Hotel Sea Breeze Scalea

partie de palermo pour aller a monreale! nous avons vue la cathedrale de cette petite ville. les murs et le plafond sont couvert de mosaic faite en grande partie avec le l'or. puis de cette ville on avait une belle vue sur la baie de palermo.

ensuite, de retour a palermo pour se rendre a l'aeroport puis prendre un vol pour rome. ou nous somme maintenant.

apres un peu plus de 3 heures a sillionner la sicile, nous somme arriver a palerme. une ville qui ressemble plus a naples qu'a syracuse.. C'est dimannche, tout est fermer, nous avons eu du mal a trouver de quoi se faire a souper, mais nous somme finalement tomber sur une petite boucherie ou nous ...

... the meal or the all you can drink wine and beer.


Monday hired a car with Nonie, Laura and Jay and drove to Corleone and Aggrigento. Since Laura and Jay don't drive manual and None's wasn't too comfortable driving in Italian traffic I drove most of the day. Since we turned up last minute we got the only car they had left... a tank of a minivan that was not designed with the narrow and winding streets of Corleone in mind... I had ...

WE depart Sicily with wonderful memories of sunny skies, blue Mediterranean seas, green hillsides covered with grape vines and olive trees, old cities, castles and greek temples, and of course good food.
We will see more sights in Rome, and then travel down the coast to Sorrento and Amalfi. I will post more about the things we are doing and seeing as we continue our trip.

We were picked up by our guide, Marco, again all by ourselves, for a full day to the east coast of Sicily. Quite a long drive (maybe 2 hours non-stop), relative to others....Sicily is not that big a place really.



Marco, whilst friendly, knew so little English that it was almost impossible to carry on a proper conversation, which made for a quiet trip! Never-the-less, we made it safely across the inland of Sicily to Catania, from where you can see Etna rising ominously ...

... only 20 minutes out of the city centre, Mondello appeared to us to be a sleepy, quiet, pretty place, certainly around mid-morning on a Monday!


Mondello is also a fishing village, and there was no shortage of boats moored en masse opposite the main square. Small stalls were selling freshly caught fish, and huge gulls hovered, swooped & ran in groups along this portion of the shore to grab any scraps or morsels they could.

While strolling along the ...

... agricultural land....outstanding vantage points where the ancient peoples cited their towns (so as to see enemies far away, and also to make a show of might & strength)


We walked all around the temple, then took one of the buses which run every half hour up the nearby hill to the summit, where the theatre & old town ruins are sprawled across it. BTW, the path to the temple, from the car/bus parking area, while quite wide, was somewhat precarious in ...

... around in a Nissan Micra (ideal for navigating the amazing traffic flows thru the city...no lanemarking!) to main piazzas, cathedrals, theatres, the old port, the original 4-way intersection at the centre of the ancient city......incredible structures built to last!



Only 8 kms outside the city we drove to the elevated village of Monreale....location of an amazing cathedral which features one of the most impressive & vast uses of ...

... stay. Beware though :) the population of Scalea doesn’t have any idea that the English language exist, so you have to learn a few basic words in Italian before you exit the hotel (The reception of Hotel De Rose speaks a good English).
Get ready to say “vino” (wine), when you are in South Italy you really need that word! Have a nice trip!

... a look, a big deal! Not! cuz we get into a doubtful neighborhood with a lot of strange people who looked at us thinking WTF are they doing here... after a few moments of fear we remember that as a funny situation, even so, we really enjoyed Palermo.