Messina, Sicily

While in Messina, we didn’t have a lot of time in port, so we just walked around the city. We wanted to go to the beach, but by the time it was warm enough to go we only had a couple hours left in port and it would have taken a little bit to get to the beach. We wouldn’t have had time to enjoy the beach, so we ended up not going. We had a few people following us while in Messina because Jake could communicate fairly well with the people because Spanish is fairly close to Italian and he has been reading the Book of Mormon in Italian, so that has helped. We walked to a Catholic church that was on top of a hill. It was really pretty. It was rebuilt after an earthquake leveled it about 100 years ago. So the foundation was really old, but the rest fairly new. We then walked to another large building where Sicily has their tomb of the unknown soldier. The building was a tribute to the soldiers that fought from Sicily in WWI and WWII. At first we couldn’t get in the building, but when we were leaving we saw two military men, so we asked them when it opened. They said it was opened and they showed us where the entrance was. We had gone to the front of the building, but the entrance was at the back of the building. So we were able to go in. After that we walked to a garden that was beautiful. It had all kinds of plants and cool trees. It was really pretty. We then walked to the clock tower and waited until noon when there was supposed to be a really cool show. The clock tower looked really cool. We walked around the church that was by the tower. At noon we saw the show. It wasn’t nearly as spectacular as I thought it was going to be, but it was still pretty cool. It lasted about 10-15 minutes. After that we went back to the boat. Messina was a pretty city, but a little dirty. We have been surprised at how dirty Europe is.