Palermo
Day 1 - Welcome to Palermo
We arrived a day early at the Hotel Ambasciatori so we could reset to Sicily, having spent the last week and a half in the Netherlands and Belgium. The tour started on the rooftop of the hotel at 3 PM on a Sunday. What a view! The rooftops of Palermo, the church steeples, the mountains in the distance. There we met Alfio, our guide, and our fellow travelers, and we each told a bit about ourselves and why we were traveling in Sicily. For me it was The Godfather, the scenes where Michael Corleone is walking in the Sicilian hills with his bodyguards. For several others it was Salvo Montalbano, Andrea Camilleri's fictional Sicilian police commissario, whom I had not heard of, but now I am an avid fan thanks to my fellow travelers (more on that later).
A highlight of the following day was our visit to the market in Palermo. To truly experience a Sicilian market, you need to hear it, smell it, feel the ground under your feet, and of course take in the riot of colors with your eyes. The following video clip was filmed in a Palermo market (that's my husband and fellow traveler at the end).
Day 2 - Palermo and Monreale
"Situated on the slopes of a mountain six miles west of Palermo is one of Sicily's most important sites, the stunning Norman cathedral of Monreale."
Rick Steves Sicily
Being a fan of mosaics, the cathedrals in Palermo and Monreale were mind-boggling. The Monreale cathedral has over 68,000 square feet of mosaics, a third more than St. Mark's Basilica in Venice. And one of the best parts - you could touch them!
For us, an important aspect of the Rick Steves tour was free time for individual exploration and experience, since everyone has different interests. Our guide Alfio made sure to give us options and information to enrich our free time. These are the kinds of sights I like to see - churches, urban spaces, anything to do with the sea, and oh my, a tile shop! It is miraculous that no Sicilian tiles came home with me, but I have the benefit that when presented with many choices, I am too indecisive to choose.
And the already-full luggage was a secondary influence.
