May Sicilian getaway...
Before I start with the trip report, it's worth putting in some background. Originally Lany and I had planned to take this holiday in Tenerife, but after going to Majorca I decided we'd seen what Tenerife was probably like and changed it. Lany and I were SOOOOOOO happy we did it. Sicily is amazing! To think we could have missed out on it all (I'm sure Tenerife is nice etc) is really quite scary.
Getting to Sicily was a huge effort! We had to be up at 2:30am, to get a cab a 3am, to be at the airport at 4am, to get the plane at 5:40am! Fortunately we didn't actually have any issues getting there, everything went smoothly and we were one of the first on the plane. Unfortunately getting into Palermo on the other side wasn't so easy. For some reason the trains weren't running, and no one was exactly helpful in telling us that (even the tourist office). Eventually we got the bus into town and managed to not get too lost finding the hotel.
There was a school group in the hotel so it was a little noisy for the first night or two, but while it wasn't very modern etc, it was nice and clean - and it was right in the middle of the night district - and right next to an AMAZING gelati place!!!!
On the first day we just walked around and got our bearings. Obviously we were pretty tired from the early morning, so we didn't get too far. One of the first things we did was check out the surrounding district where we found a cool market. This one was known for it's fish more than vegies etc, but there were a few fruit and veg stalls. We stocked up on some fresh fruit and had if for lunch on the stairs of the main theatre watching crowds go by - the fruit was amazing (as it always is in Italy). Oh, and the tuna that they have in the fishmarket and absolutely massive! We couldn't believe the size of them - the meat looks like steak.
Palermo itself is pretty old and not very wealthy. It obviously had lots of money in the past, but now lots of areas in the town are getting quite run down. Of course, the tourist bits are quite nice, and there are a few flashy-er bits to the north, but it's similar looking to other Italian cities. Of course the churches are amazing, and there's quite a few piazza's etc to check out with nice sculptures. We went to a city park and saw these really crazy trees. They grow by droppping feeler type things to ground from the branches, it's like wax dripping down and really bizarre. Sars, I'm sure you'd be fascinated by them.
If you are willing to walk around and go into the slightly older town area, it's a typical maze of old buildings packed close together with winding alleys (don't go around there too much a night). There's plenty of cool things to see like 'reclaimed buildings' where artists camp up, street art, old appartments with people living right on top of each other etc. Unfortunately where lots of old towns have looked after their older/original parts, Palermo hasn't had the money to do that (some stuff is falling apart).
As indicated earlier, it's compulsory to eat galeti in Italy, and we certainly didn't wait long. I saw people walking around with sandwich-type things that looked like they had ice cream in it, but I couldn't be sure. Eventually when I'd seen enough, I was sure it was ice cream, so we hunted out the source (the gelati place near our hotel). One of the specialties of the area is 'ice cream brioche' (ice cream in a bun). 2 euro and it's a massive amount of icecream, and it's sooooooo good. Anyone going there has to eat it! Surprisingly using a bun makes a whole lot of sense, it soaks up much more of the dripping ice cream, and you can eat it or not depending on how hungry you are - the bread is quite sweet though, so it works well with the flavours.
I'll get the conversation about food out of the way early. Food in Italy is amazing and we ate absolutely stacks of it! Each night we tried to find somewhere new to go, to find authentic places etc, and each night we had too many choices and walked out absolutely full. It's totally awesome! Because the standard is so high, I'll only briefly mention the amazing places we went to (but they are all just so cool!). Oh, weird bar of the trip award goes to the 'Aboriginal Internet Cafe' in Palermo. It was a weird place with strange decoration, and not even run by aussies (I believe) but it was always full at night!
We had planned to try to get Mt Etna, so on the first day we got up early to get a bus to the other side of the island. After getting to the bus station, we got tickets etc and found out you have to get to Catania and then go on from there, so we jumped on the 10:30 bus for a three hour trip across the island. Although it was a long ride, it was very interested to see the country side, it's so much more green that I expected - it looks like you could grow anything there! There's rolling fields, olive orchards on hillsides etc, and one of the more amazing engineering aspects of it is that the motorways are all built on raised platform/bridges.
There's very few areas where the road is actually asphalt on the ground, most of the time it's on these bridges. To consider all the effort and cost that it must have taken to create such a hugely long motorway, you have to be impressed. As the island is quite undulating/rocky, I suspect it must have been a sound engineering decision to just build a flat motorway suspended off the ground.
