Saturday, October 12, 2013, At Sea between Messina and Naples, Italy

The ship docked in Messina early in the morning, about 1 AM.  We got up, I was feeling much better this morning and ordered our coffee at 8:30.  After getting dressed we walked into town.  At this port the ship was docked close enough to town that is was an easy walk to shopping and restaurants. 

I checked the GPS and there was a cache near the ship dock.  We headed that way.  The hint said it was magnetic and GZ was near a wrought iron fence.  Gerri spotted the container quickly and I retrieved it, signed the log and returned it to its hiding spot.  This was my second Italian cache.

Gerri bought souvenirs at one shop, one that sold only items made in Sicily and afterwards we stopped at small restaurant for a snack.  We had no idea what we were ordering. It sounded like some sort of pizza.  It was like a quesadilla with mozzarella cheese.  The waiter wrote down the name, a slaid bread piedina.  It was tasty.  The restaurant had free WiFi so we uploaded some pictures to Facebook

As we returned to the ship we stopped at what appeared to be a fast food restaurant and bought another snack.  This one we had seen on the video in our room.  It looked like an orange.  It had a crisp outside shell of cornmeal and was filled with rice, corn, ham and a tomato sauce.  It was real tasty. 

As we approached the ship to re-board it rained, not heavily but steady.  It was warm enough that the rain wasn't unpleasant.  Back at our room we relaxed for awhile and then went to the Piazza on the 5th floor to see a performance that was billed as illusions with wandering miniatures.  There was a string quartet playing when we got there, the music was enjoyable.  When the quartet took a break the illusionists came on and wondered around the area talking to passengers.  It was a strange act.  The illusion was that the characters were dressed as back packers, they looked like small people with large packs.  The characters faces were not real and the voices came out at the face level that was about three feet tall.  The characters must have been actually looking through some of the higher parts of the costume.  I may not be explaining this very well.  The costumes portrayed normal size people as very short people with large backpacks.

We went to the Vista Lounge for hors d'ouvres.  We didn't see any of the people we have met before.  We sat with a couple from Victoria, BC and had a nice chat before going to our room to dress for dinner.

We went for our regular seating for dinner.  We have discussed switching to the early seating for our next cruise.  We talked about switching to anytime dinning, but decided that we liked getting to know people at the regular seating.  Everyone was there tonight.  One of the entrees was frog legs.  I hadn't had frog legs for a long time so I ordered them and a NY Steak just in case.  The frog legs were very small, Gerri had ordered veal cordon bleu, but she tried the frog legs too.  The steak was done just right and could have been cut with a fork.  All in all a very good meal

After dinner we went back to the room.  Gerri read and I watched the end of a movie I had started before.

Tomorrow were are in Naples again and are booked for a city tour in the afternoon.