Holy Cannoli! Palermo Day Two

At Mondello Beach

My hotel is in a great area of Palermo... very central. If you turn left on via Roma, you are a 5-15 minute walk from a lot of the main sites and areas like Vucciria (the vibrant neighbourhood where I had lunch yesterday), the Cathedral, etc. If you turn right on Via Roma and go up a bit, you get to Via della Libertà which is a main shopping street, and there are tons of little side streets with restaurants and stuff.

Last night I went out to find a place for dinner. I'd found some places nearby recommended on tripadvisor, but they were all either a) impossible to find, or b) closed because it was Monday, so I ended up at a patio restaurant very close to my hotel. It was ok, but a bit annoying. My food took an extremely unreasonable amount of time to come... 90 minutes for pasta all'amatriciana? Come on... But I didn't mind too much since I had a big glass of wine and a good book ok my kindle. Also, it should be illegal for a waiter to take your order and then say "can I bring you some bruschetta?" and make it sound as if it's on the house, and then later charge you for it. I don't even like bruschetta that much...

Afterwards I went to a highly recommended pasticceria next to the restaurant and got some cannoli and other ricotta-filled pastries to bring back to the hotel room. I exercised a great deal of self control and managed to only eat a few of them! Then I called it an early night.

This morning, after hitting the snooze button about 8 times, I dragged my butt out of bed and went up to the rooftop terrace for breakfast. I was pleasantly surprised by the selection. Usually Italian breakfast is just cookies, pastries, and nutella. At my hotel breakfast, there was cake and nutella-filled croissants, but also scrambled eggs, bacon, cheeses, cold cuts, and several more items to choose from. I was so satisfied with breakfast that I fully skipped lunch today, saving a few dollars (well, to be fair, I did have a couple more of my ricotta pastries from last night a few minutes ago, so I guess that counts as lunch...).

After breakfast I walked about 2 or 3 short blocks to a piazza where I caught a bus to go to Mondello beach. It was about a 20 minute bus ride (which was very very scenic). The beach itself is beautiful! White sand, bright blue water, and a mountainous vista in the background. I'd read online that the beach is now "all public". This isn't entirely true... it is largely private, with a thin strip along the water that is public (and therefore crowded). I was going to dish out the cash for an umbrella on the private beach, when I realized that I would be fenced off from the water, so instead I went to the public area and squeezed my towel in between some other people. It wasn't that bad really. Even all the kids running past me didn't bother me, although I was a little leery when the cute little girl beside me decided she liked my zebra-striped towel and wanted to sit on it with me...

Determined to avoid another sunburn incident like the one in Split, I made sure to voraciously slather myself up with SPF45 (my SPF60 is somewhere in my suitcase in the Rome airport), and I reapplied at least 6 times in the 4 hours I was there. Now I'm back in the hotel, and, having evaluated the damage, am quite proud to announce that I am relatively burn-free, minus the part of my back that I couldn't reach.

Now that I've showered off all the sand, I'm planning on going out to find a nice patio for a glass of wine and so I can read my book. Then in just over an hour I'm going to meet Carolina (the Italian girl who is interning at Celle in September) at Palazzo Riso, the Contemporary Art Museum in Palermo.

Ciao!

The view from the rooftop terrace of my hotel

Mondello Beach (the girl on the right is the one who decided to share my towel)

The Cuz Does Italy

Wandering streets looking for somewhere to eat

My cousin David has arrived in Italy! It's his first time and I'm psyched to get to show him around a bit. Before arriving, he spent a few days in Switzerland and went canyoning, which sounds super intense. Now he's staying in Pistoia.

After I got some errands done in Pistoia I met up with him on Tuesday right after he arrived around 3:30pm. We found a nice little patio and had some great white wine. Then we had some terrible gelato (it was served at room temperature, had a bizarre texture, and after sitting out in the sun for 30 minutes, it hadn't melted at all... I'm terrified about what it may have been made of...). Then we tried to find somewhere to eat around 6pm, but, as Pistoia is not a tourist centre and therefore is a true example of "authentic" Italian life, no restaurant opens before 8. I refused to settle for crappy pizza once again, and we finally managed to locate a great restaurant that opened at 7:30 and they let us sit down a bit earlier. I had to explain that the last bus to my home leaves Pistoia at 8:10 so that's why I needed to eat early, however I didn't end up making the bus and I learned that the cab ride to my place is only about twelve euros.

But yes, back to our dinner. First of all, the menu was only in Italian and our awesome waiter translated the WHOLE thing for us word-for-word (I needed the translations for many things too, as it was a very fancy restaurant and I didn't recognize a lot of the Italian words and types of cheeses and meats they had). We both got crostini (toast) to start. Mine had a smokey sort of spanish cheese with whole peppercorns in it, plus prosciutto. David's had some sort of liver paté that he said was amazing. Then for a main course, I got beef from some region of Tuscany that is like their version of Kobe beef. It was incredible... so tender, simply done with just some salt, pepper and olive oil. David got tortellini filled with cheese and vegetables in a cream sauce. I'll definitely be going back to that place!

Yesterday I had a French morning tour which was a total disaster... the group of ANCIENT French people who showed up had promised they would do the whole 4-5 hour tour, but after an hour (40 minutes of which they spent in the bathroom) they said "we're going". Miranda was not happy, and I was frustrated that I'd spent more time making sure I knew the entire tour in French than they spent actually doing the tour.

In the afternoon I went back to Pistoia to hang out with David more. We went back to our new favourite wine place and relaxed and people watched for a few hours. Then Katie came into the city after her tour and the three of us went for dinner to this great restaurant called Home. Katie and I started with a simple pasta with cheese and black pepper, and then we split a steak (that was good but not as nice as the one the previous night). David had some sort of fish pasta and then a fish main course.

Katie and I caught a cab back and then had quite a magical, wildlife-filled trek up the driveway to our apartment. First of all, the forest around us was absolutely sparkling with fireflies, which was indescribably awesome. Then as we walked along a stone wall that borders the back pathway we take at night, we saw a big-ish creature running along the base of the wall. We were both like "Oh dear God, giant rat" but when I pulled out my cell phone to illuminate it, it was a big European Hedgehog! (See below pictures). Then I went into our bathroom and there was a fairly large lizard, which isn't scary at all because there are tons of them around, but there was something about it sitting on the bathroom wall with it's funny little feet with its bulbous little toes. I squealed for Katie to come see, and we were both looking at it, but then we moved the door for a split second (we essentially just blinked) and it was GONE! Must have been our bathroom spirit...

Today I have an English tour in the afternoon for a German art association and David is going to join, and then we'll probably hit up the chocolate shop next door. Then it's off to Florence tomorrow.

Ciao tutti!

Statue in Pistoia

In Piazza Duomo

Tower in Piazza Duomo

Giant group of people and children linking hands and dancing around a bush in Piazza Duomo

My incredible Tuscan Steak!

David with his pasta

My incredible daily breakfast - scrambled eggs with pancetta and shallots

Hedgehog!