Week Five: Palermo, Sicily

Buongiorno Readers,

We are in Italy! We were picked up by Carly's host mother, Amira, and brought to the airport in Marseille where we checked in without a problem. We got through security and waited for our plane. We had never flown out of Marseille or on Ryanair so we didn't know what to expect. There was only one gate in our section of the airport and when they called the airline people went and lined up nicely at the entrance, but when the Ryanair flight was called there was a mad dash to the gate. Ryanair flights are like Southwest Airlines if you remove all the rules and boarding sections. Carly and I calmly walked to the end of the line. We had previously reserved seats so we weren't going to be apart of the chicken run. 

Our plane landed in Palermo at 6:30 and took about an hour to get into Palermo proper. It was 9 by the time we were all checked in and situated so we called it an early night and went to sleep. We were up early the next morning and headed out to see Palermo. We wandered for about half an hour until we found a beautiful, huge fountain in a square with two old churches. We toured one of the churches then continued on our walk. We saw some of the sights of Palermo but were amazed at the number of cheesy stores targeted at tourists. There were definitely some incredible sights to be seen in Palermo but you have to sift through the tourist targeted garbage before finding it. We saw an incredible cathedral where a huge funeral was taking place. The bells were ringing the entire time and it was quite the sight. We walked from the cathedral through a neat little park and ended up at the Sicilian Parliament buildings. We walked past those and ended up in another park where a large group of Italian men were playing chess and card games and were very animated. It was a very exciting sight and was exactly what we expected when we thought of stereotypical Italy. We continued our adventure in Palermo by walking through what looked like an open air-market. As we walked through the market it turned more into furniture stores and a flea market. There was a lot of nice handmade furniture but we didn't really have a need for it nor did we have a way to get it home so we moved on. We were famished after all of our exploring so we headed in search of food. We were really rather uninterested in tourist targeted food so we went off the beaten path to find somewhere the locals were eating. We came across a bread store, pastry store, and market combo where the locals were stopping in and getting food. We ordered two slices of pizza and a fresh squeezed lemonade. The lemonade was very sour but quenched our thirst nicely and the pizza was deep dish delicious! From there we went to get gelato and then sat in a park and watched a group of dogs playing. That night we went to dinner at a highly recommended restaurant that was known for its large selection of vegetarian dishes. We ordered from the special menu and got three courses. Carly had a couscous with ratatouille and Jeff had fried eggplant and cheese in balls soaked in tomato basil sauce for our first course. For our second course Carly had fried chicken dumplings and potatoes and Jeff had potatoes au gratin. For our third course, desert, Carly had apple pudding and Jeff had a chocolate amaretto pudding. All of the food was phenomenal and we were sad when it was gone. We left the restaurant and walked back to the hotel in the rain and went to bed.

The next day we woke up super early and headed to the airport, again in the rain. We boarded the plane on our way to Rome!

Pictures from Palermo: http://imgur.com/a/VdVRL