SORRENTO, ITALY

Sunset when over Sicily with Mt. Eatna. She was not active that day, that we could see anyway. This is actually a picture of a crescent moon when the ship is rocking. BUT, it looks somewhat like what the volcano at Stromboli looked like when it erupted last night at 1am. (except the eruption was RED!)
This is Sorrento from the sea. It is perched on this high cliff. You have to travel up zigzag road to get to the town level. The ship provided a shuttle bus to get us up. We chose to walk down
This is the wall we walked down. You can just see the trail. At the bottom are beaches, mostly private, where the locals rent the cabannas. They were working on maintenance this time of year. We walked back to the tender port from here. (a tender is the lifeboat we use to get to shore when the ship has to anchor off the shore when the port is too small to take our ship)
Of course, we visited a church. Duane says Arleen drags him into all the churches. He doesn't seem to mind.
Near the center of town, below street level, are the remains of an old windmill. Beautiful!

Back on the ship, we had some time before sailing. Outside the buffet, on the back of the ship, we had visitors. Arleen was able to feed one of them. It took some time to build up the trust...

April 10

Last nite we went thru the Straits of Messina, between Italy and Sicily. We were able to see Mount Etna. She was sleeping. Too bad. But about 1am we passed the island of Stromboli. Duane and I tried to get to Stromboli the last time we were here, but we didn't have enough time. It is an island with a volcano, that often has lite shows at nite. We were told about it by a volcanologist we met in Florence. He said it was very active right then, but that was 4 years ago. Last nite, we were told the volcano was not doing anything right now, but being stubborn, I stayed up to see the island anyway. We were able to see the lites of the villages as we floated by. Then, about 1am, we saw a red flash, with some movement, in the sky above the lites. The volcano said HI.

Since this was still the day I won at bingo, it sure was a great day.

Today we arrived in Sorrento. Duane and I were here for 3 days on our trip across the Atlantic. So coming back, felt comfortable. Duane says, like visiting an old friend. We went to some places we had visited before and to some new places. Unlike where we have been of late, we are now back in the modern world. So, we visited some churhes, 5 to be exact. We walked the streets, looked in the expensive shops and sampled gelato. We also tasted some lemonchello, which is made here and is local lemons with sugar and alcohol. Sorrento is kown for it. No, we did not buy any.

At the end of the we walked down the cliff that Sorrento sits above, to the local beaches and to the dock where our tender took us back to the ship. On the ship, I was able to feed some seagulls. The seagulls here are twice the size of any we have seen in the US.