Messina

Messina is in the extreme north east of Sicily, just a few hundred metres away from the Italian mainland. They could build a bridge connecting them, but… you know… <shrugs in Italian>.

Since Messina has the facilities for cruise ships to pull up right next to the heart of the city, there was no need to organise any excursions. Instead, I looked up the itineraries of the ship’s official city tours, and then used Google Maps to look them up and went to them independently, saving myself $120. Suck it, MSC!

This itinerary included the sweetly unpretentious Church of the Catalans, a modest chapel without any gilding or frescoes, just stone, terracotta bricks and plaster.

Next was one of the fancy shopping precincts, a sort of Rodeo Drive of Sicily, complete with elegant avenues of palm trees... and an inelegant dude on a backhoe digging up the street. I went into OVS, as is my wont, and bought a couple of undershirts that were affordable even with the terrible exchange rate.

After that it was up to the courthouse, which features this statue.

My Latin is a little rusty, but I think that this statue commemorates the time that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse all called in sick at the same time, and Maureen from HR had to stand in, all by herself. Girls really can do anything.

The official tour that I was plagiarising concluded at the clock tower of the city’s cathedral, which every day at noon completes a rather laborious mechanical display – the lion roars, the cock crows, Jesus arises from the tomb, and saints parade past the virgin birth, all while ‘Ave Maria’ plays. For all their infamy as criminals, these Sicilians are a religious lot.

As the suckers returned to the ship, I continued on to explore more of the city. I was drawn up the hillside by glimpses of an enigmatic domed building with bronze statues surrounding it. On the way I was treated to a very Italian moment as a taxi swerved in front of a little Smart car and tore its front bumper off. Cue lots of gesticulating and shouting.

Then I noticed a grand building with the name ‘Galleria Vittorio Emanuele III’ on the outside, bringing to mind the famous Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan. This one was similarly elegant, with three wings with long barrelled skylights radiating out from a central dome, all in delicate yellow and lavender stained glass.

However, unlike Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele III was… derelict. There were two fast food burger franchises on the ground floor, both facing outside rather than into the galleria, and everything else was closed and abandoned. The potted plants were all dead, graffiti covered the walls, and I could see no-good teens lounging with beers and cigarettes by the entrance furthest from the burger joints.

In Australia such a building would be the crown jewel of any city, but here, it’s just another edifice requiring millions of euros to restore. They have plenty of those.

I continued my climb upwards, finding that the mysterious building with the dome and the statues had no obvious or direct path to it. Through dogged determination, and the belief that the Italians wouldn’t construct a secret tunnel to it, I spiraled closer and eventually standing next to it.

It turned out to be the Tempo di Cristo Re, a magnificently oversized edifice… that was just about to close to the public.

Oh well. At least the views from its terraces were panoramic. Pirate Pete put his skills with the spyglass to good use and managed to find my cruise ship for me. What an asset.

With nothing more to do I made my way back to the ship to exchange the sacred and the historic for the profane and the new.

Tonight’s bar was the open air Zen Bar on Deck 18, perched in a rather awesome position on the lip of the eight storey chasm that bisects the rear of the ship. It’s like sitting on the edge of a huge volcano, only the roiling mass below you is bad taste rather than lava.

The drinks are a welcome remainder from pre-COVID cruising culture; poor quality but cheap and very strong. I had a margarita than needed an entire extra glass of ice to water it down to drinkable consistency. But unlike yesterday’s cocktail, it was $17 rather than $30.

The only downside is that the bar seems to have been adopted by a gang of elderly proletarian Frenchmen, who’ve been forced outdoors by their desire to smoke cigars and yammer loudly at each other. Fortunately they seem intent on monopolising the most comfortable seats, over under the pergolas, and not the ones near the bar with the best views.