After getting to Canatia, we were shocked to find out that we'd missed the bus to Mt Etna.... There's only ONE bus each day, at 8am!!?!? What the?! No one in Palermo told us that, and over the next few days when we went to the tourist office etc a number of times, no one seemed to know about it either - Sicily seems to be one of the places where you need to do a little bit of work yourself if you are going to travel around, the tourist offices only tend to know about local things. Aaaanyway, it seems the recession is hitting everyone, and no travel companies are operating anymore :( I was quite bummed because there was no way that we could make it to Catania for 8am, and if we stayed there overnight we'd miss out of a lot of time, so it was a tough call but we had to strike Etna off the list.
Fortunately Catania has enough things to see that made the trip well worth it. We had a few hours in town before getting the bus back, and it was really enjoyable. Where Palermo is more modern and industrial, Cantania is an old-school Italian city with Cathedrals, piazza's, markets etc. Unfortunately you can't get into the Cathedral at the moment for some reason, but it's pretty massive and still worth spending time checking out. We grabbed lunch in the main piazza overlooking it and the council offices, it was very nice.
It must have been some special day because when we arrived in the morning, things were fairly quiet. We had noticed people walking around with flowers a lot, but didn't think it was anything too massive. After lunch however the main street of town (with several churches along it) were absolutely rammed with people selling flowers and candles. There were so many people it was slowing traffic and every church was full! We didn't hang around too long though as we had an old castle to see, an old roman theatre (ruins in the middle of town) and various other sites. On our exploration tour we ended up in a courtyard at one point looking at an amazing massive house/building. We were amazingly surprised to find out that it was a university beause it was just so amazing and beautiful, and then amongst the gardens are students hanging around talking, studying etc. What a place to study (though UWA isn't too bad). We just saw everything in time to get the bus back to Palermo, but after grabbing dinner we collapsed in bed from the long day.
On the second full day in Sicily, we planned to head to the Greek ruins at Agrigento. Again we were up early, but the bus ride is far easier at 1.5 hours. It was a hot day, but for some reason there's nothing better than climbing over ruins in the shining sun, scaring all the little lizards away, when I think of an Italian holiday. The ruins are amazing and are built along a tall ridge of hills overlooking a valley which then flattens off down to the ocean (part of the city wall ran along the ridge).
Agrigento was once the 'Ibiza' (party town) of the old Greek world, apparently it was absolutely amazing. The ruins are still very intact and it's well worth the trip. We had grabbed a snack lunch (fruit and meat/cheese/bread etc) which we had on a ledge, sitting under an olive tree, overlooking the lush valley and ocean, probably where thousands of people had done in the thousands of years in the past. It was a really amazing thing to contemplate and Lany and I agreed it was one of the most amazing lunches we'd ever had.
Sars here are some weird trees for you, the countryside was beautiful, but the weird tall flower tree was pretty cool. It was however outdone by the new species I discovered - the tourist tree. This tree only flowers in high heat and for some reason only attracts the oldest tourists with it's flowers..... :)
On the way back to town that night afternoon we saw people paragliding off some of the higher hills in the area, it looked like amazing fun (maybe one for next time). The night we went to a quite famous pizzeria in an old piazza in Palermo. It was brilliant being able to sit outside in the warm breeze with people chatting all around, and of course amazing food.
Again, the next day, we didn't stay in Palermo and instead we took a train to get to Cefalu (pronounced, Chefaloo). It's a small fishing village with a fort overlooking it, right on the ocean. We had heard it had one of the best beaches on that side of Palermo and it didn't disappoint. In some places the train tracks go right next to the water, it was quite weird to see and I realised how much I miss the water being there (appreciate it you Perth people!). Cefalu itself is a very cute and quaint older town. It's clean, has lots of little streets and alleys and is a very good holiday spot if people wanted to relax on a beach. The main cathedral has cool mosaics and a really really old roof done by Arabic artisans.
There used to be a fort on a cliff overlooking Cefalu, so we thought we'd head up there to check it out. As usual, the climb looked fairly ok from the bottom, but we misjudged exactly where the top was and yeah, it was pretty damn far. We were also climbing in the hottest part of the day, and I was in thongs, so we didn't plan it very well. It is worth it though as at the top there are great views of the surrounding coastline and the town itself. There were a few places where we could see a picnic would be amazing, but not having food (and getting burnt like hell despite wearing sun cream) we didn't hang around too long.
Tired and hot, we came down the hill and sought shelter and food! Fortunately we found a small street with houses backing on the water slightly away fromt he main beach. A lot of these houses had restaurants on the ground floor, and we found one with an amazing outdoor balcony area over the water. The food was great, but the view and sound of the water lapping at the rocks was even better. Oh, that reminds me, for some reason all the locals in Sicily spoke French as a second language more than English, and we saw French tourists everywhere! It seems it's one of the place Frenchies go to vacation (like Germans/Austrians going to Majorca/Spain!). After lunch we hit the beach to recoup our energy and drink a stack of water ;) We even had to find shade near a cafe umbrella as it was so hot. I LOVED being in the water again.... ! Cefalu really was an amazing place.
