May 16th - Sicily

For our first stop on the cruise, we landed on the island of Sicily and had the day to explore on our own. ("never go on against a Sicilian when death is on the line!" name that movie.) I had decided not to book a shore excursion because I wanted to see how my foot was feeling and then gage my day based on that - plus the shore excursions were sooo expensive! My foot was still pretty sore but how often to do you get to be in Sicily? I didn't want to spend the day on a ship. So Kelsey and I joined a few of the professors and headed on our way. We just decided to walk the streets and explore the churches we came upon.

We made our way to the highest one we could find and the view was stunning!

It's still hard to believe that I've really been in Italy and this time and now I'm actually on my first cruise ship.

Instead of hiking back down the hill we decided to try and catch a public bus. it was quite the challenge to figure out where to catch one but after a few attempts to have conversations with different locals we connected the pieces of information and figured things out (I had decided that day to stay with Rob and Natalie (one of the professors and his wife) because Natalie is 25 weeks pregnant so everyone had to go slow for her and I didn't feel like I'm was the one slowing everyone down).

We finally caught the bus but after a few minutes it didn't take us long to realize that we were headed further up the mountain - not down like we intended. We hopped off - crossed the street, and waited for a bus to come the other way. Not too much longer a bus came - it happened to be the same driver. I'm sure he thought we were nuts. Although we didn't get to see the quaint city like we were planning, we got to enjoy the ride and travel like the locals. We finally made it back to the ship and were able to eat lunch and sit in the sun and relax. I loved it!

Kelsey and I did our best to lay out in the sun but it was soo cold and windy! I guess we should have known it would be windy on a cruise but I didn't think it would be cold.

For dinner tonight we had our first formal night. it was fun to be able to get all dressed up fancy - it's been awhile. I tried duck for dinner - a cruise is the perfect place to try new food because it's all included in the flat rate you pay up front so if you don't like something you can juts order another dish and not worry about paying more. I didn't like it. At least I can say I tried.