Palermo

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Unfortunately I have fallen way behind on my blog. What used to be two weeks tardy, has now become three! I am currently in Salerno, on my way from Sicily to the Almafi Coast for my last week (!) in Europe. Overall, the trip has been amazing, with some of the best stories coming from my last week in Sicily. Since this is the most fresh in my mind I am going to start off here and come back to fill in the rest of Germany soon. Thanks to everyone who posted comments. It's great to know that people are actually reading this!

Palermo

I arrived via airplane in Palermo in the late afternoon, with plans to get a quick look at the city and then head off to the Eolian Islands to the north of Sicily. Walking around town, usually in the street since often times there was no sidewalk, I was a world away from the order and rules of Germany. Here if you want to cross the street, you pretty much just need to step out into traffic and hope that the endless stream of scooters and cars will see you and slow down. Quite frankly, I am surprised that I don't see more people who are injured by moving vehicles. This is a stark contrast to Germany, where there are usually crosswalks with "walk" signs, where Germans patiently wait if the sign says "don't walk" even if no cars are anywhere in sight.

I came across a really cool outdoor photo exhibition called Earth From Above (http://www.yannarthusbertrand.com/yann2/) by a guy named Yann Artus Bertrand. He traveled all over the world and took photos, usually of nature, from helicopters. Each of over 50 photos were presented on display in the Piazza Politana, and they were accompanied by a description of the shot and some sort of tie in to the environment. I have since heard that this exhibition has been on in different cities around the world, and I highly recommend checking it out if it comes to your town.

I had until early afternoon the following day to tour around the city before my hydrofoil took off for the islands. By far one of the most strange things that I have ever seen were the catacombs, where someone decided that it would be a good idea to preserve dead bodies and to display what remained of them, in addition to the bones, right there in the catacombs. It reminded me of a haunted house, only the bones were real, and in some cases some of the corpses actually had hair on them still. There were thousands of them down there. Very unique. Very creepy. It was sort of like watching a car wreck. You don't really want to see it, but you still have to look.

After the catacombs, I had just enough time to grab a quick typical Sicilian lunch of sardine fish balls before jumping on the six hour boat trip to volcanic island of Stromboli.

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Comments

[Mark Steele]

Sardine Fish Balls
Oh GROSS!!!