Today I decided my best bet was to really see what I could find of value in Palermo. I don’t think it is really a tourist town at all but it does have a few sites. The weather was not going to be great and it is getting light only at 7am right now. On Sunday morning that will change to 6am or so as they turn their daylight savings time. I decided on a rather late start where I would not get out of bed until 8am. I know this is totally against my way but I think I am still frozen about the manual transmission car and the lack of a GPS. If I had been smart, as soon as I realized it was stolen I should have turned right back into the office for the rental place and rented a GPS as well. I suppose I still have the option to go there and rent one anyway. I am sure though that I will have to confront the angry woman who spoke little English again to do so.
First I asked the desk of the hotel if they had a city map and they did. I was not really sure what I was looking for. As I said this is not a tourist town and the sites are not, “Wow, that’s obvious.” So after orienting myself to the map I chose to head down the road I started yesterday with the intentions of turning left a short distance down. It appeared to be a road that would bring me to more locations of interest. I managed to find instead, probably because I passed the road I was looking for, a very long set of streets that made up a fresh, open air market. It was nice to make my way through it. It didn’t appear that tourists don’t go down that way too often and after I had passed through the 6 to 10 blocks that made up the course I found myself in a non-descript back alley sort of location. Fortunately I was able to guess on the correct couple turns to get where I wanted to go.
That accidentally happened to bring me right out to the Cathedral of Palermo. It has a fairly nice sized square in front of it and from the outside it looks very big. If there was an entry charge they weren’t doing so at that point and I didn’t see any signs that said not to take pictures so I went in and took a few while I was at it. I don’t think it was anything spectacular. I could not say how old it is. It definitely has a lot of signs of wear and tear that suggest either age or poor upkeep, especially as you look to the ceiling. Either way it was nice I guess, not something you would gasp in awe due to but certainly a showing of the Catholic expenditure of wealth.
After finding the Cathedral I could easily orient myself on the map and was able to find a park that had a lot of tropical style palms and a largish fountain and also a smaller set of ruins inside. It was free and only took a few minutes. I could tell the people at the park were curious to see someone looking at the ruins. I guess they get skipped a lot. Just further up the road I came to the Norman Palace. I am not sure what it used to be but I had found the back side by accident. I suspect it is really used for some form of governmental meetings. Palermo is the capital of the island of Sicily, so there stands to reason that something government-like could happen here. Fortunately, it said to go to the front for tourist entrance and I did just that.
The entrance cost 10 Euro for 2 sets of attractions. The Norman Palace and Chapel was one and the underground wall excavation exhibit. I started off with the chapel which was very brightly done. It reminded me of the city hall in Stockholm due to the mosaics done in gold. I am not sure but I would assume this came first of course. If I remember the history of the Stockholm City hall it is not that old. Of course I could find no dating for the chapel or the palace for that matter. It was in good enough condition that I have to consider it somewhat suspect anyway. The chapel was small though and only took a few minutes to look at. I then moved into the palace area where apparently people can only go in in groups. The lady at the entrance must have given an Italian spoken tour and there was a tour bus tour going through from England that she allowed a few of us that didn’t speak Italian to tag along with. It was very confused and not terribly structured at all. There was a room akin to the city hall of Stockholm where what looked like a governmental meeting might take place but there were also older rooms that did look like they belonged in a palace. It was reasonably well preserved, I assume because it is in use in some way. There were lots of people making sure the tourists didn’t go into the wrong places. After the palace I found my way down to the excavation exhibit which showed all the 5 various stages of the wall from pre-Roman times through to later medieval constructions that they had found. It was interesting to read but I suppose it didn’t really look like much. Still it is neat to think the oldest walls there were well over 2000 years old.
After exiting the Norman Palace (honestly it is not very exciting looking from the outside) I moved my way back up the street past the Cathedral again. In reading the map it looked like a good idea to head to the waterfront to find the Castle of the Sea (Cassel del Mare). I was not sure what it was, but it was printed as number 1 in the tourist map. Since the locations and numbers were not in a specific order I thought that perhaps this meant it was considered the best attraction. Along the way it started to rain and I found an actual sit down restaurant that was open. I decided to enter even though there was no one eating there. I suspect it is because the locals all eat standing up at the various bars and bakeries rather than spending their lunch sitting down. I am a bit surprised at this considering the reputation of the Italian love for food but this seems to be the case both in Rome and in Sicily. People do not sit down to eat for lunch. Anyway, I had a fettuccini with cream sauce and artichokes and buffalo mozzarella cheese. It was very filling and tasty. The pasta was a touch undercooked but I would rather undercooked a little than overcooked any day of the week. I accompanied that with a small Moretti beer.
It was not done raining when I exited the restaurant but it was not coming down hard so I pressed on. There was not far to go to get to the waterfront where there is a large port. From there I turned left which is presumably west and followed the half circle road that rounds the bulk of the port. That brought me to the site of some ruins but it didn’t really look like much. I consulted the map again and yes, it was indeed the Cassel del Mare. Not remotely what I was expecting. I guess the numbering system on the map didn’t really mean much, maybe 1 was the easiest to skip? Either way it was not a terrible waste. It was 2 Euro to visit. Most all of it was outside except one standing tower building that might have been an entryway from a moat. Hard to say, the ruins are very old of course and they have they have excavated I am sure. I did use that building to shelter from some of the rain but after a while it was obvious I would get no stoppage only lesser and harder rain periods. I pretty much saw all of the ruins there and then turned around and backtraced my steps to the Norman Palace because if I was reading the map correctly it would be easy to find the hotel from there.
While I was still in the half circle around the port it really started to come down hard and I had to take shelter under some low trees on the sidewalk that did afford a bit of protection. I think I was there for about 10 minutes before it lightened up enough for me to consider moving on again. At that point I made the trek back the way I had come and found that my guess was basically correct as to where I needed to go to get to the hotel. I was just thinking I would have to turn left instead of right and it was the reverse. But it was only a few blocks back from there anyway and that was a good thing because as I got to the last couple blocks I was met with another very hard bout of rain and I was nearly drenched by the time I actually got into the room.
After that I decided to relax and watch some videos on my computer. I figured the rain would pass though I heard again another serious push of rain come through while I was in the room. It appears that tonight I have some sort of Italian kids tour sharing my floor with me. Where day 4 the hotel was nice and quiet, they are instead loud and knocking on doors and the like making it a bit less pleasant to be in the hotel. Of course the recognizable thing about kids is that they don’t realize there might be others in the vicinity when they are making all the noise. Ah well… at least they got quiet by bed time it seems.
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