Land tower of Old Fortress on Corfu
Photo by Ron Fritze  ~  October 13, 2011

Dispatch from the Brilliance of the Seas:

Of Barcelona, Messina,
Mount Etna, and Corfu.

By Ron Fritze from the Mediterranean Sea
Filed on October 14 and Posted on October 19, 2011

On 8 October Twylia and I left for another cruise to the Mediterranean. We sailed out of Barcelona, so we decided to drive to Atlanta and board a direct flight to Barcelona via Delta. Although Atlanta is a four-hour drive from Athens, it is worth it not having to change planes. The drive was uneventful except for some lady who changed lanes and almost sideswiped us while Twylia was driving. We left way in advance which was good since we had not calculated the loss of one hour due to Atlanta being in a different time zone. We parked in an outlying lot and got shuttled to the airport. There we were able to check out baggage on the curb. Clearing security was quick and we had a meal at the TGI Fridays as we were not too interested in an in-flight meal. It was a good decision.

Our flight was scheduled for 6:05 pm but left a few minutes late.
It is about an eight-and-a-half-hour journey. We passed the time in the usual fashion with a combination of movies, reading, and dozing. I really can’t sleep sitting up. Arriving in Barcelona, we got our luggage just fine and caught at taxi to the Hotel Evenia on Rocafort Street in the St. Anthony neighborhood. I booked it through Expedia and it turned out to be a good choice. It is a small hotel but the room was a good size with a rather large bathroom.

A brisk fifteen-minute walk took us to the Waterfront and the Las Ramblas, the big walking and shopping street of Barcelona. We walked that way the day we arrived and again the morning of the day our cruise was scheduled to depart at 6 pm. We got a pizza for supper at a place called Pepe’s. It was a good pizza and I enjoyed an Estrella beer with it. Las Ramblas was interesting and needs more exploration. I needed more Euros so I suffered the rip-off of cashing a travelers check at Western Union. During the morning walk I got pictures of the Columbus monument and Montjuic. When we return I want to visit the Maritime Museum. Barcelona is a beautiful city with lots to see but this was our first time to actually enjoy it.

On Board, at Sea,
And Talking About Messina.

We took a taxi to the Brilliance of the Seas about 12:30 and got our room assignment with no problems. Our cabin steward is named Samuel and he comes from Costa Rica. He is a friendly and helpful person. The cabin is located on the third deck in the middle of the ship so we don’t feel much motion from the ship. But the little we do feel is too much for Twylia, so she is popping dramamine. The entertainment director is named Natalia and she is from Argentina. She’s one of the good ones and has my lectures scheduled for the entire voyage. This time I lecture in the Pacifica Theater rather than the Colony Club. The first day at sea, I had a good turn out and had over thirty people. Natalia told me it would grow as the voyage went on. I lectured on Messina. It went well and I got lots of compliments.

The next day we arrived at Messina. We signed up for a trip to the town of Taormina along with a trip to a lava flow on Mount Etna’s lower sloop and a trip to a winery. I had really hoped to get up to one of Mount Etna’s craters but none was offered. Messina is located in the Straits of Messina. Across the straits is the city of Reggio located in the Calabria region of Italy. At their narrowest, the straits are less than two miles wide. The narrow passage between the Ionian and the Tyrrhenian Seas makes for fierce currents and whirlpools. In ancient times, these probably gave rise to the legends of the monsters Scylla and Charybdis who terrorized ships sailing through the straits. Both Ulysses and Jason and the Argonauts had bad experiences with Scylla and Charybdis.

Messina was a Greek colony. Its strategic location made it a desirable area to control. So Messina was much fought over place. Its neighbor the Greek colony of Rhegium (now Reggio) conquered it. Then it fell to another Greek colony located further south, the great Syracuse. Carthaginians sacked the city. Finally the Romans took it under their protection, which helped to bring on the monumental Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage.

Roman rule was followed by Byzantine and then Arab rule, which began in 843. The Norman Robert Guiscard ended Arab control when he conquered Sicily in 1061 and founded the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. His kingdom became a very prosperous and advanced part of Europe under Norman rule.

Richard the Lion-Hearted
Established a Base at Messina.

About thirty years later, Richard the Lion-Hearted would visit Messina on his way to the Holy Land during the Third Crusade. Richard I launched his crusade during the summer of 1190. During September 1190 Richard and Philip Augustus of France arrived in Sicily. After the death of King William II of Sicily, brother-in-law to Richard I, William’s cousin Tancred of Lecce seized power and was crowned early in 1190 as King Tancred I of Sicily, although the legal heir was William's aunt Constance, wife of the new Emperor Henry V. Tancred had imprisoned William's widow, Queen Joan, who was Richard's sister, and did not give her the money she had inherited in William's will.

