Day 23 - Sicily, Italy

Today we are in Messina, Sicily. We’ve never been to this part of Italy.

Our picture of the day from Gambino Vini, which is described below.

The port of Messina is in the shape of a seagull. Messina was built in the 8th century BC. In 1908 the town was destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami. Messina sits on tectonic plates and there is an active volcano nearby. We encountered tectonic plates in Iceland as well.

We passed the court building and it had a statue of Minerva - the goddess of justice and wisdom.

Sicily is one of the five Italian regions with autonomy, meaning they have their own parliament, flag (half red half yellow with the head of Medusa in the middle with three legs around the head). The three legs represent the three sides/corners of the island of Sicily. The island is surrounded by three seas: the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Ionian Sea.

Our excursion first took us to Taormina (Tower Mina). Wiki: Taormina is a hilltop town on the east coast of Sicily. It sits near Mount Etna, an active volcano with trails leading to the summit. The town is known for the Teatro Antico di Taormina, an ancient Greco-­Roman theater still used today. Near the theater, cliffs drop to the sea forming coves with sandy beaches. A narrow stretch of sand connects to Isola Bella, a tiny island and nature reserve.

Actually walking this cool mountaintop town was fun. There were a lot of decorated staircases between buildings. So many shops and restaurants. It’s Taormina Film Festival week, but sadly we did not see any movie stars. The Greek theatre was dressed up for the film festival so it was hard to get a good feel for its origins, since it had plastic seats. We did find our friends, who are on a different tour. Of course I found a church and lit a candle!

Martha got the story of the multitude of the ornamental faces: Husband and wife have a fight. In the middle of the night, wife takes husband’s knife and chops off his head. Then she thinks ’hmm. I probably shouldn’t have done that because he was the breadwinner and now I have no social status and have to sit with the poor people and women at the top of the theater” (true seating hierarchy). Also she didn’t abide by the adage of ‘don’t do something permanently stupid because you are temporarily mad.’ Anyway, she takes his head, scoops out the insides, plants basil, and puts it out on the terrace. The basil grows and grows and all of the neighbors are envious. So they proceed to chop off heads and grow plants. And that is why there are so many faces lining to the streets.

Volcano Etna, is the largest active volcano in Europe. There are four craters and two are currently active. The volcanic activity started 500,000 years ago, very close to the coast. It slowly moved southwest to its current location.

Gambino Vini: Hey Best Book Club Ever (BBCE): don’t expect this type of service at our house for the next meeting. This guy was carrying a 10 glasses of wine in one trip. That is above my pay grade. But look how they greeted our tour bus

Martha’s pic of the day: she says “The organized side of my brain wants, so desperately, to fix this. But the creative side loves the simplicity of the display. Welcome to my internal struggle.” First a picture of the vineyard, which is pronounced Vine Yard and sounds like barnyard!

I’m more likely to “strongly dislike” tours than like them, but these were two very fun stops. Could’ve skipped the wine making lesson - we’re more end users than creators, lol!

OMG tonight’s sunset. Seriously, the sun danced around Stromboli volcano, yep looked that up to figure out what I was looking at, and was freaking amazed.