Day 5 - Sicily

Today the shipped docked in Sicily at the town of Messina. We didn't have any excursions planned for today so we went off on our own. Unlike other stops where we'd arrive sometime in the early morning... this time we rolled in around noon which allowed us time to relax in the morning. After eating lunch on the ship we headed out into Messina to hunt down Italy's version of the Metra. We walked for about 10 minutes and soon stumbled on the dumpy station and trains. After using hand signals to communicate what we wanted we were soon on our way with roundtrip tickets in hand. The train ride to the city we were going to took us an hour and a half. We got to our destination around 3:45 and grabbed a cab into the mountains to the town of Toarmina, where we were told was some good shopping.

We arrived in Toarmina around 4:00 and unfortunately only had about 45 minutes before we needed to catch a cab back to the station to catch the 5:20 train back to Messina. Even though we only had 45 minutes it was well worth the time and hassle of getting there because the view we had was pretty nice. The cab ride down was rather interesting too. For some reason the mojority of cabs on this trip have been Mercedes.. and nice ones to. The ride down consists of a lot of tight turns and narrow roads, our driver was driving like he was on I88.. driving fast and passing cars all the way down, he almost had a mess to clean up in his car!

Our train arrived back in Messina around 6:45.. so before our 8:30 curfue to get back on the ship, we toured downtown Messina. Unlike the United States, Italy takes three hours for their lunch breaks. So when we had left the ship Messina was a ghost town... and when we returned it was the happening place. We ended up boarding the ship around 8:00 and grabbed some dinner, played a couple games of bowling and headed to their magic show in the theatre. After the theatre they did a game called "How Well Do You Know Your Co-Worker" in the atrium, which I didn't participate in but we did watch. After the game we decided to turn in for the night.

We hope everyone is doing good.. and yes even though we're on a cruise ship we did hear about Michael Jackson, and the rest as well! Hope you have a good day.. we'll chat tomorrow!