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Stromboli
Monday, July 13 2026
location: room 115, M.S. Monet approaching Lipari, Italy
The boat's air conditioning hasn't really been up to the job of dealing with the summer heat of the Mediterranean Sea. We've noticed this in the dining room, which always becomes stuffy and hot by the end of the meal, and this has also been evident in our cabin, where we often have to sleep without blankets. We were doing this last night, and at some point I awoke and lay there trying to fall back to sleep. But every five minutes or so a silent, horrifying-smelling fart would come out of Gretchen's ass and I'd claw a pillow over my head. I eventually found a way to sleep that didn't completely smother me but also somehow intercepted the stench before it poison the inside of my nostrils.
This morning after breakfast, Gretchen wanted to explore Lipari, an island off the north coast of Sicily. The port in Lipari wasn't suited to ships even as small as our little cruise ship, so we were forced to take a tender to shore. Assuming the protocol would be like that in the Caribbean, I expected the tenders to be the little orange boats hanging from cranes in the middle of the top deck. But no, the tender was basically a water taxi that seemed to be owned and operated by someone working from a base in a harbor south of Lipari's castle. Once on shore, we went through a tiny security gate and then were loosed into the small city on the east cast of the island.
The first thing Gretchen wanted to do was find a place to swim. She'd done a little researched and decided the place was to go was Spiaggia di Portinente, about a third of the mile to the south. It's a narrow beach of rounded gravel stones (no sand!) crammed between a wall and the sea. Gretchen immediately entered the water at its north end, and I continued down the beach looking for some shade. People were sunning themselves on the gravel stones and the beach was so narrow, I had to wade into the water to get around some of them, since the beach was only about ten feet wide. I'd barely made it to a shady spot when Gretchen signaled she was done with her swim.
From the beach, we walked westward on winding narrow streets through the city. Gretchen loved how it looked and the way people had decorated things. Italy, she said, there's just something about it. Periodically vehicles would come barrelling through, not seeming to pay much attention to the presence of pedestrians and moving a bit fast for the narrow streets. That too is very Italy.
Our walk through the charming medieval city took us north enough that we were able to enter Lipari's castle from the north. It sits atop a rocky mound with a sheer cliff against the sea (something we should've noted) and includes a perfectly serviceable cathedral and some excavated ruins from ancient history as well as an amphitheatre that looks like it was built in the 1960s. The amphitheatre has a good view of the sea and is just beyond some lovely old planetrees underneath which teenagers seemed to be doing teenager things with their youth, inexperience, and immortality.
We then walked down out of the castle though a gap in the wall where there probably had once been a gate, passing vendors trying to sell trinkets made of local obsidian (reminding me of similar vendors in the outskirts of Mexico City). This put us back into the thick of the charming (if tourist-clogged) heart of the city, with its many gift shops and cafés. Here we ran into someone from our boat who seemed a little lost but whom we didn't want to be stuck walking around with.
We found our way to the larger port north of the castle and sat in an air conditioned bus station briefly to cool down. Then we found our way back to one of the main streets and sat down at an outdoor café and ordered an espresso (for me) and (for Gretchen) granita, a sort of sweetened fruit juice that was too sweet for Gretchen but which I found perfect for whatever my body was craving at the time. We were served by a squirrely young man who made no attempt to speak to us in English despite the fact that we could not speak Italian (actually some latent Italian was coming back to Gretchen, though it was getting mixed with Spanish). That espresso, not unexpectedly, was perfectly good.
Sitting down for an espresso and watching the world walk past is more my thing than being part of the world walking past for others who are enjoying an espresso. So that was nice, and I wanted more of it. Fortunately, Gretchen had developed a hankering for locally-made pizza and remembered passing a restaurant that offered vegan pizza. It took us awhile to find that pizza place again, partly because they'd changed their menu since we last passed through and now the vegan pizza option was invisible. But after some discussion in a mix of broken English and even more broken Hispano-Italian, the correct menu was found. In keeping with how Gretchen expected pizza to work in Italy, we each ordered our own pizzas. I also ordered a Belgian-style beer called 24 Baroni Rossa that had been brewed in Sicily. It was very good and had its own unique flavor. When they arrived, the pizzas were bigger than expected, and we thought maybe we should've just ordered one. They were very simple: just veggies like zucchini, tomatoes, red onions, and capers and no faux cheese or any sort of tomato sauce. But that crust with its brick-oven provenance made it work. I managed to eat all of mine and Gretchen ate about half of hers, so we got a to-go box. (They're thinner in Italy than they are in the United States.)
