American Mom in London: Mediterranean Cruise: Port of Messina

Happy 4th of July from Messina, Italy! Our port on the 4th of July was Messina, a city on the island of Sicily. It certainly did not seem like the 4th of July cruising the Mediterranean and spending the day in Sicily. There didn't seem to be much to do in Messina, and I had a feeling we would be exhausted at this point so I booked a Carnival excursion for this day that involved spending half of the day at the beach. The other half of the day would be spent in the town of Taormina.

We drove for about an hour before reaching Taormina, which was high up in the mountains of Sicily. Taormina is a popular tourist destination with pedestrian streets and beach resorts. Its most well known site is the Teatro Greco ('Greek Theatre'). We headed straight to the Greek Theatre when we arrived. Another not so stroller friendly tourist destination but a really cool place to see as the ancient theatre is built into a cliff. After the theatre, we did some window shopping and stopped at a cafe for a panini (for me), beer and cannoli (for David), and gelato (for Colin). Taormina was such a cute village. It was more of the Italy I love similar to the villages making up the Amalfi Coast rather than the big cities like Rome.

After our time in Taormina, we drove down the mountains to one of the private beaches on the Ionian Sea. The beach was beautiful. The sandy beaches of Sicily were so much better than the rocky beaches we saw in the French Riviera. We all went for a swim although I must admit I kept my time in the water short after hearing that there were a lot of jelly fish. The beach lounge chair called my name after that! Colin liked swimming when David was holding onto him but wanted no part in touching his feet to the sand!

When we got back to the ship, we had a casual dinner at Guy's Burger Joint. Guy Fieri partnered with Carnival to create a burger restaurant in all of their new ships. So yummy! Then, we brought Colin to Camp Carnival and went to the Punchliner Comedy Club to see a comedy show. We were ready for the following day which would FINALLY be a relaxing day at sea!