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nothing much to see in Pozzallo
Wednesday, July 15 2026
location: room 115, M.S. Monet in Pozzallo, Italy
Since we were docked there, Gretchen wanted to go see Pozzallo. To me, it was just another probably beautiful Sicilian city, though by this point in the cruise was about as tired as I get of allocating so much of my day walking around through them. For Gretchen, the big draw of Pozzallo was the presence of beaches and maybe a fort.
After we got off the boat, a guy at the security station was assigned to task of walking us out to the road. I suppose this was because the harbor area was mostly industrial and hadn't really been set up for tourists. There were big trucks coming and going and the sidewalks started and ended in ways that didn't make the route obvious.
We continued through an unlovely landscape to the beach, which lay to the northeast. It's fairly broad and sandy and had a good number of people enjoying it. Gretchen gave me all of her stuff to hold and went for a swim, though I paralleled her while wading in the water. The beach was so shallowly-sloped that I could be fifty feet out in the water and it wasn't even up to my knees.
As I passed through a rambunctious knot of boys, one of them asked me something in Italian. "I don't understand," I said in English. He responded with English that indicated that he was American, saying he was from Los Angeles. He wanted to know the time. But I didn't have a watch and the phones were all put away to keep them out of the salt spray.
We entered the street grid of Pozzallo near a temporarily-erected ferris wheel at the northeast end of the beach. Gretchen has been suffering from a pain in her right thigh that hasn't been improving, and she was eager to try a suggestion Kelly had given her for something that might help: arnica. So we went into a pharmacy. It was like other European pharmacies, clean and cold inside, with lots of employees working the counter or puttering around in the back. The front of the pharmacy was mostly dedicated to cosmetics and nearly everything with active ingredients was behind the counter. It turned out that this particular store had no arnica in tablet form, but they did sell tubes of some sort of arnica salve, so Gretchen bought that. While I was waiting for this transaction to complete, a woman walked in with so many varicose veins in her bare legs that it looked like a tattoo depiction of a forest scene.
Later we found another pharmacy, and this one had arnica pills. She ate two of them immediately, but them we looked at the label and saw that it was claiming to be "omeopatico." Nether of us believe that chemicals diluted until there is none of it left can have any medical effects, but this flavor of homeopathy must've been different, since the label also claims that each of the pills contain some number of milligrams (something like 150) of actual arnica.
So far, Pozzallo wasn't much to look at, but our expectations had admittedly been raised. At some point we came to the Torre Cabrera, some sort of fort on the beach, which, unbeknownst to me, was Gretchen's destination. It was old and weathered but nothing special by Italian standards. Having seen that, we had no reason to go further.
There was a boardwalk leading to another beach just to the fort's northeast, and we followed that to the water, where Gretchen got another chance to experience the cooling effects of the Mediterranean. We thought maybe we could then just walk in the sea over to that first beach, the one that ended with a ferris wheel. But we soon arrived at a patch of rocky reef where the water depth became a bit too chaotic to walk for someone carrying things that must not fall into salt water. So we doubled back and headed southwestward through the city via a different set of streets. When we arrived at that first beach again, we hurried through, not taking the time for Gretchen to have another swim.
We tried to take a shortcut to our ship, but were directed by the security people back out to the road to come in the way we'd left.
At lunch today, I was very excited that chana masala was an option. Paired with my hot sauce, it was very good. I would've been more excited about the fava beans in the buffet, but they were flavored in a way that did not work at all with chana masala. Gretchen and I ate with Mary the veterinarian, who was not feeling very well. But her symptoms sounded like the ones I'd had a few days ago, so I was sure that there was no risk of being exposed to something new.
Tonight was our last night of the cruise, so this evening the usual end-of-cruise event was planned. At the time, though, the bus coming back from an excursion had been delayed and it was looking like our departure from the Pozzallo harbor would be delayed as well. Still, flutes of champagne (or, more likely, prosecco) had been put out, so people were drinking them prematurely. Gretchen and I were up on the little top deck for awhile watching the ferries to and from Malta coming and going, since they used the same harbor. They produced huge masses of foam as they turned around in the limited space available, and that foam would blow like tumbleweed across the water. I then watched as they sailed off to the south, slowly reduced to the smallest detail visible with the human eye before dropping below the horizon while another ferry arrived using a somewhat different slice of sea.
When the others finally made it back to the boat, they included Kelly and Brian, and it seems the excursion had involved an herb garden and probably other things and had been "amazing," something Kelly and Brian would not say unless it were true (or they were being sarcastic). But there had been all sorts of problems with the logistics of getting people to and from the destinations, and Dirk had been at his wit's end.
I expected Dirk to experience even further aggravation during tonight's end-of-cruise toast, when the Josef the captain would be speaking again. Sure enough, Josef started going on and on about the backstories of various members of the crew, and this probably would've gone on for an hour had an applause line not given Dirk the opportunity to cut in and say that dinner was served.
Tonight we sat with the clique that had developed over the cruise: me, Gretchen, Kelly, Brian, and the two veterinarians from Brighton, Dave and Mary. We had a rollicking good time but I don't remember any of what was discussed. As always for a final dinner of the cruise, the meal was somewhat disappointing and, though there was less choice, it was presented as a fabulously special meal.
The little security outpost near the habor and our cruise ship. Click to enlarge.
Someone added black sickers to this "do not enter" sign to make it look like a man carrying a large white rectangle. Click to enlarge.
One of the few lovely buildings in Pozzallo. Click to enlarge.
The boxy fort Torre Cabrera, with its lack of fun details. Click to enlarge.
Torre Cabrera viewed from the sea. Click to enlarge.
Gretchen walks along the water line on the beach just north of the harbor where our ship was docked. The large ship visible in the background is one of the Malta ferries. Click to enlarge.
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