When Richard arrived he demanded that his sister be released and given her inheritance; she was freed on 28 September, but without the inheritance. The presence of foreign troops also caused unrest: in October, the people of Messina revolted, demanding that the foreigners leave. Richard attacked Messina, capturing it on 4 October 1190. After looting and burning the city, Richard established his base there, but this created tension between Richard and Philip Augustus. He remained there until Tancred finally agreed to sign a treaty on 4 March 1191 which involved a marriage alliance.

After that Richard resumed his journey to the Holy Land and his battles with Saladin, but not without another stop at Cyprus, where he conquered the island and married his betrothed Berengaria all in one stop. It’s a wonder that Richard the Lionhearted ever made to the Holy Land with so many distractions along the way.

Tragedy struck Messina and all of Europe in 1347 when Genoese ships brought the Black Death into the city from their trading post at Caffa in the Crimea. Messina had the distinction of being to first place in Western Europe reached by the Black Death.

By the sixteenth century, Sicily had come under Spanish rule. During the period of Spanish rule, Sicily’s fortunes as a whole declined, although for Messina, Spanish rule brought a great increase in its prosperity. Ignatius Loyola founded his first Jesuit college at Messina in 1548, providing full academic instruction and not just accommodations. It would become the foundation for the future University of Messina.

The Spanish viceroys of Sicily used Messina’s port for military staging. The relief force that gathered to save Malta from the ferocious siege by the Ottoman Turks in 1565 gathered at Messina. So did the Christian armada that defeated the Ottomans again at Lepanto in 1571. Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, fought at Lepanto and was wounded. He spent time recovering at the Grand Hospital of Messina.

In the Wake of Cervantes.

As I sit on the ship, I imagine the day the Spanish fleet sailed to Malta or to its destiny at Lepanto. In this place, one walks the path of history in the wake of Cervantes — not a bad path to follow.

Messina’s peak of glory was the early seventeenth century. During that era, its population increased to the point where it was one of the ten largest cities in Europe. The people of Messina, however, were not happy under the rule of Spain. In 1674, Messina staged a successful revolt against the Spanish garrison while Spain was busy fighting a war with the powerful France of Louis XIV. Thanks to French help, the Messinians remained independent until France and Spain made peace in 1678. Spain quickly recovered Messina, sacked the city, and abolished its privileges, including local self-government and its university. As the decline of Messina’s political fortunes sat in, Mother Nature added to the city’s woes with incredible acts of destruction.

Messina suffers from earthquakes. In 1783 an earthquake devastated the city, inflicting damage that took decades to repair. A less powerful earthquake struck during 1897. The most destructive earthquake took place on 28 December 1908. It and the tsunami that followed almost completely destroyed the city with an estimated 60,000 people losing their lives and most of the ancient architecture falling to the calamity. As a result, scholars of today have difficulty getting a sense of the exact nature of ancient and medieval Messina because so many opportunities for archaeological research were lost in the calamities.

The city was rebuilt according to principles of modern architecture, but World War II brought heavy damage from allied bombing during 1943. Despite much travail, Messina today maintains a population of about 250,000 people living in mostly modern buildings. Thus, the architectural glories of the ancient, medieval, and renaissance eras are mostly swept away. My readings about these earthquakes became a case of too much knowledge when, at one point in my contemplation of the city, I felt a bit of unease about an earthquake occurring during our visit there.

Mount Etna as viewed from Taormina
Photo by Ron Fritze  ~  October 12, 2011

A Lovely Tourist Trap,
Taormina is Worth the Visit.

The town of Taormina has all the things that have been lost by Messina: a Greek theater, a section of Roman wall, a Byzantine castle rebuilt by the Arabs, a medieval cathedral, and lots of Baroque buildings. It is a lovely town built on the side of a mountain with a view of both the Mediterranean Sea and Mount Etna. Historically it does not possess the significance of Messina, but it is worth a visit despite being somewhat of a tourist trap. The special thing about Taormina is its spectacular view of Mount Etna -- just close enough for a good view of the frequent eruptions but located far enough away to be quite safe as Etna is not an explosive volcano.

The great volcano Mount Etna lies southwest of Messina and is almost 11,000 feet in elevation. That makes it the tallest volcano in Italy and also Europe. It is also one of the most active volcanoes in the world and is almost constantly active. There was an eruption just the Saturday before we visited. In area, it covers 460 square miles or 1,190 square km. Despite its great size and activity, it is not a very deadly volcano. In all of recorded history, only about 77 deaths can be attributed to an eruption by Mount Etna.

According to Greek mythology, the great monster Typhon attacked Mount Olympus. For a time, he was successful and even took the king of the gods Zeus prisoner and incapacitated him. Zeus, however, recovered and defeated Typhon by throwing Mount Etna on top of the monster. The continuous volcanic activity at Mount Etna is the result of Typhon tossing and turning in his underground prison. The later Greek philosopher Empedocles would attempt to prove his superhuman powers by throwing himself into the crater of Mount Etna with the boast that he would survive. He was never seen again.

