Today our stop was at Messina on the island of Sicily. The ship does not actually stop here for Messina itself, but rather for the surrounding areas. We chose to visit a smaller mountain town called Taormina and then drive up to Mt. Etna. As usual we went and got our tourist stickers and boarded the bus for the ride to Taormina which took about 45 minutes. During this time the guide explained several interesting facts about life in Sicily. The most memorable of these is that people only have active running water for an hour a day between 6 and 7 am. They use this time to fill up reservoirs on the top of their houses/apartments. Sicily has always had problems with fresh water (since it is an island).
Taormina is actually the town where the Godfather was filmed. It is a nice little Italian town. After arriving there we went to the Greek / Roman Theater. The Greeks built this beautiful theater in the 700 B.C which could seat around 3500 people. The theater itself was completely open backed by 24 columns and the gorgeous Sicilian landscape behind it. When the Romans invaded this area they remodeled the theater into basically a Coliseum. They ripped out some of the seating to allow for the gladiator fights and walled in the whole theater with bricks. You can see from the picture where the brick walls have crumbled and you can get a hint of what the theatre was like when Greece occupied Sicily.
After this we had about an hour to wander the town and do some shopping. We bought a porcelain cat which was a fairly typical souvenir from Sicily. The picture at the right is actually the symbol of Sicily. Another local item is embroidered cloth made by the local nuns. Other than that it was interesting to walk through the sections of this town where no cars were allowed.
After our shopping we left for Mt. Etna which is actually an active volcano. On the way there however we stopped for lunch at Zaffereto. The lunch was just ok, but as always in Italy there was plenty of wine. We then continued on to Mt. Etna. The last time it blew was 2000 - 2001 and lava from that eruption cut a swatch 1500 feet wide and 36 feet high. The top of Mt. Etna is at about 2900 meters, however we only went up to the 2000 meter point. After arriving we had a chance to walk around for a bit. There are 2 secondary craters where we stopped (non-active) that we could walk around in. The active craters of Mt. Etna have been burbling for the last month. One interesting thing is that during the winter Mt. Etna is actually a ski resort...I guess Italians like to ski on active volcanoes. Mt. Etna is also responsible for supplying much of the fresh water for Sicily. After walking around there we boarded the bus for the hour and a half ride back to the ship.
On our way out of port from Sicily we drove around another active volcano which is basically another entire island to itself, Stromboli. This volcano is actually much more active than Etna and frequently spews lava from the top. We were lucky to be able to see it shooting off some small bits of lava as we drove by that evening. What is even more amazing is that there are about 200 people that live at the bottom of the volcano (Lael - I question their sanity...).
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Taormina
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To Mt. Etna
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Mt. Etna
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Mt. Stromboli
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