Thursday – October 16 – At Sea

This is truly our last day on the ship.  We dock early at Civitavecchia (port for Rome) and will leave the ship about 7:00am.  At this point we still don’t know if American will find seats for us to fly home on Friday.  If not, we will be forced to spend the weekend in Italy, oh darn.  This morning we attended the Executive Chef’s cooking demonstration.  They do a bit of cooking of foods that are served on the ship, but mostly the Executive Chef and the Maître’d share quips and jokes.  About noon, the ship passed through the Straits of Messina, the narrow waterway between Italy and Sicily.     On the map it has always looked to me like a sizeable passage, in reality it is very narrow, less than two miles.  Since there is a turn right at the mouth of the opening, from not very far away the view is of solid land.  You sure hoped the Capitan knew where he was headed.  As you can tell by the way Maxine is bundled up, it was very windy.  Not surprisingly, for a strait this narrow, there is a castle right at the mouth.  In the afternoon, the wind died and the sea went totally flat.  As far as the eye could see, it was as smooth as a mirror.

Now we have to enjoy the beautiful sunshine and try to not think about returning to reality.