Politeama Palace Palermo

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 ...

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.

... everything around it! Quite a bit of 'smoke' issuing from the volcano meant one could not really see the 3400m summit, even from a good distance.



Our van took us up the neverending winding access road up Etna, until we reached 2000m elevation, and the tourist centre of the volcano came into view. This is where all the souvenir shops, eateries, car parks, bus-stops are all situated. Marco dropped us off near a restaurant and adjacent crater walk, advising us we ...

... s remains were taken through the streets (she had been known as a holy woman when she lived her life in isolation on the mountain, praying & watching over the city), the plague was no more!?


The grotto we got to see on Mont Pellegrino obviously held much more favour with locals who still take offerings to the Saint, and we could see evidence of jewellery, money, etc inside a glass-walled shrine where a likeness of Santa Rosalia has been setup.....quite ...

... like one imagines it might have almost 1000 years ago! Small, narrow, cobbled streets suitable only for pedestrial traffic these days, but once the routes for small carts drawn by horse, abound (you can still see rows of wider pavers marking where the cart wheels were positioned in days gone by).

Lovely old churches, shops, eateries, etc everywhere....had a nice lunch where we sampled famous local almond/sugar sweets (really good stuff!) On the day we were there, an ...

... 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 ...

... Angevin dynasty, and so on. It stayed nominally its own kingdom (at one point merged with southern Italy in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies) until Garibaldi did the unification of Italy thing in the mid-1800's. (So it's really only been a part of Italy for about as long as Texas has been a part of the US. ) The joke that my mother used to make was that whenever anyone fought a war, the loser got Sicily. None of which really ...

If you have doubts whether the mafia is still working... I don't.
Palermo is a charming mediterranean city, his highlights are so great, his Cathedral is amazing, but try not to get lost in the streets... we saw a peculiar street market and we decided to ...

... usually i can get my question across and understand pretty well. I figured it'd make it a little safer for me maybe...so far its worked out well. one thing the ship did provide was a place to take some exsquisite pictures...you will see... . i arrived to my hostel here, not sure how long i'm gonna stay, but for now i'm content. gonna go find some nice beaches now. adios

... The father then offered to give us a tour of the city after dinner, and off we went in the back seat of their Fiat as their kids were bundled in the other car with their aunt, uncle, and nona. He showed us all the sights of Palermo by night, including the Sicily jail, where many mafiosa have spent some time (after convincing Matt he was about to take us to a luxury hotel favoured by the mob). It was really nice, and just reflects the general friendliness that we found among all ...