Day 9: At Sea between Santorini and Naples

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This was to be our day to re-energize before the last half of the cruise which would prove to be a whirlwind of activity for us all.

Steve and I got up late and sort of lounged around the ship, took some pictures of the boat and the passengers. It was a beautiful day with highs around 75 degrees outside, so we walked around a bit on deck and just had a very nice relaxed day. Not really much else to tell. We both spent a fair amount of time working on the blog and got it caught up to that day. I spent some time playing cards with Sandra and Denise, our fellows from Nova Scotia, which was very pleasant. This was our second formal night for dinner, so Rick and I swapped tuxedos. Rick looked very dashing in the Lavan tux that Richard lent me and we had a very nice evening. About halfway through dinner we all got up from the table to go outside and watch the ship traverse the Strait of Messina: a very narrow channel between Sicily and Italy that has been the stuff of myths for ages (google Scylla and Charybdis for more on that). I was really beside myself at this because I didn’t think the ship ever took this route. All of the information we had said the ship always went around the other side of Sicily. The most amazing part of this was to see molten lava running down the side of Mt. Etna on the Sicily side – a slight reddish glow seeming to come from a point high above the lights of a city down below. It was very eerie and exhilarating at the same time, and a very emotional moment for Tim whose family is originally from Sicily.

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