Our last proper day in Sicily. We had thought to train out to Cefalu, but given the forecast for slightly inclement weather decided to see a bit more of Palermo instead. After a standard Italian breakfast of croissant and coffee, we headed to the Norman Palace (The Royal Palace of Palermo). After its long history of housing the Sicilian kings, it is still the working parliament building for the Sicilian government. The wind and temperature dropped overnight, and we even had a few spits of rain, our first for many, many weeks. It was a pleasure not being hot.
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| Palermo street |
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| This majolica-style cloth is everywhere |
We passed an exact replica of our Ceret car. This is what Palermo does to a 15-year-old car. Ours in France is in perfect condition, not one scratch!
We hadn't left ourselves with as much time to visit the palace as we wanted before a pre-booked tour of another palace, but it turned out fine. The Norman Palace is a lovely big building, with the highlights being the amazing gold-mosaiced chapel, and the palace rooms adjoining a Norman tower.
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| The tower, part of the Norman Palace |
The chapel is one of the wonders of Italy. The floors are gorgeous geometric patterns of different-coloured marble, and pretty much everything above ground level is covered in mosaics depicting all kinds of scenes from the bible and elsewhere, The effect is amazing. They are in perfect condition, bright, vivid and tell great stories.
The palace rooms were also lovely, but not as spectacular, and a little tricky to get the feel of it as they were full of displays about the Mafia Wars when the Italian government finally got to grips with the mafia problem.
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| Main hall, now Sicily's parliament |
We had about half an hour free before our tour of Palazzo Conte Federico, so we tried desperately to find a granita seller. We couldn't find one, but we did stumble across the Mercato di Ballaro, a crazy winding street market. At 11:30 it was full of locals, tourist, street food vendors, music and activity. great fun, but no granita. Running short of time we picked up a couple of bananas from a vege stall and hot-footed it back to the palace.
The Palazzo Conte Federico was one of our trip highlights for sure. It's a big palazzo built by the original Count Federico in the 17th century, surrounding one of Palermo's original city wall towers. It's now the only tower still standing. The guides are the two sons of the current Count, and are 15th generation. The family still lives in the palace, but opens it to guided tours, presumably to help with its maintenance. Our guide Andrea was great. It felt a real privilege to be able to go through the family's home, seeing all rooms except bedrooms and bathrooms. The family's belongings, mementoes, photos and kit were all there. Father was, and still is, a serious racing driver - at 85 he was away with his favoured vintage car at a rally in Malta. Mother was, and still is, a serious competitive swimmer. Their many hundreds of trophies adorn most rooms. They were also good friends with Garibaldi, the man who founded and combined modern Italy - they've dedicated their kitchen to him.
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| The Palazzo courtyard |
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| Living room |
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| The current Count's study |
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| The original tower |
Each room was full of treasures one or other of the counts had collected some time in the previous four centuries. A fascinating and really enjoyable tour we'd absolutely recommend to any Sicilian visitor.
Coming out an hour later we were well ready for some food. A croissant and a banana don't last terribly long. We went straight back to the street market, found some seafood we liked, ordered it and sat down. It was a great spot just off the market street, and the music, hawkers and visitors made for a lovely noisy and fun environment. The food was excellent. One of the best things about street food is that the turnover is extremely rapid, and you can pretty much count on it being really fresh ingredients to start with, and freshly made just for you. And so it was. One of the tastiest, and cheapest, meals of our Sicily trip.
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| Lunch! |
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| More market scenes |
All we needed afterwards was a final granita to finish the meal off, and we found a spot a bit outside the market as we headed back towards our room. We chose mandorla again, the rich almond flavour being something we haven't met elsewhere in other countries and importantly, it's less sweet than some of the alternatives. Sweetness is a Sicilian theme.
A bit of a relax in our room, some reading and blog, then dinner was some bits we'd saved from lunch, followed by a last Sicilian gelato from the place we'd found close by our room.
Tomorrow there's an early bus trip to the airport, a Ryanair to Barcelona and a Flixbus back to Perpignan.
So, a great trip to Sicily. We'd wanted to visit those parts of Sicily we'd been unable to visit in 2011, and we feel we made a pretty good fist of it. Our favourite town without doubt was Ortigia, the island joined to Syracuse. It was beautiful, fun, and the couple of evenings we had in the main square drinking Aperol and watching the world go by were delightful. The mosaics of Villa Romana del Casale were the best we have ever seen, and the temples and theatres of Agrigento and Segesta were excellent. Todays palazzo tour was fascinating.
The travelling and hire car have all been very easy and simple, no issues of any kind. The food has been delicious, tasty and easy to find - we are definitely going to miss the granita and gelato!
