grovers! First, we took a thirty minute tourist train ride around town. It had a good amount of commentary and took us around without having to get wet in the rain. Everything seemed so empty, even a central piazza at this time.
The train took us to one of the high points in the city to get a good look at our surroundings and the rain clouds.
And a traditional selfie finally with our cruise ship in the background.
Kids were happy to have another sort of relaxing day.
The whole kid group.
After we got off the train, we literally wondered around town in search of gelato and cannoli. That's all we wanted and I couldn't believe how difficult it was to find a shop that was open! Finally, we found a cannoli place and bought a couple, but they didn't turn out as yummy as the ones in Cinque Terre (still very good). By then, the rain was pouring buckets. We kept walking and walking, finally coming across a few open shops on a central street. The kids got gelato and all was well.
Now we just had to make it back to the Old Town piazza to see this famous clock do a little performance for us. We made it just in time, together with a hundred of other tourists. We all were standing in the rain, listening to the crazy golden lion roar and watching the figurines move. It was cool and cheesy.
And guess what? That was it! We walked back to the boat while looking for a place to buy an Sicilian umbrella (didn't find any although found many people trying to sell us some that were cheaply made in China probably).
I think the kids went swimming again, and later that afternoon, the whole group of friends met up at the karaoke place where some of us had a great time showing off our hidden singing talents.
Dinner that night was Italian themed, so everyone was supposed to dress up in red, green and white...but we just didn't have many clothes in those colors, so this was the best we could do.
By the way, our seats for dining were simply amazing-right next to the window with a beautiful view of the ocean!
This was the evening when they served us THE BEST cannoli ever. Hands down. I wish I could have just canned mine and eat them now because back then I was so stuffed and could only eat one. Oh, they were so good.
Okay, did I manage to write the shortest post ever? Or maybe our Crete one was shorter? Oh well. Messina would have been better if we had better weather, but it's still cool to say we've been to Sicily (Alex and Katya would immediately start singing "Sicily, Sicily" song by The Wiggles).
Ciao,
Lyana.
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