A lava river from 1992
Photo by Ron Fritze  ~  October 12, 2011

Concrete, Dynamite, and a Prayer

Our next stop after Taormina was to view a lava flow from the 1992 eruption. The flow of the lava stopped just short of a house on the outskirts of the village of Zafarrena. During the eruption of 1992, with things looking pretty grim for Zafarrena, townspeople poured concrete and blasted barriers with dynamite to try and divert the flow of lava. It was a close call, but it worked. I picked up a few lava pieces to help me remember.

Next we toured the San Michele winery. I don’t think I have ever seen that many wine bottles in one place. We also met a friendly greyhound dog that belonged to the property. She was quite friendly. After the tour we sat down for a wine tasting. Much fun, too, although I didn’t taste a wine that wowed me. I guess I prefer Beaujolais. They also served some wonderful salami, cheese, olives, and crusty bread. Then it was back to the bus and to Messina. Once we got on the ship, we found a nice table to sit at while the ship left the port. I got some pictures of Mount Etna from the sea although it was a bit hazy and there was glare from the sun.

A friendly greyhound with the author at San Michele
Photo by Ron Fritze  ~  October 12, 2011

Straying from the Tourist Road
Brings Simple Delights at Corfu.

The next day, the ship arrived at Corfu. We bought shuttle bus tickets to the Old Town which I had visited previously. For the last fifty years Corfu has been a popular tourist resort. It was the first of the Ionian Islands to promote itself as a resort area. Prior to that, Corfu’s import lay in its strategic location where the Ionian Sea turns into the Adriatic. From that location it guards the entrance into the Adriatic Sea. It is also a convenient stepping stone for ancient sailings traveling to and from Greece and Italy. This location also meant that Corfu was a prime location for launching attacks on Italy or Greece. It was one of those places that people fight wars over.

Corfu is also known as Kerkyra or Corcyra. It is an island that is forty miles long (64 km) and varies in width from 7-17 miles (11-27 km). Olives, figs, oranges, lemons, and grapes are grown on the island which is very fertile. Corfu moved into the historical record when the mainland Greek city of Corinth established a colony on the island in about 734 BC. Relations between the mother city and its former colony were sometimes poor — in fact, so poor that they helped to bring on the Peloponnesian War. Sailing out of the harbor of Corfu, one can imagine the sea lined with the war galleys of Corcyra, Corinth, and Athens on those fateful days of battle that sparked the greatest war of the ancient Greeks.

Meanwhile, Twylia and I took a little trip to downtown Corfu. Our first stop was the Old Fortress. It guarded the entrance to the harbor of Corfu. Originally the fortifications were built by the Byzantines. Successive rulers of the island added to them, the last to add being the Venetians. You enter the fortress across a sea moat and through a formidable gate. Other ramparts surrounded towering fortifications set on rocky hills.

We climbed the steps of the tallest to gain a splendid view. The Corfu weather that day was splendid, the exercise invigorating. After clambering over various ramparts and since neither of us fell there was no red glare, but we did need a break. So we stopped at a nice café inside the fortress. It is near the Greek Orthodox church of St. George that looks like an ancient Greek temple. I got my favorite a Mythos beer. As you can imagine, the place was a bit over priced. It almost was extra over-priced and the waitress made a try at holding back 10 euros in change but I pointed out that I had given her a 20 euro bill. So be careful out there, there are those who would bilk trusting and hapless tourists.

We crossed the park to Corfu town, which is a big shopping area. I was hoping to find the little restaurant I had visited on my last trip but no luck. So we climbed on the shuttle and headed back to the boat. As we approached the cruise terminal, I noticed a little taverna across the street so I suggested we check it out. We had two and a half hours to get on board. When we arrived the place was empty but the owner was glad to see us. Twylia ordered red wine, I got a Mythos. She got a very full glass of delicious red wine and I got a super-sized bottle of Mythos (holy last trip to Athens!). I decided to try a taste of Greek food. I was hoping for taramoslata but they did not have it. So I got Greek sausage. It was great and came with crusty bread.

We were sitting outside on a covered deck. A man and his granddaughter joined us. A couple of local mama dogs showed up and we shared some sausage with them. The pups came later. It was fun and the people were pleasant and welcoming although with little English. When I inquired about a menu the lady showed me the kitchen and what she was cooking. We got another round of red wine and Mythos. Best of all, it was quite reasonably priced or more accurately a bargain. We had a great time just sitting and watching the world go by. If you ever find yourself at Corfu and its cruise terminal, look across the street for ΤΑΒΕΡΝΑ ΧΑΓ ΙΑΤΙ. We highly recommended it as another good example of getting off the tourist road and finding where the natives eat. And we got back to the ship with 45 minutes to spare after a ten minute walk.

Tomorrow is a sea day. I lecture on the great siege of Istanbul in 1453. I won a trivia question answering correctly a couple of years ago. After that we have two days in Istanbul. I need to start studying the guide book. The weather is looking worrisome.

Click on the black panther to read about Ron Fritze's latest book, Invented Knowledge: False History, Fake Science, and Pseudo-religions.