Messina, Sicily

Our first stop, Messina, Sicily... Before we left for our cruise I did my research and found that there wasn't much to see in Messina and it was recommended to travel to Taormina, about an hour away. We booked a tour through Carnival, not wanting to be too adventurous, scared that we would somehow miss the boat. They leave you behind if you are late. It happened almost every port. Thankfully, it never happened to us!

This was the main attraction in Messina, the bell tower... a quick picture from the window of our bus was good enough...

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Welcome to Taormina...

We made to Italy! Sicily to be exact! We are so happy to be here! Notice the red sticker on Scott's shirt... You'll see these stickers on us about every place we went. This was our tour number and helped us stick together. I felt like such a tourist! But with Scott's big camera around his neck and the silly red stickers, we were dead give aways!

They had the most beautiful flowers!

Scott took and retouched this picture...

More of these gorgeous flowers!

Our walking tour... Wasn't too impressed with our guide. Monotoned and once we got to the city we couldn't hear a thing she said because she wouldn't speak loudly enough! Other tours we had headphone!

Beautiful buildings!

I loved this city! It was so pretty... I loved the buildings and walking the main street packed with people. A perfect place to start my Italian experience!

I was told by MANY people to try gelato... It was delicious, especially on a warm day... Gelato tasted a lot like ice cream, but better!

I was listening to some Italian music from this guy while I was enjoying my gelato!

The town square!

The view of the Sicilian coast!

This was our final destination of our Taormina walking tour, the ancient Greek theater.

We didn't take too many picture of the inside because they still use this theater as a venue for concerts and they were setting up for one while we were there. Didn't make for an excellent experience :(

We did get some great views of Taormina from the Greek theater. BEAUTIFUL!

Another view!

I tell ya, I was just in awe!

In the back is Mt. Etna... one of the world's most active volcanoes. We were told there was a bit of an eruption during the night before and it was still smoking. We heard on the news a week ago that the volcano had a big eruption. It was pretty cool to say that we were there!

Sicily was nice and it was a perfect place to ease me into the Italian culture, it wasn't my favorite stop, each stop just gets better and better!

Next, Naples!