Montenegro and Sicily aren’t that near each other. We had to cross the Adriatic Sea, which separates Greece from Italy, then cross the Ionian Sea, as we wailed around the bottom of Italy’s boot, before we finally got to Messina at noon the following day after a 17-hour sail. Because of our late arrival, P&O’s Aurora had already beaten us into port and fully unloaded.

 

All six of us were on the same tour for the only time of the trip. Aaron and Toni were uncertain that they could safely drive to and from Mount Etna and get back to the ship in the relatively short time available (ashore at noon, all aboard at 6:30pm). So together we six headed for Mount Etna, with 90 minutes of free time at Taormina.

 

Sicilian Tour Guide

Our tour guide was a clueless dingbat who nonetheless delivered a fascinating Sicilian’s view of the world.

 

I call her a dingbat because many of her explanations seemed implausible or ridiculous. For example, she said one of the reasons why Sicily and Italy are not connected by bridge is because it would have to be a suspension bridge and it would swing too much. She had also had gotten much of her historical information about the occupation of Sicily during World War 2 from a 2016 comedy called “At War With Love,” which she heartily recommended. Also, she could not remember when Italian Unification was – “A long time ago, I’m not good with math.”

 

But her account was nonetheless riveting, not only because she had a crazy strong Italian accent – Every. Single. Word. Must end in a vowel, even if that-uh means-uh that-uh she’s-uh going-uh to sound-uh like-uh a caricature-uh of an Italian trying to speak English.

 

The other reason that we really liked her was because she gave an uncensored and politically incorrect account of how Sicilians view the rest of Italy and the mafia. She explained that northern Italy and southern Italy are really different.  In the north, they are really more like Germans, she said. And they say we in the south are lazy (rolling her eyes). And we have mafia, (rolling her eyes).

 

She said that a lot of people, apparently referring to herself, did not used to think the mafia was so bad a thing. But what she really gets passionate about is Sicily’s loss of public infrastructure – toll roads that she pays for that still don’t get fixed; bridges that get paid for but never are finished.  And worst of all, “Eco-Monsters,” which are giant development projects that are never completed but remain half-finished eye-sores and blights on the land, which can’t be completed because the technologies and designs are no longer plausible, but can’t be torn down because it would be too expensive to do so.

 

All of this occurs, she says, because the mafia bribes local authorities to get the contract, but the bribes are paid after the contract is awarded, and they come from the public funds that were supposed to be used to complete the project, so no there is never enough left to finish the project after paying off the public officials.

 

As a result, she says, citizens pay for public projects and services that they never receive. And therefore, she concludes, mafia may not be so bad, until they start to control the government, at which point they are intolerable, and a lot of people, apparently including herself, have turned against the mafia because of it.

 

Because of the mafia’s corruption of politics and public infrastructure, businesses will not locate in Sicily, she says. And because businesses do not locate there, there are no jobs, and young people who get advanced degrees leave the island for jobs elsewhere. The resulting brain-drain makes it even harder to reverse the perpetual economic slump.

 

Sicily’s fate is to be dominated by foreign governments, she says. Sicily always welcomes the new domination in hopes that it will bring better times, but it never does. Rome is currently attempting to dominate Sicily, but with only mixed success, she says, because Sicily resists.

 

Mount Etna

It was a two-hour drive to Mount Etna, so we learned a lot, including the parts of Wikipedia that our tour guide had memorized involving the geology of Mount Etna.

 

Mount Etna is a very large mountain, and it took a long time for us to get two-thirds the way up. The base of the volcano is verdant, but higher up we encountered vast lava flows similar to what we had seen around Kilauea volcano in Hawaii last year (before this year’s massive fresh eruptions). 

 

The bus stopped briefly at a cannoli store and we all lined up for a free cannoli, which in all honesty dwarfed and put to shame the cannolis we had enjoyed a couple years ago in Venice. Point to Sicily.

 

Across the street from the cannoli store was a dormant vent on the side of the volcano, and we walked its perimeter and looked down into its dry maw.

 

Nearby was a ski lift that disappeared over the rim, presumably offering rides to the summit of Etna’s great caldera, but we didn’t get to go up the ski lift. Our driver said that every time Etna erupts the ski lift is destroyed and a new one gets built. We could see the remnants of one prior ski lift near the functioning ski lift.

 

Taormina

From Mount Etna, we drove to the tourist town of Taormina, which is the primary destination for most cruisers who stop at Messina’s port. We were supposed to have 90 minutes of free time in Taormina, but we ended up with only 60, possibly because our tour guide was not being careful with the clock, more likely because she is lazy and they have mafia.

 

Taormina’s main attraction is an ancient Greek Theater overlooking the Mediterranean and Mount Etna. It is actually a 2,000-year old Roman Theater built atop an even older Greek Theater, but the original Greek design was retained, and so it is the second largest Greek Theater in Sicily, after the one in Syracuse.

 

Since we only had an hour, and it was a twenty-minute walk each way to the Greek Theater, we had to move with some haste. Gianna, Sam, and Aaron opted to eat, drink, and rest in Taormina. Chiara, Toni, and I gave short shrift to the Piazza of the 9th of April, and the many bits of scenery and retail adventure along Taormina’s main street, and sweated our way up the hill.

 

The ancient theater is used today for shows, as was the Theater of Dionysius in the Acropolis, and they were setting up for a show when we arrived, so there were lights and crew around the front rows and on the stage.

 

The theater itself was huge, and steep, with gorgeous stone steps, and amazing views of the sea both inside and outside the theater.  It would better to see this theater in the morning than in the afternoon, because the theater faces west, which means our photos were largely looking into the sun. But you can still get a sense of the scale and beauty of this ancient place.

 

The bus ride back to the ship was uneventful.

 

Return to the Princess Theater

That evening, the Princess Theater was featuring soloist Phillip Browne, who had played Mufasa in the Lion King in London.

 

I was the only one who went to see Phillip Browne. No one else in the audience joined me in the first row.

 

Obviously anyone who played Mufasa in the Lion King in London would be a formidable presence on stage, and Phillip Browne was that. He sang many show tunes and popular songs, like a Nat King Cole medley, and Old Man River. He also sang Circle of Life, and he really had an advantage over other performers on that song, because he was able to convincingly insert Mufasa’s “All the Great Kings” monologue into the song.

 

He told us all about how he heard about the Lion King, and how he auditioned for the role, and how he got the role, and his family’s reaction, and how he prepared for the role, and what it was like performing the role, and the kind of dialect coaching that one gets for such roles, and much, much more than we wanted to know.  You got the distinct impression that he was a washed up theater star who had been relegated to the cruise ship circuit. But he actually is still active in London, most recently starring in “Chess The Musical.” His Facebook page gives the impression that he just really likes being on cruise ships.