The Straits of Messina

We were on official business, as official as it gets here, to do an Azania apartment inspection in Reggio Calabria, which necessitates crossing over the Straits of Messina from Sicily to the lower part of the boot of Italy.

Any English teacher worth her salt would recognize the opportunity to cross the Straits of Messina as an opportunity to relive The Iliad, get in the head of Odysseus and imagine what that trip home from the Trojan War must have been like.  Ten years to travel home included many diversions and stops along the way.  The Cicones, the Cyclopes, the Lastrygonians, Poseidon’s interventions, King Aeolus, The competition between Zeus and Apollo just to entertain themselves cost Odysseus untold complications.   Odysseus lost his ships and his crew and was in a desperate set of circumstances, doomed never to return home. King Alcinoüs listened to the story of Odysseus' wanderings, presented him with rich gifts, and furnished him a ship to get to Ithaca.  In the end Odysseus passes through the Straits of Messina off the coast of Sicily through the perils of Scylla and Charybdis narrowly escaping with his life.  He passes the Island of Persephone, (Sicily) the Hubs of Hades and arrives on the shores of Ithaca. Of course it is a myth, but excellent reading for Freshman English.

Here is the best documentation I could find for the Sicilian adventures of Odysseus.

• Lotus-eaters: Djerba, following Polybius (1.2.17)
• Cyclops: south-east Sicily, near Etna and Lentini (1.2.9); also suggests that Homer "borrowed his idea of the one-eyed Cyclopes from the history of Scythia, for it is reported that the Arimaspians are a one-eyed people" (1.2.10)
• Aeolus: Lipari, among the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily
• Laestrygonians: south-east Sicily (1.2.9)
• land of the Cimmerians: the Bosporus (1.2.9)
• the Ocean: the Black Sea (ancient Pontus; 1.2.10)
• Sirens: either Cape Faro, by the Strait of Messina; or Sirenussae, a headland in Italy between the Bay of Naples and the Gulf of Salerno; or Naples itself (1.2.12-13)
• Scylla and Charybdis: Strait of Messina (1.2.9, 1.2.16)
• Ogygia (Calypso's island) and Scheria: "imagined in fantasy" as being in the Atlantic (1.2.18)

Our adventure did not measure up to Odysseus’s trip but nonetheless fun to see first hand.

Tickets to load our car on the ferry 45 Euro!

Unofficial parking directions are "jam in as close as you can." They wave you in to less than an inch of bumper space and you are required to turn your side view mirrors toward the car so you don't loose them exiting the ferry!

Mostly small cars among the buses and the 18 wheeler freight trucks. Notice the green ramp for exit, one car at a time but at least six lanes wide on the platform.  Rev your engines and get ready for the exit!

This ferry boat goes back and forth all day long and takes 20-25 minutes to make the trip.The wait in line to get on the ferry can be short or hours depending on the traffic and the time of day.  Rush hour is brutal!

Messina siting from the ferry boat. Ahhh Odysseus what a great trip!