The Garden City

8/29

Today Stefano and I had the day off so we decided to take the train to Palermo. Although the train station of Vallelunga looks like a deserted hotel from a horror movie, the train that arrived was surprisingly new and clean. We headed north through the countryside for about 2 hours until we reached Palermo, the capital of Sicily. He had never been here before either so we both opted to take the tourist approach. We bought an all day pass for a double decker bus that took us all around the town square and let us on and off at different places around the city. The bus also provided audio with facts and history about the different sites. Cheezy I know, but it was the best way to get around town in the limited time that we had (we had to catch the train back to Vallelunga by 4). I think it was good because I was able to see a little bit of everything. Some just in passing, but most up close and personal. From the parks and fountains to the theaters and churches, there are so many different kinds of beautiful architecture here. You can see the influence from the many different civilizations that passed through and left their mark here. There are many parks and gardens to see, so much that Palermo used to be known as "the garden city." Many of these are now a part of the many private villas scattered through the city such as Villa Tasca pictured here which is owned by the same family as the Tasca D'Almerita winery I am working at. Even though I was sweating the entire time from the heat and humidity, I enjoyed every moment of it. Palermo is a great city with so much history and beauty.
Around 1:00 we realized how hungry we were from all the walking around and were both craving Pizza so we went on a mission to find a pizzeria. Sounds like a simple task right? Think again! Not only are the restaurants not really open at this time (1:00 is way to early for lunch here) the ones that are don’t serve Pizza that early. We walked around for a good hour following about 4 different people’s wrong directions trying to find something other than a bar. One of the people we stopped to ask directions from started to tell me how beautiful I was and how she could tell I was not from there (Duh) and as she started to tell Stefano to take good care of me and never let me go (everyone thought we were married and on our honeymoon haha) a Pigeon pooped on my back…twice! Oh man, it was disgusting! This was the first time for me and I couldn’t believe it. I have always thought it was so funny when people tell the story about it happening to them but now it was not so funny. Stefano thought it was hilarious and once I got it wiped off and was not in shock anymore, I could not stop laughing either. We ended up settling on a restaurant where we were the first and only ones to sit down and we had pasta instead of pizza, which turned out to be very good.

We returned to our sightseeing and visited the some of the most famous sites in Palermo like the Teatro Massimo, Fontana Pretoria, Piazza Marina, Palazzo Dei Normanni, the Capella Palatina (a beautiful cathedral) and much more. On our way back to the train station at the end of the day, it started raining all of a sudden and the wind picked up like crazy. It came out of nowhere and the leaves and trash (it’s beautiful, but it’s still a big city) were all kicked up like we were in the middle of a tornado. It was strange but it only lasted for about 10 min. The rain felt good and was a nice break from the heat though. I am not sure if we were just really tired or if everything was really as funny as it seemed, but we laughed the whole way home, telling each other funny stories about college and our friends. The train ride flew by and before we knew it…casa dolce casa.