A lovely sunny morning, 26 degrees, clear skies, light breeze and slight seas. This afternoon we reach land. As I said yesterday we start a busy stretch with Sicily today and then followed by Salerno, Civitavecchia, portoferraio Elba, Marseille, Barcelona and then a sea day. We sail into the harbour just before 3 pm and on our way into Sicily we pass by Mt Etna, unfortunately it has become very hazy and it is only a shape in the distance.
The harbour is quite protected and very pretty. We are docked right in the town. It is warm but not hot, about 29 degrees.
We wait until it is open gangway, no need for tickets to get off. We get off about 3.45. We have a plan of attack. We go straight to the Cathedral Duomo of Messina. It was built during Norman times and was consecrated in 1197. It was built on over the centuries but in 1783 it was considerably damaged by an earthquake. In 1908 an earthquake levelled the city of Messina killing 60000 inhabitants and practically destroyed the cathedral. Reconstruction work commenced and in 1929 it was consecrated as Santa Maria Assunta cathedral. In 1943 the cathedral was hit with incendiary bombs and the resultant fires burned for two days destroying much of the precious artworks. In 1947 the cathedral was reopened for worship.
Attached to the cathedral is an astronomical clock which was added following the 1908 earthquake. This was to replace an ancient astronomical clock of the medieval bell tower that was destroyed in previous eras. It was constructed in 1903.
After the cathedral we went on a mission to the supermarket. We had worked out where it was and we went straight there. It was getting hot and I was perspiring quite a bit. We got there ok with no problems. Bought two bottles of white wine, a rose, some potato chips and chuppa chups! We then headed back to the ship as there were a couple of cold beers calling out to us. We expected to pay corkage when we got back on board but we were just waved through! Then the beers went down well as we sat on our balcony admiring Italy.
It was so lovely that we decided to have room service. We ordered a hamburger each (with fries) and Ann ordered a NY traditional cheesecake and I ordered a key lime pie. Then of course we had to accompany that with a bottle of wine. It was a lovely evening meal on our balcony enjoying the ambience.
Glad you enjoyed Sicily , looks really nice, bet you are looking forward to all the off boat excursions coming up -k
ReplyDelete