Palermo

Moving on to Palermo... I must first profess my intense love of Sicily. I WILL be coming back in the near future because again, we barely scratched its surface and I am completely in love with the people, the place, the food, the culture, and most of all, its general insanity and disorganization. I know, right, me I liked its disorganization. But it is orderly disorganization. The city is crazy, loud, boisterous and in-you-face. Street peddlars try to sell you things 8 times in the course of one meal, but hey, it doesn't matter because you have the best food EVER right in from of you. And it's cheap. Ahh, but I'm getting ahead of myself.


Chaz's first view of the Mediterranean! It was good to be back. There's something different about the sea rather than the ocean. I like it much better! It was the first really sunny day I had experienced in months, so it was great. We walked 15 minutes from our hotel to this beach (not too sandy, lots of wave-breakers) but it was a great view and very relaxing. Oh, and of course, we ate our way there. That is the general theme of this spring break! Eat and walk, eat and walk, sleep and eat, sleep and eat.


Strangler fig tree! I love these things, despite the fact that they are actually an invasive species and not very nice trees. I saw some huge strangler figs in Belieze, but these were fatter than any I could remember. We had fun climbing through them and figuring out how many trees were really in one. They tend to grow together after awhile!



Up close.


Chaz and I enjoying a typical Sicilian snack food/ quick lunch. It's called an "arancina" and it is amazing. I am 100% positive that Dad would go crazy for them. They are different everywhere you go, but basically, they're a ball of saffron-spiced rice, meat, and ricotta cheese all fried up in a delicious ball of goodness. Two of them cost us 2.80 euros, and they were huge. Now that's a price I can handle! We were so excited not to be paying 10 euros for a cup of coffee in Rome that we went back after sitting at the beach for a while and got a dessert from the same cafe. Mmmm cannoli! So good :)


I didn't catch the name of this building! I feel terrible, but there was so much to do in Palermo, and we just didn't get a chance to do everything.


One of the main cathedrals in Palermo.


Underneath.


Mmmm how about some cow testicles and innards for dinner? It's fresh, I can assure you.


Or, how about some nice intestines wrapped around a stick? They'll fry 'em up right there for ya!


Note the poor animal (I think it's a lamb?) sliced right in half. The market was great to walk through, but geeze did it make me want to be a vegetarian again.


Here we have the intestines cooking. The string them up in long chains (look in the back left corner of the picture.) Chaz was interested in trying the intestines, but he chickened out and didn't do it. Who knows if it's good or not, but I wasn't brave enough to find out!




So for dinner, we settled on something a little more tame. Kebabs were everywhere, and always delicious. We're not sure what kind of meat he ate that night. I didn't like the taste of it, but he did. Ah bliss. And, we ate outside every night in Palermo, so we can't complain at all!


Arab influenced architecture.



Ok so I can honestly say I've had the best fried calamari of my life at a Sicilian restaurant called "Crazy Food." They should probably change their name, but not their recipes! AMAZING. And oh so fresh! Walking around the markets I saw the squid and octupi and fishes right there with my own eyes. No shipping or freezing what I just ate! So good so good so good.



Sooo random run in #3- Scott Budnick was just walking around the street with some friends one evening!! And coincidentally, we ran into him. He is studying the whole year in Rome, and just happened to be on a field trip to Palermo with his architecture class. We walked around and caught up on life for a good hour. It was fun!


Palermo has this really weird tourist attraction which we (oddly) decided to go to. It's a crypt of Cappuchin monks. I guess a couple centuries ago some of the monks decided they wanted to be preserved, and that they wanted people to come see them after they died? So they perfected some embalming technique and are now on display for everyone to see in their creepy little crypt. I guess people liked the idea and asked if common people could do it too. When they got the go-ahead, they started embalming everyone who could afford it! Some people are a liiiiiitle too well preserved- we're talking hair and skin left over. Sick. Chaz thought it was cool, I thought I was going to barf. Yuck. I couldn't wait to get out of there. They are even clothed! Some of the people had the audacity to actually ask for their clothes to be changed at a certain point after their deaths!


Ahh marzipan. Pretty to eat, but in my opinion, too sweet. It looks very real though!