Sizzling in Sicily
8 - 9 August
The next night we took a 12 hour ferry to Palermo, it's more like 14 hours since you need to get on 2 hours early, and there aren't any seats. Everybody just sprawls all over the hallways and decks in their sleeping bags and lilos, we chose the bar. After listening to 4 hours of an Italian piano man singing bad covers in English and having everybody dancing and singing along I was ready to jump the plank. Did I mention they ran out of food before the ferry left port?
Anyway we turned up in Palermo early in the morning and walked in completely the wrong direction to the hostel. I say hostel, I really mean flea ridden hotel. We got to try a nice free 'frozen' shot of cappucino from a cafe we got some breakfast in. In the afternoon we visited a catacombs with lots of skeletons dressed up in clothes hanging from the walls, something like 4000 semi-mummified bodies. That might sound a kind of morbid thing to do on a lovely Saturday afternoon, but it was in fact extremely preferable to the streets above which were covered in dog shit and stinking rubbish. How anybody can put up with that I don't know.
It being a Saturday night we sat outside the Fleatel and had a couple of beers in the bar. It was fascinating to watch the locals careering about on their scooters crashing into bar tables and oncoming cars. It all kind of happens in a chaotic slow motion. We spent a few hours talking to a young boy selling roses - he must have been 12 years old, and sat at our table for a few hours trying to get us to buy roses, eventually he gave up, and just sat there chilling out.
Next stop, Milan.
The next night we took a 12 hour ferry to Palermo, it's more like 14 hours since you need to get on 2 hours early, and there aren't any seats. Everybody just sprawls all over the hallways and decks in their sleeping bags and lilos, we chose the bar. After listening to 4 hours of an Italian piano man singing bad covers in English and having everybody dancing and singing along I was ready to jump the plank. Did I mention they ran out of food before the ferry left port?
Anyway we turned up in Palermo early in the morning and walked in completely the wrong direction to the hostel. I say hostel, I really mean flea ridden hotel. We got to try a nice free 'frozen' shot of cappucino from a cafe we got some breakfast in. In the afternoon we visited a catacombs with lots of skeletons dressed up in clothes hanging from the walls, something like 4000 semi-mummified bodies. That might sound a kind of morbid thing to do on a lovely Saturday afternoon, but it was in fact extremely preferable to the streets above which were covered in dog shit and stinking rubbish. How anybody can put up with that I don't know.
It being a Saturday night we sat outside the Fleatel and had a couple of beers in the bar. It was fascinating to watch the locals careering about on their scooters crashing into bar tables and oncoming cars. It all kind of happens in a chaotic slow motion. We spent a few hours talking to a young boy selling roses - he must have been 12 years old, and sat at our table for a few hours trying to get us to buy roses, eventually he gave up, and just sat there chilling out.
Next stop, Milan.
Comments
Post a Comment