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Published: January 18th 2009
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There was a long free weekend December 5 through the 8th. We had Friday off like normal and we also had Monday off because it was an Italian holiday. (Though I have no idea what holiday it was) I went with many other people for a few days to Sicily to see the far south of Italy. I left on Thursday night for the train station because I was planning to spend the night in the airport along with some other friends that had an early flight out of Rome’s airport. When we arrived at the train station the train we wanted to take was running an hour late (yes, an hour) so we had to find another route to the airport, otherwise we would miss our flight even though we left the night before. We got lucky and found an alternate train that linked us to a train to the airport, but we ended up changing our plans when we arrived at the second train station and found that no trains would be running to the airport until later in the morning. There was a group of 5 of us that hired a taxi to the airport and so we
Sam and I in the Airport
these last 2 pics are of the 4 of us sleeping in the airport before our early flight to Sicily...so cold! ended up being able to sleep for a few hours at the airport like we originally planned. Needless to say we didn’t sleep all that well on the cold tile floor.
I ended up being on a different flight than my friends, but that ended up ok because they were going to the east coast of Sicily after arriving in Palermo, but I was planning on staying in Palermo for the duration of the trip. I had to take a bus into the Palermo center from the airport, but after that found everything ok; I had a pretty good map. My hostel was really nice and I met some other Americans there that were studying in Rome for the semester. We all walked around together that afternoon; we saw some government buildings and went to lunch at a restaurant that served typical Sicilian cuisine. After, most of their group had gone back to the hostel I wandered around by myself and went to see the Norman Palazzo, which is now a military building and the Palermo Cathedral. I also walked through the four square intersection that is located in one of the oldest parts of Palermo that was just
Uncle Sam
I saw this in a restaurant in Palermo...probably from World War II down the street from my hostel.
The second day I was in Sicily I wanted to go to Corleone, where parts of the Godfather movies are based. (If you know me, you will know I am a huge Godfather fan) It was supposed to be just a nice day trip, but something that was supposed to be easy turned out to be quite tricky; I couldn’t find the bus that went to Corleone. I walked around by the train station forever looking for where the bus was supposed to stop. I finally found the bus stop, but never found the right bus, so after about 45 minutes of looking around I decided I was done looking and it wasn’t meant to be. I used the rest of the day to explore the rest of Palermo. Surprisingly enough there is not a whole lot to see there. I covered the rest of the attractions during the day. I saw a beautiful park where I sat and read for awhile, then walked along the coast toward the harbor, walked the main street to the Teatro Massimo, saw the market, a small church, and areas of the city that hadn’t been restored
Piazza Pretoria
the location of the Town Hall since bombings in World War II. That evening I went with two guys from my hostel to supper at a close pizza place; they were studying in Germany.
The third day of my trip I met two Italian ladies in my hostel from Milan who were traveling with one of their daughters and one other guy and they invited me to breakfast. I ended up spending the whole day with the Italian family! We went to the town nearest Palermo called Mondella. It is a town located directly on the coast and it has a beach. The guys from my hostel recommended it to me, so I was planning to spend the day there and it just so happened that the Italian family wanted to see it too. The bus to Mondella took about an hour and once we arrived we walked around the town and then went to lunch. It took forever to find a place that had some non-seafood dish for me! I guess if you don’t like seafood you shouldn’t go to Sicily because it seems like that is all they eat! The food that the others ate looked disgusting! There were whole shrimp and little
anchovies, yuck! I just tried not to look at them. The weather was great there; it definitely didn’t feel like December. It was sunny and about 65 degrees. The day at the beach was my final day in Sicily and I had to wake up to leave for the airport very early the next day. It wasn’t difficult to find my plane, but the trip back to Perugia seemed to take forever because first I had to fly to Rome and then take a train to Perugia. This was my last big adventure in Italy and I count it as a success. Stay tuned for my last week in Italy and my future adventures in England.
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