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)

4th of July at the Pisa Beach

Monday night was the Fourth of July, and I got to be an honorary American for the night. Katie and I headed down to Pisa in the afternoon after work, met up with our new friends, got some incredible pizza, and then headed to the American army base beach for swimming and dancing. It was a LOT of fun, and a really weird cultural experience... like a little slice of the states in Pisa, Italy. I kept talking to people in Italian and they'd respond with a "huh?". Like the guy who was trying to take a chair from our table, and I told him "Oh mi dispiace, usiamo tutti questi" and he said "huh?" and I said "oh, whoops, i mean... all ah y'alls chairs are taken". Then they proceeded to make fun of my "Canadian accent" and mimic me. Apparently to American people, we sound British?

Unfortunately it was raining so they had to cancel the fireworks... but they made up for it by providing a lifetime supply of glowsticks.

Here are some pictures from the last few days. Enjoy! In the meantime, I'm headed back to Florence tonight for some more Pizza O'Vesuvio :)

This is the place where the magic happens.

Me opening the greatest box ever in piazza signoria

Great orchestra in piazza Signoria

Katie and I... last night of Naima :(

New friends

At the beach in Pisa. Like the Gumby shirt I bought at the army base?

Getting ready for 4th of July fun!

Cloudy beach on the 4th of July

We clearly need more glowsticks...

24 Hour Adventure

So last night Katie and I decided at the last minute to head into Florence for some pizza from O'Vesuvio, AKA the pizzeria we discovered that makes pizza that tastes like angels. Our pizzeria expedition turned into epic 24 hour adventure. We got into Florence at 6pm, got our pizza, and ate it in piazza Signoria where an orchestra series was also going on. After that, I remembered that it was the final night that my favourite bar, Naima, would be open, since they're closing for renovations/the summer holiday season (in Italy, many businesses close in late July and throughout August since most Italians go away to the sea) so we went to Naima where, as always, we made tons of new friends, including the bouncer who we talked to for about an hour and discovered that he also makes jewellery. Interesting.

Needless to say, we missed the last train back to Pistoia, so we stayed at Naima all night. Later on, we met an awesome group of Americans and ended up hanging out with them. A few of the guys work at the US army base in Pisa, a couple of them study biology in Florence, and a girl named Lisa whom they had just met 2 hours prior to meeting us is studying Italian in Florence for the summer. It was a wild chance encounter that we all met each other like that, because we ended up having the greatest time with them and feeling like we'd known them forever. We all talked for a bit, and then at 6am they said they were heading back to Pisa and we were invited to come, so we agreed. There wasn't room in their car for 9 of us, so Katie, myself, Lisa and another guy (Matt) took the train and Mike picked us up. When we got there, we went to the army base so Katie and I could buy bathing suits. Then after a delicious Chinese all-you-can-eat lunch, Katie, Mike, Lisa and I went to the beach at Pisa and spent a glorious few hours enjoying the sun, the breeze, the water, and the fabulous people watching.

So that was my weekend! Tomorrow after work we're going to go back to Pisa to a 4th of July party on the beach with our new friends.

Now I'm going to try to go to sleep, despite the incredibly loud karaoke event going on in the village at the bottom of the hill. (Our apartment is in a sort of sound tunnel, so it essentially sounds like the karaoke is taking place in our apartment. Agony.)

Ciao for now!

PS. Unfortunately my camera battery died partway through the night, so I'm counting on Katie's camera for some good shots. I'll grab pictures off her later this week and share if there's anything good