We arrived in Palermo yesterday, as you know. In our short post, we left out a couple of details. Once we arrived at the train station, we had about a 20-minute walk to get to our hotel. After all the things we've read and heard about Palermo, we were naturally overly-precautious. While there are definitely some sketchy areas and many dark, narrow alleys in this town, my first impression coming from the train station was that this was a regular big city, like Paris or New York. Its the most diverse city we've seen so far on this trip, with tons of clothing shops and some international chain stores.
However, as we got closer to our hotel we were both getting a little more worried. Turns out there is a big open-air market right on our block and our hotel is very non-descript - no sign, no nothing. We walked into a regular apartment building and some residents pointed us to our hotel, on the 4th floor. The elevator is so small that only one of us fit in it at a time, given the size of our backpacks. Finally, we walked into our hotel. It is impossible to describe.
Vito, the owner, has the hotel in his house. He is on vacation, so Tanner (or Turner) helped us get settled in. We're in the "Tango" room, next to the "Sultan" room. Look at the pictures to see the murals on our walls (and from the Sultan room). Look at the pictures to see the "breakfast room". The first thing I thought of is how crazy it would be to have a Passover Seder in this place. Next to the breakfast room is what I can only describe as the fortune-tellers room (I still need to get a picture of this room). We weren't checked in for five minutes before Mike was recruited to set up the WiFi for the hotel. Its just crazy here! But I really like it and its just a great retreat from a different kind of crazyness on the streets below.
Ok. Finally I can get to the details from our first real day in Palermo. In planning out this day, I was very worried - our guidebooks give the impression that there are 1,000 things to do here. So we got an early start to get as much under our belts as possible (since there are several areas of the city we were warned to stay away from after dark, especially since Mike oozes "I'm an American"). We started at the archeological museum, where there were a lot of interesting artifacts, including what is basically another Rosetta Stone that didn't make it into the British Museum. Of course, we were also quite interested in watching the turtles in the courtyard fountain climb out of the water and sun themselves.
From there, we visited several churches and oratoriums (this may sound ignorant of us, but we're not quite sure what oratoriums are, except that they are built with incredible detail). We walked through a large open-air market on our way to visit a very well maintained palace. Across the street there was nice public park where we had lunch and saw some amazing Banyan trees, with aerial roots. They come down from the branches and basically form new trunks. They were amazing!After lunch we walked through one of the "bad" neighborhoods - La Kelsa (which was fine during the day), and then down a major street to cross through the city. On the way, we stopped at the "Four Corners" - a major intersection that bisects the mideval part of town into four distinct neighborhoods. Apparently, one was born into one of the neighborhoods, grew up there, married there, had kids there, and died there. And it was big-time taboo to marry someone from another neighborhood.
We had to stop when we saw an amazing catheral ("The Duomo"). Just a few blocks down, we saw the Nuovo Porta - the door that separates the new city from the old, and continued on to visit the Palazzo dei Normanni, where the government seat is now. We couldn't see much of this palace since parliment was in session, but we did get to see the Cappella Palatina (Palatine Chapel). That was worth the entry fee just on its own. I think the entire room was mosiac except for the ceiling, which took things to a whole-'notha-level (thats for you Becky). Our book says you can't see anything like this except in Istanbul or Ravenna. It was amazing. From here, we walked quite a way from the city center to visit another catacomb. This one was way creepier than any other I've ever seen - all the skeletons (about 8,000) were still there and wearing their burial clothes. And propped up against the walls. Turns out there is something about where these catacombs are located - it seems to help preseve the bodies in such a way that they are in "great" condition. The last person buried here was a young child in 1920, and the locals call her "Sleeping Beauty", since she still looks life-like. We weren't allowed to take pictures down there, but if you want to see what it looked like click here (may not be appropriate for the little ones).
We walked back to our hotel to relax for a bit before heading out to dinner in the new part of Palermo. I am not sure what "new" is, but this part of town is really beautiful, with wide boulevards and very nice aparments lining the street. We had dinner at a great restaurant, and even got dessert at the restaurant, since the food was so good. We had our first semi-freddo (sort of like a fluffy ice-cream, made with whipping cream and eggs) and it was delicious.We accomplished more than what we thought we would today, and our feet are tired. But Palermo is a great city, so far! Tomorrow we're off on a day-trip, so we'll get some rest on the bus ride there and back.
Gelato Gusti per il Giorno:
Mike - Vaniglia e Stracciatella
Aviva - Stracciatella con panne (with fresh made whipped cream!)
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