Palermo City Walk

September 12, 2011

I liked the reflection of the old building in this new, modern building. Of course, motos everywhere. The Museo Archeologico, to my immense disappointment, was closed. Had been for a couple of years. That was the one museum I wanted to see. Palermo architecture has been influenced by the Normans, Arabs, Spanish and Byzantines.

A Day at the Beach

September 11, 2011

It was hot hot hot. Finally, my time to swim in the Mediterranean! I bought a voucher for lounge and umbrella in Mondello at the beach. It took a while to get to know the ropes. I rode the bus packed like a sardine with about 200 people I kid you not. I found my place on the beach and went into the water. I had put my cell into a baggie and pinned it to the inside of my hat. I didn't want to leave anything valuable on the beach. (I took these pics with my cell phone.) When I got back to my lounge there was a woman preparing to change her son's diaper on my lounge. Um, mi scusi, questa la mia lounge, I said. She said no, it is hers, for the entire season. I picked up all my stuff and went to a little hut where they directed me to a place of my very own. It takes a lot of humility to travel... a little later everyone near me was rousted and made to move so a woman could have the lounge they had assigned to me. People just hung their heads, packed up and moved to the next row (instead of putting the late-comer in a spare lounge - which would have been the simple solution. But how do you say that in Italian?)
People were selling everything from jewelry to massages to coconuts. The man with his box of coconuts held it high and rasped loudly, "Coco, coco, coco," sounding like a cross between a parrot and a raven, his shirt closed with one button, showing his skinny chest. The masseuses were Asian, covered from head to to in long pants and shirts and hats. The jewelery sellers were Indians. They did not give up, and circulated steadily the whole time I was there.

Ho arrivato e ho mangiato

September 10, 2011

Yum! My first dinner in Palermo was at Il Mirto a la Rosa near the hotel. They are the sponsors of the map the hotel hands out.  I sat outside and ordered this fabulous pomodoro, mozzarella and arugula ensalada, a pizza and a bottle of vino rosso. Way too much food. I asked to take the leftover pizza away, and later found out that this is frowned on. But it made a great lunch for a couple of days. I would go there again. 

I can't resist

In Trapani, the town below Erice, the bus station  was closed. An off duty bus driver told me that we would buy tickets on the bus going back to Palermo. The benches were right across from this storefront. I looked up all the words in my Italian dictionary and found only the meanings for timbri and targhe. I used to work for a photolithographer and I think it was the same type of business.

The place was deserted, and at first the only other people waiting for the bus were 3 young muscular black men with huge bags of purses or clothes or something. The bags were about 3-4 feet tall and as big around as a barrel. They were energetic and spent their time binding up the bags with twine. They spoke a language I couldn't understand, and they were ill dressed, like the guys who sell the knock offs all over Italy. I was a little fearful of them so I was grateful when a couple of other people joined us. The black guys didn't get on the bus.

Town at the top, Erice

Being a touristy town, although much smaller than Orvieto, Erice was filled with shops of ceramics, rugs, pasta, and old stone walkways and lots of churches and quaint apartments plus hoards of tourists. I walked around off the main streets, trying to stay in the shade because it was pretty warm, and ran across these firefighters. It was an unusual scene but I wanted to remind myself that there were people living here. I wanted to see them but I think they were having their afternoon lunches in mama's dining room, the whole family sitting around a big table with platters of spaghetti and pane and ensalada mista con pomodori fresche, and a big jug of vino rosso.

Scusi me while I touch the sky...

September 9, 2011

A young couple invited me into the cabinovia to ride up the hill with them to Erice. He wanted to practice his English, and his wife-to-be is a photographer. They live in a small town in Calabria and are planning a wedding in October.

We chatted about my travels in Italy and he was surprised that I had visited Bari, Matera and the Sassi. I told him that I liked to travel, and have done it alone since my husband died. He reached into his wallet and took out a laminated business card with a photo of a man, molto bello e simpatico, on one side. On the other side was a very short bio and a religious passage. This was his father who died on April 24, he said. The young man's voice quavered a bit. He said his father was a wonderful man and he missed him very much. He'd died of cancer, and he'd held his hand when he died.

He said he felt as if his father would be there if he turned around, and I said I understood how that feels. The silence in the cabinovia grew thick. It turned out that his father was beloved by so many friends - he was called the professor - that in the little town of 2500 people where the family lived, over 5000 had attended the funeral. "I felt very strange the day of the funeral," he said. "It was unreal. I felt like a block of ice in the sun."

Those words have stayed with me ever since he spoke them. It is the exact way to describe grief, an unnatural out of the body experience. An altered state.

Later I ran into them in a small osteria at the top. I was looking for gelato, and they were buying lunch. "Let me get you an ice cream," he said. "Something cold to drink, too." How nice they were. I could not say no. I could only say "Grazie mille."

L'autobus e la mi'amica

L'avventura!

As one who rides the bus infrequently, the Italian system takes some understanding, especially if you can't even be understood when saying "Erice, the name of the famous (well, I think it would be famous in the region) medeival village on a mountaintop near the city of Trapani.

I really wanted to go to Erice. It seemed simple. The hotel clerk printed out a bus schedule, gave me a Palermo city map with directions drawn on the streets, but I lacked the detail of where, exactly where the place was where I should stand and wait. I was able to find out where from a friendly polizia who asked if I were French or English and I forgot to say American.

I got to Trapani Stazione Centrale after a 2 hour ride through verdant farmland of grapes, orchards and cacti and palm trees, along pastures with sleek horses, past brilliant azure water and little boats nodding in the sea. I want to go there, and be one a boat in that water. Better yet, be in the water, nodding and floating myself.

Once in Trapani the panini seller/ticket seller told me that it would be an hour and a half until the next bus to Erice. But I could take the "cable way" bus which comes every twenty minutes. I'd heard of the gondola that took people up the mountain, which sounded fun. So again I got directions to a bus stop, the details very fuzzy in the two languages. I set off with a positive mindset. I won't bore you with my quest to find the 21/ 23 ATM bus, but I did find it and hour later by some dumb luck and watching for buses with ATM on the side.

"Erice," I said, and the driver seemed to understand.

After a few stops the man in the seat in front of me was shouting. I was reading up on what to do in Erice. I looked at his red face and he was shouting at the people behind me. The seats are very close together and he was in my face. I looked away. He was still shouting , now joined by a chorus: the bus driver and others on the bus. "ERICE," he was screaming at me like I was a deaf woman. "ERICE!" They were all pointing to the right.

"Oh. Erice," I said. "Grazie." I got off, wishing I could shrink into the pavement and looked up the hill beyond the fake red crenellated building on the corner and saw the Funierice.