To get back to the harbor where a tender would take us to our ship, we had to get around that castle high on the cliff above the sea to the little harbors to its south. For some reason we'd forgotten about that cliff, though, and wondered if we could get to the harbor by walking along the sea side of the castle. Initially things seemed promising as we followed a concrete walkway out around Sottocoperta Bar and Anagrafe Lipari. It even had steps! But then after round a corner to the east side of the rocky cape, the walkway vanished and we had to scramble over jagged outcrops or through tidal pools as seagulls eyed our pizza box. And then, as we rounded the cape, the castle came into view, and we could see it perched high on a cliff that wasn't just vertical; it was cantilevered out slightly. There was no way to get around it except by swimming. But we weren't going to do that; I cannot swim and we were carrying various electronics. Fortunately, there was a concrete stairway climbing to some buildings uphill from where we were; perhaps that would allow us to get back to the city without having to retrace our steps. We were making our way through what seemed like an alleyway when a voice called out. It was in English, so perhaps we'd been overheard. It said "this is private property." Gretchen apologized profusely, saying we'd gotten lost down by the edge of the sea and all we wanted was some way out. So a muscular young man was found to lead us out. It turned out we'd come into the back of Turmalin Day/Night Club, so I'd like to think we were being escorted out by the bouncer. On the way, we passed a very nice collection of vinyl albums.
In front of Turmalin is Piazza Giuseppe Mazzini, an open space from which we could get a better look at the castle and the unclimbable rock it was perched atop of. Fortunately, from where we were now standing, it was as easy to pass around the castle to the west as it would've been had there been a cantilevered sidewalk over the sea to the castle's east.
On the way to the harbor where the tender would be, a boat ride I was very much looking forward to, we ran across the veterinarians Dave and Mary at an outdoor café. They'd just gotten back from their high-end tourism, having been chauffeured in a Mercedes to a farm where a nice Italian family served them a multicourse meal featuring most of the veggies that Gretchen hates. Now Mary was feeling like she ate too much and just wanted to lie down, a feeling I could relate to. But instead we were standing there while Gretchen seemed to want a whole long conversation about it. At some point Mary looked at me and could tell I was miserable and said something, and that allowed us to continue to the harbor where the tender would be. But when we got to the little security gate where the tender was docked, we could see its pilot taking something of an Italian siesta and the security woman said that the next tender ride was in forty minutes. Dirk had fibbed to us again, having told everyone that tenders would be running "every half hour."
If we had to wait that long, Gretchen wanted to go for another swim at Spiaggia di Portinente, the beach with gravel instead of sand. I didn't want to go that far, so I found bench in the shade in an alleyway along the way and sat there looking at Google Maps on my phone, which was pretty much the only thing I could do with it without WiFi.
At some point while I was sitting there, I heard a familiar voice and it was Mary. She and Dave were on the way to the gravel beach as well, but only Dave wanted to swim. So Mary joined me on the bench until Gretchen returned. I don't remember what we talked about, but our conversation was fairly rich in punchlines.
Back on the ship, I participated in another game of Five Crowns, the card game, with Gretchen, Kelly, and Brian. Kelly had been talking with a person in the know and had further gossip about the Carin-Frederick-the-cruise-director scandal in the Caribbean. It seems the details of what Frederick said to Carin in an effort to seduce her got back to the vegan cruise company, so they will not be hiring Frederick for their cruise director on the next Caribbean cruise this winter. Frederick is maybe my age but the targets of his advances were always women in their early 20s. The only one he successfully bedded, it turns out, was the goth girl with the streaks of blue hair, the one who I never saw far from her rhinestone-bejeweled mother.
This afternoon our ship continued northward towards the volcanic island of Stromboli. Being an American, my only definition for the word "stromboli" is "a delicious Italian food similar to a calzone but rolled into a cylinder instead of folded." It turns out that a stromboli is a distinctly American food item. In Italy, "Stromboli," refers only to the most actively volcanic of the Aeolian islands, and the accent is placed on the first, not second, syllable. The plan tonight was to have an outdoor buffet on the back deck of the boat so we could eat while watching Stromboli do its thing. I think of volcanoes as reluctant performers, but evidently Stromboli is as dependable as Old Faithful, and we were sure to be entertained tonight.
Gretchen went out to the back deck early to secure what she thought was the best table, in the very back of the ship. But then she started having second thoughts, wondering if it was going to be too sunny. Indeed, it was very sunny at first. But the sun was falling fast, and it wasn't long before the sun was a non-issue. We sat with Kelly, Brian, the British couple from France, and the nice southern couple that includes the guy who teaches computer programming. The buffet food was more in keeping for a spectacle and featured veggie burgers, delightfully crisped onions, pickles, and other fixings to allow us to custom-assemble burgers perfectly suited to our preferences.
