Italy with Kids - Palermo

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04 Oct 2008

With a bit of forehand experience of the A19 and other roads, our trip across to Palermo was quicker and easier than the drive out. Kylie's sense of direction worked pretty well - even in the traffic madness in the older part of Palermo that we had to traverse to get into the port area (possibly almost as bad as Naples). At the port, thanks to the magic words "Maggiore rental" we got past all the security and were able to park at the rental place, where we left our luggage still locked in the car and went walking up into the city.






On our walk we found a number of excellent ceramics shops and clothing shops, although being their siesta time many were closed. We ended up resting at the Piazza Pretoria with a large, well made but a little bit busy fountain.

The churches all looked wonderful from the outside, but we weren't in the mood to look around inside. After a bit more wandering around, we ended up at the Giardini Garibaldi, which to our surprise was the home of the most enormous ficus I've ever seen. Joseph and Liam had loads of fun climbing around and in them.












We dined at McDonalds, at the Piazza Castelnuova, along with literally hoards of teenagers. It was almost as if Palermo had been bewitched by the Pied Piper and brought all the teens to McDonalds! Needless to say we received a fair lesson in appropriate dress style!

Then onto the ferry for a rough trip back to Naples (thankfully the boat rocking didn't cause any bouts of sea sickness on our part).

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