Bill, David, Tom, and i met up at the airport and grabbed dinner before our redeye to Frankfurt, followed by a short flight down to Palermo as the sun rose.
Bags packed and ready to go |
London at night, from airplane |
Passing the English Channel and starting to fly over continental Europe |
The beginning of sunrise on the flight from Frankfurt to Palermo |
Step 2 of sunrise - blinding sunlight |
First view of Sicily - a foggy island in the rain |
The Sicilian coastline comes into focus |
Palermo airport, with the town of Cinisi in the foothills behind it |
Taxi ride to our hotel in Palermo |
After checking into the hotel, Bill, Dave, Sarah, and i went to a nearby pedestrian district and found a nice restaurant for lunch. In the afternoon, Sarah and i wandered around Palermo to look at buildings, and then we made a dinner reservation at another place near the hotel. Joe joined us just in time, and all eight of us had dinner together.
First primi of the trip |
building in Palermo |
on the street corner by our hotel, Dave and Bill do not look at the camera |
Dave and Bill continue not to look at the camera |
Teatro Politeama Garibaldi, near our hotel |
statue of a lion |
the top of the building with the lion |
a pedestrian district in Palermo |
sculpture above a door in Palermo |
hipster gelato |
the intersection of Via Maqueda and Via Vittorio Emanuele has a statue-decorated wall at each of the four corners |
a second corner, with tourists |
the Piazza Pretoria, with fountain |
graffiti in Palermo: 'to struggle for work is not a crime' |
windows at the end of San Cataldo, a 12th century Arabic-style Norman church |
panorama of churches in the Piazza Bellini |
a part of the fortification of the old Panormo |
Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio — as you can see from the plants, we seem to be in the Mediterranean |
San Cataldo with its three red domes |
Dooooooome (of the Chiesa di Santa Caterina) |
buildings in the Piazza Pretoria, from another angle |
more Palermo graffiti, something along the lines of 'Long live the uprising of the youth' |
Cattedrale di Palermo |
clock tower of the Cattedrale di Palermo |
roof and wall detail at the Cattedrale di Palermo |
wall above the entrance to the Cattedrale di Palermo |
plaque about the kings of Sicily (i can't read Latin, but Wikipedia knows everything) |
inside the cathedral... a replica of the cathedral |
dome interior with chandeliers |
a floor sundial! |
information about the floor sundial, which was installed by an astronomer in the late 18th century |
floor sundial detail - fish vs scorpion |
SCORPION DEFEATS FISH |
statue inside the cathedral - St. Agatha with a protractor |
On the walk back from the cathedral, we took a different route up many narrow streets and through an outdoor vegetable market with mammoth zucchini and cauliflowers (not photographed due to clerical error) |
a bicycle (ish), and also some berries |
Back at the hotel, we met up with Scott, who had arrived, and prepared to go out to dinner |
sketches over the fireplace at Hotel Plaza Opera (plus bonus arms) |
decorative plate at Trattoria Biondo, where we had dinner |
In Sicily, you can eat squid with melon every day! |