As we were passing other lesser Aeolean islands (a complex anchored by Panarea), I could see the mass of Sicily itself to the south, with the tallest visible peak being Etna, another active volcano. As we drew closer to Stromboli, we could see smoke near the top that didn't look like clouds, and fresh little puffs kept appearing when we weren't looking. At some point, though, I was looking at Stromboli at the time it belched out some smoke. That's the kind of natural activity like a total solar eclipse or the birth of a baby elephant that is very different when seen with unaided eyes than when seen on recorded video. Once we'd seen one poof of smoke, all we wanted to do was watch the top of Stromboli so we'd be watching when the next poof happened.
Meanwhile, our ship was heading clockwise around Stromboli, starting from north of Stromboli's most developed villages. Darkness descended as we went parallel to Stromboli's southeast shoreline, and at some point the poofs of smoke were replaced by incandescent splashes of bright orange: superheated lava being ejected under pressure! Such outbursts came reliably every ten or fifteen minutes. The most spectacular sprays of lava came from a crater high on the volcano, though a little below it to the southwest was another crater that glowed constantly.
As we were watching, Gretchen, Kelly, Brian, and I were near that group of Chinese vegans. They'd tuned into the spectacle a little later than us, so we explained the regularity of the eruptions and what to look for. We all tried taking pictures or video of the eruptions, but it was a hard thing to get right. Usually the lava wasn't visible long enough for my camera to lock a focus on it.
At some point I'd seen enough of this amazing spectacle and declared that after the next eruption, I would head back to the room. And so I did. Our ship never docked on Stromboli; at some point in the night it turned south and headed towards Messina on Sicily.
Our ship as we left it in the tender. Click to enlarge.
On the tender to Lipari, with the veterinarians Mary in the foreground and her betrothed Dave behind her. Click to enlarge.
Piazza San Bartolo with Chiesa di San Bartolomeo Apostolo Extra Moenia. Click to enlarge.
Inside a small church. Click to enlarge.
Bro Jesus. He should be wearing a backwards baseball cap. Click to enlarge.
Street art. Click to enlarge.
Sessantanove, bello! Click to enlarge.
Dutchman's pipe, a vine with crazy flowers. Click to enlarge.
Balconies. Click to enlarge.
A young cat with a motorcycle. Click to enlarge.
The Lipari cathedral. Click to enlarge.
This display in the Lipari cathedral holds a reclined woman with a bleeding gash on her neck. Click to enlarge.
Some sort of model boat displayed in the Lipari cathedral. Click to enlarge.
Unearth archeology in the castle grounds. Click to enlarge.
A fairly modern amphitheatre on the edge of the castle grounds. Click to enlarge.
A seagull Click to enlarge.
A sleepy cat. Click to enlarge.
A vine-surrounded window from inside the castle entrance. Click to enlarge.
Gretchen on the way to the castle through some lovely stone architecture. Click to enlarge.
Gretchen takes a photo for a family in a window in the stone entrance of the castle. Click to enlarge.
You can tell people have been touching the king in this embossed brass plate on a door. Click to enlarge.
The gap that should be a gate in the castle wall leading back into town. Click to enlarge.
Detail of the gap. Click to enlarge.
A flatiron intersection. Click to enlarge.
Plants and a calico cat. Click to enlarge.
The bustle of urban Lipari. Click to enlarge.
Vegan pizza in Italy. Click to enlarge.
Gretchen with vegan pizza, wearing a teeshirt sent by my childhood friend Nathan that reads "OMG I forgot to have children!" Click to enlarge.
The rugged rocks where we gave up on our foolish plan to walk around the castle on the sea side. Click to enlarge.
The view of the castle from Turmalin Day/Night Club. Click to enlarge.
View of the base of the castle rock from the small harbor to the south. Click to enlarge.
The view of Turmalin Day/Night Club from the tender at sea. Click to enlarge.
Mt. Etna and Sicily. Click to enlarge.
Panarea Island. Click to enlarge.
Detail of Panarea Island. Click to enlarge.
Stromboli with smoke. Click to enlarge.
Stromboli with another burst of smoke. Click to enlarge.
Me and Gretchen with Stromboli and a fresh puff of smoke. Click to enlarge.
A picture I tried to take of an incandescent eruption from Stromboli. Click to enlarge.
I had an online AI tool unblur the photo of that eruption. Click to enlarge.
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