06-21-04 – The Strait of Messina (June 2)
The next morning, we hopped on a train bound for Messina. in our cabin sata family from Calabria. The balding father always looked about very nervously. His wife spent most of the train ride staring into a mirror and applying, removing, and reapplying massive amounts of makeup. Their son, about my age, passed the time snoring loudly into my ear – his halitosis was unbearable.
Dad and I had tried to imagine how we were to cross the water between mainland Italy and Sicily. Was there a bridge across the entire strait? Do we leave the train and get on a ferry? As we approached the Strait of Messina, the train stopped and waited for about a half hour. It then backed up slowly into a huge ship. The ship held the entire train, broken up into four tracks side by side. I was grateful to get on deck and away from our travel companions. A half hour later, we descended back into the bowels of the ship and the train continued on through Messina and to Taormina. We were in Sicily.
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