Finally we had our last full day in Palermo. Because we'd been so dead on the first day, we hadn't really done the major tourist stuff, so our last full day was set aside for that. We'd seen half the stuff, so we headed to the other side of the city to see the main sight of the city, the church in the Parliament offices. Unfortunately we got sidetracked in the morning and made it to the main cathedral around 11:30. We got a god look around and it's very impressive (it has relics of saints bones in the treasury) , however by the time we got to the Parliament bit, it was 12:30 and it was closing for lunch. We trudged around the area to find some markets and get some fruit for lunch (it was too hot for serious food) before waiting for the church to re-open. We had considered leaving it, how good could it be??
Well, when we eventually walked into the church, we realised we were so completely wrong, I would have killed myself if we hadn't waited. The church is pretty small as it was only for nobility etc in the old castle/barracks/parliament thing (the building has had a few uses), but every single surface of it is just covered in mosaic. The main mosaic is all gold leaf and amazingly clear and detailed, it even rivals the Basillica San Marco in Venice!!! We were stunned and spent over half an hour just looking around. You really can't take it all in, every time you look somewhere, it's like you've missed something and have to look again. I tried to take photos of everything, but it just doesn't do it any justice - you'll just HAVE to go and see it yourself. The roof was again done by Arabic craftsman.
We spent the afternoon doing some shopping (it was the first chance we'd had) before grabbing a last dinner at a cheap local place we'd found. It was basically a kebab place but they served everything (pasta/pizza etc) and all the food was great - plus it was full of locals so it had a rowdy atmosphere. Of course, we went and got a last gelato as a farewell to Italy.
The next day we were up again early to get the bus around 7:30am, to get to the airport. As I said at the start, I can't believe I hadn't thought of going to Sicily before, and that we were almost going to Tenerife instead. We had such an awesome holiday! Palermo is a good place to use as a travel base, but doing a big tour with a company is probably a good idea as you need to do some of the tourist information-hunting on your own. We missed out on Etna, but the other stuff we saw was so cool, and the food is so amazing, the weather was so warm, the ocean was so easy to swim in, the gelato was so incredible and the regional cities so full of history, I definitely want to go back again.
Getting to Sicily was a huge effort! We had to be up at 2:30am, to get a cab a 3am, to be at the airport at 4am, to get the plane at 5:40am! Fortunately we didn't actually have any issues getting there, everything went smoothly and we were one of the first on the plane. Unfortunately getting into Palermo on the other side wasn't so easy. For some reason the trains weren't running, and no one was exactly helpful in telling us that (even the tourist office). Eventually we got the bus into town and managed to not get too lost finding the hotel.
There was a school group in the hotel so it was a little noisy for the first night or two, but while it wasn't very modern etc, it was nice and clean - and it was right in the middle of the night district - and right next to an AMAZING gelati place!!!!
On the first day we just walked around and got our bearings. Obviously we were pretty tired from the early morning, so we didn't get too far. One of the first things we did was check out the surrounding district where we found a cool market. This one was known for it's fish more than vegies etc, but there were a few fruit and veg stalls. We stocked up on some fresh fruit and had if for lunch on the stairs of the main theatre watching crowds go by - the fruit was amazing (as it always is in Italy). Oh, and the tuna that they have in the fishmarket and absolutely massive! We couldn't believe the size of them - the meat looks like steak.
Palermo itself is pretty old and not very wealthy. It obviously had lots of money in the past, but now lots of areas in the town are getting quite run down. Of course, the tourist bits are quite nice, and there are a few flashy-er bits to the north, but it's similar looking to other Italian cities. Of course the churches are amazing, and there's quite a few piazza's etc to check out with nice sculptures. We went to a city park and saw these really crazy trees. They grow by droppping feeler type things to ground from the branches, it's like wax dripping down and really bizarre. Sars, I'm sure you'd be fascinated by them.
If you are willing to walk around and go into the slightly older town area, it's a typical maze of old buildings packed close together with winding alleys (don't go around there too much a night). There's plenty of cool things to see like 'reclaimed buildings' where artists camp up, street art, old appartments with people living right on top of each other etc. Unfortunately where lots of old towns have looked after their older/original parts, Palermo hasn't had the money to do that (some stuff is falling apart).
