After arriving from Monreale, we spent the next two nights of the trip in Palermo, which is Sicily’s largest city with a population of over 1 million. Palermo has a grittier feel than most of the other cities we went to, with strange smells emanating from bags of trash on the street, hoards of speeding mopeds, and guys on the street corner who will yell “bella” at any literally any woman who walks by. This is not to say Palermo is unpleasant though, it just has its own character. I still found the city to have plenty of good restaurants, impressive sites and welcoming locals. My hotel room also had plenty of its own character: my roommate and I ended up on the top floor, with a window that looked out onto the elevator shaft, which had been pleasantly decorated for our viewing pleasure. The bathroom ceiling slanted with the roof, so our shower curtain was diagonal, and even I had to duck to manage to take a shower under the low ceiling.
the Palermo cathedral
We continued our tour of Norman churches and Byzantine art in Palermo. The first stop was the Cappella Palatina, a royal chapel with all the mosaic-ed splendor of the Monreale church, but on a smaller and more accessible scale. We stopped at several other churches, including La Martorana, which interestingly combines Byzantine and later baroque art in its décor, and the Palermo cathedral, where All Saint’s Day services were taking place. The last stop was La Zisa, an old Norman palace, with Arab architectural influences.
appetizer buffet lunch…straight from the kitchen
During a lunch break from sightseeing, I cut through the market area of Palermo with some friends, looking for a good place to eat. We dodged gangs of little kids, some who looked as young as five, who were speeding around on kid-sized mopeds (I guess they start early). While we were looking for a particular restaurant a waiter from a different place accosted us: “What are you looking for? Why would you want to go there? My place is better, come in!” So we went in, and instead of ordering, we got to file into the kitchen, two by two, to put whatever we wanted on our plate as an appetizer buffet. After a big plate of eggplant, stuffed tomatoes, and other local veggies, no one was hungry enough to order anything else.