By this time, we have stayed in 4 different Sicilian towns and visited several others and felt like we had a great feeling for Sicily, but to really say we have seen Sicily, we need to see the capitol. So, in our farewell to Sicily planned 8 days in the heart of the big city Palermo. Our Airbnb was right off the main walking street in town and really felt, and heard, the hustle and bustle of Sicily’s major city.
Travel books always list the churches as one of the main attractions so we usually go check them out as they are free most of the time. I am mildly interested in the style of architecture and construction history but I am really tired of trying to identify which biblical stories are shown in the paintings and statues. We have seen some fancy churches in our travels but Italy has some of the fanciest churches anywhere. One day, we rode a bus up the hill in Palermo to the Monreale cathedral. It had glass tiles that were covered in gold leaf that they estimated to weigh about 2 tons. My calculator says that would be $3.8 billion if they figured a way to get all the gold of the church interior.
We also saw a church in town (Santa Caterina) where the nuns are not allowed to be seen by the public or their families, so they built caged windows on the upper floors of the cathedral so the nuns could see the church service. The nuns also sell desserts that they used to sell out of a dark window so they wouldn’t be seen. We bought some cannelloni and another pistachio dessert that they make from unchanged recipes from generations ago…
Palermo, and Sicily, have a lot of good food, but my favorite things are street food with an Aperol or Campari spritz. After walking miles around the city, we often found a table to rest and keep us going between meals. I am eating a ham and cheese Arancini below and M has a ricotta filled cake.
One day, we took a daytrip to Cefalu, which is a cute little town about an hour train ride from Palermo. When we got off the train, we heard a lot of noise coming from a few blocks away and we quickly realized that we were in Cefalu during a car race Sunday. They were racing go carts in the ancient streets of Cefalu. These were just weekend hobby cars that seemed like a lot of fun. Hobby racing is on the decline in America but this would be a great alternative to stock car racing. These must be fairly cheap and can be transported in the back of a van. They lift them on to little carts to work on them and move them around at waist level. There were hundreds of them and the many racing heats were happening the whole day. I saw someone named Mario but we didn’t see any Luigi’s or anyone throwing bananas out the back.
After being sidetracked for a bit walking through the pits, we needed to check out this town. There was a nice beach with nobody in the water (although it is November and still only 70 degrees) and a small downtown filled with touristy shops and restaurants. There was also an ancient laundry where people used to wash their clothes using water piped in from a spring. Kind of interesting I guess… There was also another fancy church but I already have enough church pics in this post.
The big attraction in Cefalu is an ancient fort overlooking the city, so we paid the entrance fee to hike up the trail to the top of the cliff. Short but steep and sweaty hike to some awesome views.
8 days in Palermo was probably too long compared to how we used to travel, but we had a lot of time to continue planning our next trips. We watched a lot of Youtube videos and are really close to completing our Winter itinerary and are excited to see something new. But now, we are headed off to our next destination- Rome.