AspiringNomad

Arrivederci, ciao, per favour, grazie and buongiorno. The only 5 Italian words that Mum and I know that we hope will carry us through the next 3 days. We perfect our Italian accents as we travel to Stanstead arriving with plenty of time to spare at 5:30am.

Brimming with excitement, we browse the duty free and grab some breakfast before boarding. I distinctly remember Mum telling me that ‘Palermo isn’t a place that you bring children’ as we discuss, in hope, that our plane is fairly quiet and smooth.
I think it’s fair to say that I have never, in all my life, out of all the flights, been on one with so many children! So quite rightly, I blame Mum for jinxing what would have been a child free flight if it wasn’t for her earlier comment, cursing us onto the plane version of a school bus.

While we wished that there was an option to book ‘adult only’ flight tickets, it really wasn’t all that bad. 3hrs flew by, literally and metaphorically, and before we knew it the city of Palermo came into view as we approached it from the beautifully blue Mediterranean Sea.

After a quick loo stop, we withdrew some euros from the bank and made our way to the bus stop to get a shuttle into the city center.
We got off at a stop down Via Roma, which wasn’t too far from our hotel. As we muddled our way through the back streets with our luggage we soon made it.

Clean, bright, big and airy, our hotel room was perfect. It was all going swimmingly until we realised that Mum’s adapter didn’t fit into the wall plugs! We could charge our phones with my adapter, however, the lack of Mum’s adapter meant no hair straighteners! This may seem like a first world problem, and you would be right, it is, but we are on holiday and since we went to the effort of bringing them with us, we made it a priority to find a new adapter as we explored the city.

Once we changed from our travel attire, we headed to the harbour. The sun beamed down on our English winter skin and whilst we were soaking up the sun, the locals were still walking round in jackets and scarves! We leisurely walked up into the city. We stumbled across a busy, loud and very local square that provided us with our lunch and entertainment.
We selected arrancini, and a veg mix from a street food stall and a can of coca cola to share. 
As we sat and ate our food, we realised that this is city is far from peaceful! There was so much going on, multiple delicacies cooking on open friers on the street, people dancing to the sound of a man cycling round blaring music from his speaker and mopeds speeding along the cobbles with not much care for the pedestrians! This square was completely manic, but we were ready for it! It was a fantastic welcome to Palermo and a taste of what was to come over the next few days.
We headed up through a few more streets and wandered passed what can only be described as a car boot sale stall on one of the pavements. It caught our eye, and before we could talk ourselves out of it, we asked the man if he had any European adapters. He directed us to all the adapters that he had and against all odds, he had one that was exactly what we needed! €5 was a very small price to pay for the sheer joy we got from our little purchase and straight hair!
After our little win, we made our way back to the hotel to get ready for a meal out.

After I had a little nap and we bothbfreshened up, we went to a little restaurant along a narrow street in the center of Palermo. We sipped on delicious white wine and each had a very large pizza. The street was lit up from the restaurants that had poured onto the cobbles, lots of locals and tourists all enjoying their meals. The obligatory wait staff tryied to heard us in as we walked past the restaurants, but we settled at the bottom on the street that had tables wirh mosaic coloured table clothes and good prices and no one forcing us to view their menu! Music was coming out from a speaker somewhere along the street and we even had a little bit of drama with an ambulance pulling up. The man getting into the ambulance seemed to be ok and so we decided it was OK to enjoy the entertainment as we tucked into our pizza. Full to the brim, we paid the bill and retreated to our cosy room for a good night sleep.

Day two began with a continental breakfast at the hotel. Despite a street food walking tour planned for this day, we still decided that eating cereal, toast and croissants was a great idea. Spoiler alert- this was not a good idea!

We left the hotel and headed to one of the squares in the city and met our guide who introduced us to the group. The ‘group’ consisted of two others, a German couple who, without sounding rude, seemed a little less enthusiastic as you might expect a couple to be on their holiday. But they were friendly and kind and after our pleasantries, our guide (whom neither Mum or I managed to catch the name of) began his tour. In true Palermo style, we could barely hear what he was saying over the general noise of the city let alone the man directly behind us playing his guitar and singing as loud as he could!
Our guide, seemingly unbothered, proceeded to explain the history of the theatre that we were stood in front. We continued to a food market along a narrow street filled with fresh fruit, vegetables, fish, meat and herbs and spices. It was so vibrant and lively, we tasted some of the local delicacies and had some freshly squeezed blood orange juice and made our way to the Kings Palace. Mum was on top form, asking all the right questions and making conversation with our guide which took a lot of pressure of me and more than made up for the lack luster German couple who we later found out were both doctors.
After a couple of hours of eating so much good food I felt like I might explode and discovering my new favourite dessert, Pistachio Granite, the tour ended in a sweet little courtyard inside a convent, right in the middle of the city.

