Thursday, November 13, 2008

Quest Day 5 -- Messina, Sicily, Italy

Oops, I did the pictures out of order again. The church above is the last thing we went to before heading to lunch on the ship. At noon there is an interesting kind of show here. If you will look closely you will see several golden statue things. They all move. There is a little skeleton that you can't see whose staff moves up and down. At the top, the lion raises his head and then roars really loudly. The speakers are great. When he's done roaring, the rooster raises it's head, opens it's beak, and crows really loudly. Then "Ave Maria" is played really loudly while some monks (also golden) go around moving their arms (I think blessing the crowd). It was the oddest thing ever and I'm afraid we all thought it was a bit amusing. We wonder what the locals think of it. It is a big tourist attraction though and there were lots of us there to listen and watch.
I might be remembering wrong but I thought this was one of the churches we went into first. It was really big and had statues of the saints on either side -- bigger than life. I can't think why I didn't take any pictures of any of them -- probably because I thought it was weird to take pictures in a church. The statues were mostly the original 12 apostles.
This is a confessional. We actually walked in a church where one was being used in Spain -- right there where we were walking by. It didn't seem like the kind of place I'd want to confess any sins!

The picture above shows where we sailed to get in the harbor. I was trying to figure out what the words under the statue were.
One building we went to seemed to be a school, a church, and a -- what do you call an indoor burial chamber? We believe this one was full of World War II soldiers. It seemed to be so from the dates.
This was the day that Derek got his cold. We walked into Messina with a large group from work -- which kept Derek from overdoing it because large groups don't usually move fast and deciding where to go by committee isn't quick either. It is a nice group though and it was a fine day.
Even though Derek didn't feel well I'm the one who slept the afternoon away and we had dinner and a movie and time to read in our room.



4 comments:

cold cocoa said...

Poor Derek. And his companion. Darn colds! Did he have a package of zinc handy? A

So how much smarter do you feel after all this cultural exposure?

Marcy said...

I am enjoying living vicariously through you. What a great trip! I am so impressed at how you have been blogging one day every day.
Just so you know, you can click on the pictures and drag them to change the order after they download. I discovered that the other day.

Sherie Christensen said...

Lets see, how do you measure how much smarter you feel? I can't say I feel much smarter at all -- but it was a good experience and I'm sure I learned a few things that are sure to stick for at least another week.

Sherie Christensen said...

Oh, hey Marcy -- thanks for the tip. I'm forever messing up the picture part of my blog.