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Published: February 24th 2008
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Palermo
the view from the balcony of the Monreal cathedral Alright, so it's been a little while and there is a lot to say. We took an overnight train from Naples all the way to Palermo in Sicily. Dan and I paid the extra €30 to get beds which were likely worth it on that trip. Kam went for the cheaper route which is a compartment with 2 rows of 3 seats facing each other with not enough room for oppossite people's legs and your own. So we made out pretty comfortably but Kam did not get very much sleep. So anyways, Palermo was our first stop in Sicily. It is a pretty large city that functions at a fast pace compared to much of the easy-going, country lifestyle in most of Sicily. While in Palermo we took a bus out to Monreal to see a church there. The church was pretty cool, but the best part was that Monreal is on a fairly large hill overlooking Palermo and so we could walk around the outer balcony of the church and get some pretty cool views. Otherwise there wasn't a whole lot going on in Palermo. We explored for a while, saw some large, old buildings, and that was about
it for our first day. The next day we were planning to take a train down to Agrigento but decided first to go visit the Cappuccini catacombs before doing so. This was quite the experience. The Cappuccini monks took it upon themselves to try preserving bodies a while back and storing them on display in these catacombs. They dressed them up in all sorts of 17th century finery and propped them up against the walls, laid them out, or hung them from the walls higher up. They managed to have around 8,000 bodies at one time, but I'm not sure how many are left now. So anyways there were just lots of corriddors underground that were lined with decomposed bodies, most just skeletons but some had that leathery flesh still on them and they were in tattered clothes. There were also sections of children and babies. On the vast majority of bodies, there was no glass casing or any other sort of object between you and them so we were litterally just walking around between all of these bodies, which as a result of being strung to the wall only by the chest have often taken on some strange slumped
positions and grotesque facial(skullular) expressions, and at first it was just the 3 of us in the catacombs. Soooo....some of you know dead bodies aren't really my thing so this was quite a little journey for me but it turned out alright.
Alright, so having thoroughly explored the halls of the dead we took a train ride down to Agrigento. This is a smaller city, about 50,000 people and it's on a hill with great views of the land sloping down into the Mediterranean. We stayed at a campsite type place which had some pretty flimsy little mobile homes set up for use as "dorms" which we stayed in. This was actually really nice. It felt a lot like a motor home with 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a tiny kitchen and dining table with a bench around it. Usually 6 people share one of these, but since there was hardly anyone there, we got our own. I won the draw for the room with 1 big bed and this led to me sleeping in a room by myself for the first time in about 4 months. It was raining when we got into Agrigento so we did a
Sicilian roundabout
just cause it´s cool quick trip around town to check out the cathedrals then headed to our little house pretty early. We went to a supermarket and found out that we could buy bottles of wine starting around €1.50 which we certainly did. This led to lots of wine and lots of card playing while hiding from the rain. Good fun. The next day the weather was perfect which was good because we were spending it outside. There is an area called the Valley of Temples near Agrigento and it is a large section of land which used to have Greek temples all along it. Now there is a nice walkway connecting the ruins of all of them. Most are just a few pillars now, but it was still pretty cool. This walk was also along a hillside with great views of the countryside and the ocean. We spent most of that day wandering through the temples and through the museum containing artifacts from them and facts about archeology there before heading back to try some other Sicilian wine. We were hoping to head to Syracuse the next day but the hostels were full and everything else was very expensive so we went to
Catania instead.
Catania didn't have much going on in the town but it is right next to Mt. Etna, the tallest volcano in Europe. On our second day there we took a bus up to Mt. Etna and then went exploring on the mountain. The bus had a thermometer on it and we watched the temperature go from 6 C in town to -1 at the drop-off point. We were hoping to hike up the mountain to the "Philosopher's Tower" but apparently you can only do that in the summer because the mountain is covered in snow in the winter. This was ok though, we spent a good bit of time walking around craters and then Dan and I started climbing off the paths and wandering through craters and fields of lava rock and snow. This was really cool because there were a lot of people around the little mountain town and the typical paths but heading out on our own we had huge open areas with nobody around. Kam and I later took a tram ride up to another point farther up the mountain which was pretty cool but a bit of a letdown. There wasn't really anywhere
One of the temples
This was the closest one to being still intact else we could walk from the drop-off point and we were too high to see the view of the ground and ocean and it was very windy and freezing outside so I would have to duck back inside to warm up my nose and hands every few minutes. Overall, a pretty cool day for not being able to do the hike we wanted to do. The next morning I split off from Dan and Kam and headed off on my own for about a week. Just got back to Barcelona and found Dan on the streets but I´ll write more about everything else in days to come. Seeya.
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Karen
non-member comment
Your photos give great perspective
It's wonderful for me to be able to view the photos and words of you, Dan and Kam to see the varying perspectives. I love the view you've given us back home, of the towns and Etna with a realistic perspective of their setting. I'm glad to hear from you, finally, since you and Dan and Kam split off. Enjoy Spain!