As indicated earlier, it's compulsory to eat galeti in Italy, and we certainly didn't wait long. I saw people walking around with sandwich-type things that looked like they had ice cream in it, but I couldn't be sure. Eventually when I'd seen enough, I was sure it was ice cream, so we hunted out the source (the gelati place near our hotel). One of the specialties of the area is 'ice cream brioche' (ice cream in a bun). 2 euro and it's a massive amount of icecream, and it's sooooooo good. Anyone going there has to eat it! Surprisingly using a bun makes a whole lot of sense, it soaks up much more of the dripping ice cream, and you can eat it or not depending on how hungry you are - the bread is quite sweet though, so it works well with the flavours.
I'll get the conversation about food out of the way early. Food in Italy is amazing and we ate absolutely stacks of it! Each night we tried to find somewhere new to go, to find authentic places etc, and each night we had too many choices and walked out absolutely full. It's totally awesome! Because the standard is so high, I'll only briefly mention the amazing places we went to (but they are all just so cool!). Oh, weird bar of the trip award goes to the 'Aboriginal Internet Cafe' in Palermo. It was a weird place with strange decoration, and not even run by aussies (I believe) but it was always full at night!
We had planned to try to get Mt Etna, so on the first day we got up early to get a bus to the other side of the island. After getting to the bus station, we got tickets etc and found out you have to get to Catania and then go on from there, so we jumped on the 10:30 bus for a three hour trip across the island. Although it was a long ride, it was very interested to see the country side, it's so much more green that I expected - it looks like you could grow anything there! There's rolling fields, olive orchards on hillsides etc, and one of the more amazing engineering aspects of it is that the motorways are all built on raised platform/bridges.
There's very few areas where the road is actually asphalt on the ground, most of the time it's on these bridges. To consider all the effort and cost that it must have taken to create such a hugely long motorway, you have to be impressed. As the island is quite undulating/rocky, I suspect it must have been a sound engineering decision to just build a flat motorway suspended off the ground.
After getting to Canatia, we were shocked to find out that we'd missed the bus to Mt Etna.... There's only ONE bus each day, at 8am!!?!? What the?! No one in Palermo told us that, and over the next few days when we went to the tourist office etc a number of times, no one seemed to know about it either - Sicily seems to be one of the places where you need to do a little bit of work yourself if you are going to travel around, the tourist offices only tend to know about local things. Aaaanyway, it seems the recession is hitting everyone, and no travel companies are operating anymore :( I was quite bummed because there was no way that we could make it to Catania for 8am, and if we stayed there overnight we'd miss out of a lot of time, so it was a tough call but we had to strike Etna off the list.
Fortunately Catania has enough things to see that made the trip well worth it. We had a few hours in town before getting the bus back, and it was really enjoyable. Where Palermo is more modern and industrial, Cantania is an old-school Italian city with Cathedrals, piazza's, markets etc. Unfortunately you can't get into the Cathedral at the moment for some reason, but it's pretty massive and still worth spending time checking out. We grabbed lunch in the main piazza overlooking it and the council offices, it was very nice.
It must have been some special day because when we arrived in the morning, things were fairly quiet. We had noticed people walking around with flowers a lot, but didn't think it was anything too massive. After lunch however the main street of town (with several churches along it) were absolutely rammed with people selling flowers and candles. There were so many people it was slowing traffic and every church was full! We didn't hang around too long though as we had an old castle to see, an old roman theatre (ruins in the middle of town) and various other sites. On our exploration tour we ended up in a courtyard at one point looking at an amazing massive house/building. We were amazingly surprised to find out that it was a university beause it was just so amazing and beautiful, and then amongst the gardens are students hanging around talking, studying etc. What a place to study (though UWA isn't too bad). We just saw everything in time to get the bus back to Palermo, but after grabbing dinner we collapsed in bed from the long day.
On the second full day in Sicily, we planned to head to the Greek ruins at Agrigento. Again we were up early, but the bus ride is far easier at 1.5 hours. It was a hot day, but for some reason there's nothing better than climbing over ruins in the shining sun, scaring all the little lizards away, when I think of an Italian holiday. The ruins are amazing and are built along a tall ridge of hills overlooking a valley which then flattens off down to the ocean (part of the city wall ran along the ridge).
Agrigento was once the 'Ibiza' (party town) of the old Greek world, apparently it was absolutely amazing. The ruins are still very intact and it's well worth the trip. We had grabbed a snack lunch (fruit and meat/cheese/bread etc) which we had on a ledge, sitting under an olive tree, overlooking the lush valley and ocean, probably where thousands of people had done in the thousands of years in the past. It was a really amazing thing to contemplate and Lany and I agreed it was one of the most amazing lunches we'd ever had.
