I need to first admit that we did near-zero investigation into this part of the trip. I mean, taking a trip to Sicily via mainland Italy, why should you worry about how you actually got to Sicily? So I finally did pull up some information last night about the names of carriers and the costs associated with the trip across the Straits of Messina. In this case, the Internet came through.
The ferry boat was much bigger than I expected. I mean, they had a couple dozen semi's on our trip! And dozens of cars. A truly well oiled machine. We bought our ticket shortly after we exited the freeway and got in line. (This is where LtPC messed up on the directions and we had a tour of the local area.). It was maybe a 15-20 minute wait, and then they directed everyone onto the ferry. These guys had their act together. We were underway in less than 10 minutes once we were parked.
I was a little surprised that there were no chains, locks or other security devices for the cars and trucks. They didn't even tell you to us your emergency brake. (Which was good because we still haven't located the emergency brake on our car.) I'm thinking that in the USA, you'd have TSA agents all over each vehicle with a flag to denote that it was safely secured.
When we docked in Messina, they were putting on cars heading to Italy as we exited the boat. We decided that they likely had 3 boats in service as the schedule had ferries leaving Italy every 40 minutes, and the trip took around a half hour. They might have been able to get by with two vessels, but a third made sense. Our one-way fee was 38.50€. Plus a 2€ tip to the hawker who who directed me to the ticket counter and gave me the directions that I blotched.
It was another 90 minutes on the road from Messina to Siracusa. Interstate-like road with few construction spots and not all that many exits.
Google Maps got us into town and to our near-City Central B&B. We did a once-around town after check-in, and finally found a street-side cafe with a decent bottle of wine.
Without asking, the wine came with the antipasti shown. Very cool. And the wine was a Sicilian Merlot that was quite good. 18€.
We ended up with a walk on the seaside at sunset. Again, very cool. I'll try to add a pic of the sunset from my iPhone that didn't make it over to the cloud.
Now headed out to din-din.
2 at dinner. end of a great day
Thanks for reading. Ciao!!
BCOT
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1 comment:
so so cool. this looks like the most amazing trip. hope you are having as much fun as it looks like!!
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