What a difference today was from our last visit to Catania. It helped tremendously that we had a bright sun in a cloudless blue sky and not a bit of wind, though the day was, just as Captain D had promised, quite chilly. Who cared? The earth did not move beneath our feet; all was well in our world.
I'll back up just a few hours, though, to last night after I published yesterday's blog post. Just as predicted, we had extremely rough seas until around 11pm and then things started to quiet. But in the meantime, we lay in our cabin and listened to the things crashing around us on the ship. We had to move everything off the vanity in our room...wine bottles, wine glasses, plastic baskets filled with G's small items. They had all slid to the floor while I was at dinner. Around 8pm we heard a crash so loud that we imagined a life boat had fallen to the Promenade Deck (that wasn't actually the case), and we looked out the window (the over the side lights were turned on) and saw spray blowing sideways, totally obliterating the view of anything else. It was exactly like being in a blizzard.
Still, when we opened our eyes after over ten hours of sleep (we had moved clocks back an hour from Greek time for the final time this season) and saw a beautiful sunrise over mirror smooth water and a view of the snow covered peak of nearby Mount Etna, we felt like survivors. It was a brand new day. Yay!
Snow topped Mt. Etna overlooking Catania, Italy
G was starving and even I was hungry, having not eaten a great deal yesterday, and we went to the Panorama Buffet for breakfast (peanut butter on six grain toast and a Bosc pear). We met up with Marlene and Paul who decided to join us for the day. Our only firm plan was to visit the Allied landing Museum in Catania and we were open to whatever else the day brought. We walked off the ship together at 9:30am and I was immediately struck with the feeling of mal de debarquement, which is quite interesting because I was one of the few people we know who hadn't gotten seasick yesterday. Mal de debarquement (French for disembarkation sickness) is a real illness and affects some people every time they cruise. I've only had it once before, on a transatlantic cruise after five days at sea. Fortunately, today I only felt the vertigo that accompanies the illness for a couple of hours and was then fine.
We were approached by vendors selling a Hop On Hop Off bus for just 10€ per person and it would get us to and from the Allied Landing Museum and also give us an audio tour of Catania. When we boarded the bus and left the port, we were especially glad that we had dressed for the day in our warmest clothing; the bus had an open top. We started by taking the roughly 70 minute tour of the city, heading north along the beautiful Sicilian coastline. We could see waves crashing on the large black lava rocks along the way.
After about 20 minutes of driving along the coast, the bus turned around and headed back through the heart of Catania. We were amazed by the ornate architecture of at least 1/3 of the buildings, many of which had been rebuilt multiple times due to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and the Allied bombing of Sicily in the summer of 1943. We were left off at the Piazza del Duomo, the site of the Cathedral of Sant Agat (Saint Agatha), the patron saint of the city. Today was the festival of Saint Elizabeth, who must be the patron saint of the military, because there was a large service taking place in the cathedral with several service members, particularly of the Italian Navy and Coast Guard, in full dress uniforms standing outside.
Catania Courthouse
The Roman Amphitheater of Catania (it once held 20000 people!)
Basilica della Collegiata
Bell tower of the Cathedral of St. Agatha
Cathedral of St. Agatha
We walked through the Piazza to the market area and Marlene and I could easily have spent the rest of the day there. We loved seeing the bags of spices and nuts and all the gorgeous locally grown fruits and vegetables and the refrigerated cases filled with meat. The prices were astonishingly low and the quality appeared very high and it made us wish we had similar open air markets to shop at every day in the States. We made our way back to the bus stop to get the next HOHO bus and were sitting on it right next to the cathedral when the noon bells rang. And rang. And rang. G said there were three different sizes of bells and they were a wonder to listen to.
Check out the size of these red peppers!
We stayed on the bus back to the Allied Landing Museum which is part of a large complex that also houses a movie museum and concert hall. The price to get in was just 4€ per person (2€ for over 65) and it was a steal for what we saw. First we watched a 10-minute video (subtitled in English) explaining the war up to the point where the Allies invaded Sicily. It was obvious that dictator Mussolini was attempting to keep Italy from being overrun by Germany and wanted to retain some power in the new order by joining forces with Hitler. As a result, Sicily became a gateway to the rest of Italy for the Allied troops and they invaded the island in July 1943.
The first floor of the museum recreated what life was like in Catania with people going about their lives and then we entered a mock up of an air raid shelter and sat there while we heard Allied planes approaching and beginning to drop bombs and the air raid shelter actually shook and moved. We emerged from that into a mock up of the same street we had just seen, but after the bombing. We all remarked that it isn't often we've seen WW II from a non-Allied perspective.
The second and third floors focused on actual historical video and photos and the military strategy (it was termed Operation Husky) with large maps showing where the British and the US simultaneously attacked. And correspondence between Hitler and Mussolini showing Hitler's frustration with the Italians inability to resist the Allied troops. And though Mussolini knew his country lacked the resources to resist the Allies, he kept this fact hidden from Hitler. In fact, he invaded Poland and Greece and North Africa without notifying Hitler in an attempt to surprise Hitler the way that Hitler continued to keep things hidden from Mussolini. It was a partnership that was doomed to failure.
The museum visit was a few hours well spent and we went back to the bus stop to get the HOHO bus back to the ship. We were all dragging a bit when we returned to the Pacific Princess about 4pm. G and I showered and were up in the PES Lounge for sailaway after dark, with the beautiful lights of the Sicilian coastline in the not-far distance. From our dinner table in the Club Restaurant we could see the lights of the island going up the mountainsides and they were just spectacular. We went to the 7:45pm performance of production show Do You Wanna Dance (loved it!) and when I returned to the cabin, our window was filled with the same view of the lights of the coastline.
Captain D said we'd pass through the Messina Strait between Sicily and mainland Italy about midnight tonight (think of Italy as a boot and Sicily as a deflated football at its toe, separated by the Messina Strait). We have another busy day tomorrow in Napoli, and I will be asleep soon.