Although the boat was supposed to dock at a few minutes after six, I was up at least an hour before that. I caught this glimpse of the rising sun.
There is a kennel on the ship for dogs being transported to Sicily, and the dogs and their friends were reunited in the early morning light.
We took our time disembarking from the boat, which annoyed crew somewhat, and caught a cab. We arrived at our hotel, the wonderfully named Palazzo Brunaccini, in a few minutes. Since it was barely eight o’clock, it was no surprise that our room was not ready yet. We asked if there was a barber nearby. Salvatore, one of the workers there, walked us a couple blocks away to the small “Fabio” salon. We mimed enough information for me to get my hair trimmed quite nicely. Unfortunately, I did not get a picture of this.
From there we went on to one of the many markets in Palermo, the Ballarò market. It was still a little early for this and many of the vendors were still starting to put our their wares. There is a fantastic amount of fresh fish here. Frankly, it leaves the Pikes Place market in Seattle in the dust here.
There were things I have never seen at home like these giant zucchini.
And there were some things I am not sure I want to know more about. I’m guessing these we salt water eels.
We stopped friendly at a small church in the market. All of the pills were draped with faux silk was was the altar itself.
The church was dedicated to Saint Francis, so his image was given pride of place … a bit of neon, too!
We still had an hour or two before we could check in at the hotel, so we decided to do more sightseeing. At the top of nearly everybody's list of sights in Palermo is the Palazzo dei Normanni, the Norman castle. It is not, as the guidebooks all point out, a particularly interesting place from the outside. It was built as fortifications in the twelfth century, after all. It is what is inside that is important. And there are two things that are worth visiting inside: the Royal Apartment and the Palatine Chapel.
Alas, the first of those two places was not open today. The Palazzo is the home of the Sicilian Assembly, the closest thing in Italy to an American state government. For security reasons, when the assembly is meeting access to the building is restricted. So had to content ourselves with the chapel. Still, what a glorious place this is! It possibly contains the most magnificent Byzantine mosaics in Italy. They are nowhere as old, of course, as the ones in Ravenna, but they give the sense of what such a church should look like. Here is the Christos Pantokrator, the “All-Ruling Christ” in the apse above the high altar. Note that Jesus has a beard and long hair here just like a Norman noble: in the earlier mosaics in Ravenna he is clean shaven with short hair as a Roman would have been.
In the back is an elevated area where King Roger I who built that chapel may have sat during Mass.
Restoration of the chapel is an on-going job. The chapel was built by an eclectic group of architects and artisans including Arabs. These artists used traditional Islamic geometric patterns in the tile work.
As we left, I noticed from the guidebook at San Giovanni degli Eremeti was on the way back. We stopped by this ruined monastery, one of the very oldest in Sicily. There is really not much left here, at the red domes, the most famous feature of the church, may or may not be authentic. There are bits of what could be a splendid garden in the old cloisters.
I tried to point out to John that we are too old for selfies, but he insists on trying.
Nobody over the age of 40 should have a close up or a photo shot from below their chin. Or, in my case, chins!
We also briefly stopped by the Duomo, or cathedral. It is an enormous building and the exterior is a hodgepodge of Arabic, Byzantine, Gothic, and neoclassical styles. It still manages to look sort of interesting. The interior is beyond drab, possibly the worst of eighteenth century church design. On the outside there was this strange carriage. I have no idea what this is all about. Maybe it’s religious, or maybe it’s some kind of public art.
Making it back to the hotel, we check in an discovered that they had given us a truly enormous room, a suite with a sitting area as well as a bedroom. Rebecca would have liked this place a lot! I am not sure why we received this obvious upgrade, but I’m not complaining about it!
We napped a bit and then went exploring in the neighborhood. Palermo seems poorer even than Naples, and we were struck by how many African immigrants are living here as well as a sizable number of Muslims. Most of the centro storico is still in poor condition, although here and there building have been restored. There are an utterly absurd number of churches here, even accepting that the population of this area a century ago was much higher than it is today. Still a few were intriguing. This is Saint Cataldo the church of the Knights of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, one of the Roman Catholic “military” orders dating from the time of the Crusades. It was not clear how exactly one could tour this church, so we never made it inside.
Instead, we look at the Fontana Pretoria. This fountain dominates the square in front of Palermo’s city hall. Built in the sixteenth century by a Florentine sculpture, it shocked conservative Palermo. It was called the Fontana della Vergogna, or "Fountain of Shame.” It does have a few pretty risqué elements to it.
We looked in our guidebooks for a good place for lunch and finally hit upon Zia Pina, or “Aunt Pina’s” a small trattoria close to the old port area. The food was quite good, and quite cheap, too! John loved the antipasto bar. As we left, though we went through some of the poorest areas we have seen yet in Palermo. In a nearby square, the graffiti pointed out that the buildings there have no been rebuilt from the Allied bombing in 1943!
As we were shaking out heads at this, we noticed another man walk up with large plastic jugs to fill from the fountain. We figured that he must not have running water where he lives. This seemed straight out of one of those post-war Italian neo-realist movies.
On a lighter note, we noticed that across the street somebody else had declared their love for Uwe, Since we have a friend by this name in Los Angeles, we thought we would let him know that he might have an admirer in Palermo.
In the evening we walked over to the Teatro Massimo to see if we could get tickets to the ballet. When we look at this online a few weeks ago it was sold out. But we decided to see if either there had been cancellations or if more seats had been released. I’m not sure which it was, but we bought two tickets for a very reasonable 45 euro each. We noticed the colors on the front of the building and wondered if this had anything to do with upcoming Gay Pride weekend in Palermo.
The Massimo is another of the grand old European opera houses. It was built almost 70 years after the new San Carlo in Naples, but it looks pretty similar.
It does have a bigger and better lobby than some of the earlier Opera houses.
We were seated on the top row of the boxes, but in back. We were there to see not opera but ballet. In this case it was a new production of Delibe’s Coppelia. As nobody was seated behind us, John discretely took some pictures of the production with his phone.
After the production, John went to the Royal box. I am not sure if the reigning monarchs of the House of Savoy ever left Rome or Milan to come down here, but if they did, they certainly had a grand place to watch opera.
We had a lovely small supper at on a square in the old section and then headed back to the hotel.
Tomorrow we are going to try to make it to Monreale.