Sars here are some weird trees for you, the countryside was beautiful, but the weird tall flower tree was pretty cool. It was however outdone by the new species I discovered - the tourist tree. This tree only flowers in high heat and for some reason only attracts the oldest tourists with it's flowers..... :)
On the way back to town that night afternoon we saw people paragliding off some of the higher hills in the area, it looked like amazing fun (maybe one for next time). The night we went to a quite famous pizzeria in an old piazza in Palermo. It was brilliant being able to sit outside in the warm breeze with people chatting all around, and of course amazing food.
Again, the next day, we didn't stay in Palermo and instead we took a train to get to Cefalu (pronounced, Chefaloo). It's a small fishing village with a fort overlooking it, right on the ocean. We had heard it had one of the best beaches on that side of Palermo and it didn't disappoint. In some places the train tracks go right next to the water, it was quite weird to see and I realised how much I miss the water being there (appreciate it you Perth people!). Cefalu itself is a very cute and quaint older town. It's clean, has lots of little streets and alleys and is a very good holiday spot if people wanted to relax on a beach. The main cathedral has cool mosaics and a really really old roof done by Arabic artisans.
There used to be a fort on a cliff overlooking Cefalu, so we thought we'd head up there to check it out. As usual, the climb looked fairly ok from the bottom, but we misjudged exactly where the top was and yeah, it was pretty damn far. We were also climbing in the hottest part of the day, and I was in thongs, so we didn't plan it very well. It is worth it though as at the top there are great views of the surrounding coastline and the town itself. There were a few places where we could see a picnic would be amazing, but not having food (and getting burnt like hell despite wearing sun cream) we didn't hang around too long.
Tired and hot, we came down the hill and sought shelter and food! Fortunately we found a small street with houses backing on the water slightly away fromt he main beach. A lot of these houses had restaurants on the ground floor, and we found one with an amazing outdoor balcony area over the water. The food was great, but the view and sound of the water lapping at the rocks was even better. Oh, that reminds me, for some reason all the locals in Sicily spoke French as a second language more than English, and we saw French tourists everywhere! It seems it's one of the place Frenchies go to vacation (like Germans/Austrians going to Majorca/Spain!). After lunch we hit the beach to recoup our energy and drink a stack of water ;) We even had to find shade near a cafe umbrella as it was so hot. I LOVED being in the water again.... ! Cefalu really was an amazing place.
Finally we had our last full day in Palermo. Because we'd been so dead on the first day, we hadn't really done the major tourist stuff, so our last full day was set aside for that. We'd seen half the stuff, so we headed to the other side of the city to see the main sight of the city, the church in the Parliament offices. Unfortunately we got sidetracked in the morning and made it to the main cathedral around 11:30. We got a god look around and it's very impressive (it has relics of saints bones in the treasury) , however by the time we got to the Parliament bit, it was 12:30 and it was closing for lunch. We trudged around the area to find some markets and get some fruit for lunch (it was too hot for serious food) before waiting for the church to re-open. We had considered leaving it, how good could it be??
Well, when we eventually walked into the church, we realised we were so completely wrong, I would have killed myself if we hadn't waited. The church is pretty small as it was only for nobility etc in the old castle/barracks/parliament thing (the building has had a few uses), but every single surface of it is just covered in mosaic. The main mosaic is all gold leaf and amazingly clear and detailed, it even rivals the Basillica San Marco in Venice!!! We were stunned and spent over half an hour just looking around. You really can't take it all in, every time you look somewhere, it's like you've missed something and have to look again. I tried to take photos of everything, but it just doesn't do it any justice - you'll just HAVE to go and see it yourself. The roof was again done by Arabic craftsman.
We spent the afternoon doing some shopping (it was the first chance we'd had) before grabbing a last dinner at a cheap local place we'd found. It was basically a kebab place but they served everything (pasta/pizza etc) and all the food was great - plus it was full of locals so it had a rowdy atmosphere. Of course, we went and got a last gelato as a farewell to Italy.
The next day we were up again early to get the bus around 7:30am, to get to the airport. As I said at the start, I can't believe I hadn't thought of going to Sicily before, and that we were almost going to Tenerife instead. We had such an awesome holiday! Palermo is a good place to use as a travel base, but doing a big tour with a company is probably a good idea as you need to do some of the tourist information-hunting on your own. We missed out on Etna, but the other stuff we saw was so cool, and the food is so amazing, the weather was so warm, the ocean was so easy to swim in, the gelato was so incredible and the regional cities so full of history, I definitely want to go back again.
posted by Anthony Hawke at 1:35 pm
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