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Published: August 16th 2009
Our final two ports of call were Palermo, Sicily and Naples, Italy.
In Palermo, my mom and I decided not to take a guided tour and we just went out for the day on our own. We first walked around the city and took a guided tour of Teatro Massimo, which is the biggest opera house in Italy and one of the largest in Europe. For those Godfather fans, on the steps of the Teatro Massimo is where Mary dies in the Godfather III. After our tour we tried to find the puppet museum (Sicily is known for it's puppet making) and we were successful in finding the museum, but unfortunately for us, it was closed. We then went to Monreale where there was the beautiful Monreale Cathedral. (It is said that if you visit Sicily and don't visit the Monreale Cathedral then you arrive as a donkey and leave as an ass...so luckily my mom and I weren't among the people leaving as asses...hahaha!) After the cathedral we went back into Palermo and went to the Capuchin Catacombes. This was really cool! Originally this cemetery was for Capuchin Monks and then is was expanded to include the monks' benefactors. The
interesting thing about the Capuchin Catacombes was the technique that was used to preserve the bodies because there were bodies in there that we over 100 years old and they still had hair and teeth!!!Nobody is quite sure how they preserved the bodies, but it was based on the injection of chemicals and nothing else. It was pretty creepy to walked around there and it just kept going and going...body after body! There was even a body of a little girl that looked like she was a doll - so perfectly preserved.
Our final port of call was Naples, Italy. We took an all-day tour (another great suggestion from my grandma) that went all around the Amalfi coast and stopped in the town of Sorrento and Amalfi. The coast was absolutely breathtaking! The drive was about 72km long and consisted of about 60 turns! (It was a good thing we had such a great bus driver because there were some very tight turns!) We stopped and had lunch in Sorrento, which was a gorgeous little town that was famous for lemons and a special drink called Lemoncello. Amalfi was another charming town that was well known for their coral
cameos. We walked around the town and went into the Duomo (cathedral) of Amalfi and saw the Cloisters - the cloisters were really nice because every pole was designed differently.
The next day, the ship returned to Rome and we went directly to the train station and departed for Milan, Italy, where we spent the night before heading to Paris.
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Kevin and Hillary
Kev and Hill
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Great to see that you're blogging too! Can't wait to read all your entries!