Edward found that a fearful amount of kissing was exchanged among the male portion of the assembly as the ferry was leaving including a young gentleman he had met in Palermo who insisted on coming to see us off, so took me by surprise as to bring his lips in contact with my cheek before I was aware of his design. As I've mentioned the kissing still goes on although by now Covid19 awareness was filtering through and we noticed some chaps substituting the full blown smacker with embarrassed little air kisses at a metre distance. Edward reasserted his masculinity by noting on the ferry that an older Russian Countess aboard is tall and graceful, and though a little passe, she is still a very handsome woman. A "cougar" eh?
The train along the coast took about 4 hours from Palermo to Messina and traveled along the spectacular coastline with steep hills running down to the sea. Thus there were frequent tunnels, cuttings and embankments to keep the line level and higher up you could see huge bridges for the highway to cover the same route.
A young woman travelling across the aisle from us had her dog with her. She was impressed when I correctly identified it as a Japanese Akita and surprised when I told her that in Australia only blind people could take their dogs on public transport. She spoke little 'English, and I even less Italian so most of our conversation took place via our phone and Google Translate. However, I did impress her enough that she suggested that if we ever came back to Sicily we should come and stay with her at her family home. Trish cynically suggested that this just meant her family have an AirBnB listing she was touting for whereas I took it as an offer of genuine hospitality.
Covid19 awareness has now increased to the stage that apart from the frequent PA announcements regarding following the instructions on the signs (which still don't appear to be on the trains yet) extra cleaning is taking place. At a short stopover on the halfway point of the trip, a cleaner in overalls and rubber gloves got on. I had just remarked to Trish on his resemblance to my friend Greg Elton, not only physical but also in the manner with which he was engaging jovially with passengers as he came down the aisle, when he reached us. He stopped, and with Edward's eye for a pretty lady he pulled 2 oranges out of his overall pocket and insisted that Trish take and eat one. He proudly declared in broken English- Italian that he had grown them organically, on the hillside above, pointing out the window to show us the exact spot. When Trish gave me half of the orange he had given her, he then insisted that she take the remaining half of the one he had kept and peeled for himself. He then sprayed a little antiseptic from the bottle he carried onto the side of just one of the many vacant seats, and carried on down the aisle. Now the PA announcements assure us that "all staff are scrupulously adhering to the new requirements" but clearly this chap fell asleep during the training seminar.
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| Messina Duomo and bell tower. Despite the tower's classical appearance it was built in the 1930s to replace an earlier one that fell down in an earthquake. |
Drizzly rain started to fall during the latter stages of the trip but it eased off long enough for us to walk up to our room at the B&B Duomo on the Cathedral Square in Messina. At 6pm we heard the loudest and longest bells we've heard all trip but I guess being right next to the Cathedral accounts for that.
For dinner, being bored with Italian food, which as I've mentioned previously tends not to vary much from one establishment to the next, we visited a Sri Lankan cafe on the other side of the Square. Our meal was tasty and cheap. It was clearly genuine Sri Lankan, because just as they do in Sri Lanka, it was served unnervingly tepid from a bain marie.
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