Great view of the giant clock tower from last night; supposedly this is the largest mechanical clock in Europe (or something). When the hour strikes, a lot of the golden figures move around and do things—it really is quite a show. We will be climbing this later on!Messina seems so small & quiet, but it is still a tourist hub apparently, here’s a giant cruise ship in for the dayI googled this ship, it’s friggin enormous but also kind of interesting in that it runs on LNGAfter Catania, all the buildings look so pristine here!Heroic statue-type guys; statues and monuments are all over the place in MessinaTypical street in the historic district—what a contrast to Catania!This has been our go-to beer in Sicily, so huge!!Back inside the Duomo. This poor place keeps getting mostly destroyed and then rebuilt, it’s been here through at least three massive earthquakes, not to mention WWII so it’s a real hodgepodge of different eras and styles.Still pretty grand though, all things considered But it’s lunchtime suddenly, we found a great place with a patioOMG haha look what car turned up outside our lunch place 😂 We saw three people get in, still not sure how?!?Random seafood stuff, including the best anchovies of the trip (deep fried, at the top right)Sam’s cantaloupe & prosciutto I ordered poorly, here’s my dead dead tuna steak of death…. I sometimes think they see an American and proceed to cook the crap out of everything because we all obviously love it that way, like we love our chicken fingers: deadHere’s a diagram of the giant clock tower, we’re heading up!Our first views of the secret mechanical inner workingsMore mechanical mysteriesView of the huge-ass cruise ship we walked by earlierLook! In the harbor, I see a ship!!!We made it to the top! I wish I knew how long the climb took but there are no clocks anywhere….lol this is when I took this pic I posted earlierThere’s Sam down there at the endThe tintinnabulation of the bells bells bells bells bells….That’s apparently an original fifteenth-century electric motor 😂😂 Italians have a very different idea of “mechanical” than I do lolReligious dudes who parade around at noon every dayElectrical help or not, the whole thing is pretty impressive reallyAfter the huge hike up and down the clocktower, we decided to embark on another huge hike up and down the whole city!!!We’d seen this church from everywhere and decided we needed to see it close up… but we’re not taking a freaking taxi ride!!!!We climbed and we climbed… and now we can look at the clocktower down below us!!!This is the first of the two cathedrals we wanted to seeI dubbed this place the Church of BarbieFrom here we can easily see our second target
It looks so close, doesn’t it… by zip-line it would be close! But it is perched atop a different hill completely, so we have to slowly trudge all the way down, then even more slowly trudge all the way back up. We would have made it all the way but dang it we got distracted by beer!
There was a big open-air bar overlooking the vista… the view was amazing so we pretty much had to stop for a bit!I’ll have it known that we did get pretty close!!!That’s our Church of Barbie from across the valleyAnd a different look down upon the tall clocktowerA look in the other direction, there’s that crazy cruise ship againGreat shot of the Church of Barbie by nightWe did get totally close to this church… well, maybe next timeA couple shots from the trek back downAnd it’s all the way back down to our same freaking restaurant from last night haha the L’Orso in Duomo…. and it was actually open this time hahaYou bet we ordered the same exact thing, it is just that amazingly good!!!This quiet plaza is absolutely magical
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