We said goodbye to our boring German friends and our lovely guide who we still don’t know the name of and headed to the ‘No Mafia’ exhibition.
A building dedicated to highlight the devastation caused by the Mafia across the city in the 1980’s run by the ‘No Mafia’ organisation.
We left feeling a little sceptical about how much of this No Mafia movement is still actually, more than likely, heavily controlled by the Mafia but glad we went in to look and maybe even a little bit more intrigued about this city and it’s history.
We sat in a little cafe just across the street and had some coffee whilst discussing our next activity.
We both wanted to head up to the Santa Rosalia and researched the best way to get there. We unanimously agreed that we need to get across the city to catch the 812 bus line to get there. Following Apple Maps we walked through an antiques market before realising that we were definitely not going in the right direction. Ever hopeful, we switched to Google Maps and managed to grab a bus to Piazza Crispi. Upon arriving at the bus stop, we realised that with hardly any battery left on our phones and not enough time on our validated bus tickets, it would be more sensible to make our way back to the hotel to charge Mum’s phone and I can pick up my power bank to use as we go to the harbour for a drink.

With Mum’s phone on charge and my power bank collected, we settled in the sun along the promenade. Since we are in possibly the loudest city in the world, it was no surprise that music started blaring from some speakers nearby, but what was surprising was that the water fountain in front of us was dancing to the music too! We had managed to time it just right to witness a daily fountain display on the harbour!
Lots of people gathered around us to watch and three songs were played; Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson and some Italian artist who we didn’t recognise.

After the disappointment of not getting to the Santa Rosalia, the water fountain lifted our spirits!
It was soon time to get ready to head out for dinner (not that either of us were hungry after the amount of food we consumed on the tour, but it was getting late).
Unfortunately as we returned to our room, we discovered that Mum’s phone had stopped charging at some point after we left. This had happened a few days ago due to some dust in the charging port, so we both attempted to remove anything that might be causing a problem, evidently, this wasn’t making any difference.
We cut our loses and decided to head for dinner via a phone shop that we might be able to get to before they closed. Clutching Mum’s phone and charger, I ran ahead to the shop. Getting there just in time I explained the problem, they took the phone and tried one of their own charging leads, to my disbelief it worked straight away.
Confused, I asked for the phone back so I could try it with my power bank (something I hadn’t checked before). Embarrassingly, it started charging. Mum arrived shortly afterwards and couldn’t believe it. We couldn’t understand why it was working in the shop after all the stress we were having in the hotel room. Apologising to the nice men in the shop we gathered our thoughts outside. Thankful that Mum had her phone back, we replayed the events in our heads.
It then suddenly clicked that all the excitement from the fountain display had meant we arrived back at the hotel room in a bit of a fluster and the key that turns on ALL THE ELECTRICITY IN THE ROOM had not been put into the key slot. Therefore, there was no problem with the phone, the port, or the charger… just a problem with mine and Mum’s common sense. Laughing at our stupidity and elated at the fact we still had two working phones, we walked around the corner to a restaurant that we planned to visit and both reluctantly agreed that Dad would have figured out what had happened before assuming there was something wrong with the phone!

The meal at Locale was perfect. The atmosphere was buzzing, the service impeccable, and the food was 10/10! All washed down with some more white wine. We wined and dined like Kings. Turns out we are pretty good at choosing good restaurants!

Another lovely night sleep lead us into our 3rd and final day in Palermo. It was a bright, sunny morning and we had planned to finally head up to Santa Rosalia. We tucked into another continental hotel breakfast. Off to Via Sciná we took in all of Palermo and its noisyness!
The illusive 812 (aptly named by Mum as it doesn’t appear on any route planners, even Google doesn’t seem to know it exists) turns up almost on time and we climb aboard to head up Monte Pellgrino to the church in the cave.
At the top we take a quick wander round the small church and decided to walk a bit further up the mountain to see if we can get a better view of the city.
We walked up in the sunshine for about 30mins before getting to an unlikely place to find a good view. Despite being up on the mountain with the satellite poles, the views of the city and the Mediterranean Sea were beautiful and we sat up here for a while before making our way back down.

We were on a mission to make the most of the finale day so we got back on the 812 to the city center. Off that bus and on to another, we headed across to one of the more touristy streets in the center. We bought tickets for the contemporary art gallery which is in the grounds of one of the palaces. We weren’t disappointed by the randomness of the contemporary ‘art’ and left feeling like we had accomplished quite a lot in one morning. However, there was still time to sneak in a Pistachio Granite ice cream dessert to have as we walked back to the hotel to get our luggage.

Just like the 812, the shuttle bus back to the airport seemed a bit unreliable. So with lots of time to make mistakes, we walked 30mins across the city to the bus terminal. As expected, our bus stop was nowhere to be seen. We finally gave in and asked one of the ticket office workers, he pointed around the train station and after another few minutes, we found the bus stop!

As our time here comes to an end, we reflected on our little trip to Palermo.
Mum took her shoes off around the city about 8 times (if you know, you know), we consumed about 5 glasses of wine, 2 beers and 1 Limoncello Spritz, we walked approx. 1 million steps, we laughed and I actually did cry at one point. We soaked up the sun and indulged in the local life of Palermo! Noisy, bustling, dirty and a bit rough, this city has a charm to it that grows on you the longer you’re here. We both wish we had longer to explore and learn more of what this city has to offer but as always, we had to get on our flight and we are now coming in to land at an cloudy Stanstead.
A bit tired but refreshed after a little break away, we land knowing it could be worse…. we could be having to go back to work tomorrow!