For our
annual autumn getaway we headed to an island best
known for its volcanoes, great cuisine and Mafioso (well, maybe little less for
that these days but yet an exciting thought…). So we got on an early morning flight
from Paris to Palermo, and we were on our way! The landing to Palermo was an excitement on its own; the
first sight of any land was only seconds before touching down the runway...
Aside from the early
waking, the good thing about arriving in the morning was that we had the entire
day to see what Palermo has to offer. We ended up strolling down the
streets of its old district and running into a street market that was full of
Sicilian life- we had some street food there and carried on the sighting. We got to
the Palazzo dei Normanni, but only viewed its facade thinking we’ve seen so
many of them already, and thus continued down the road to the Cathedral, which was
also impressive in size and glory.
As Denis sometimes gets greedy for local pastries, he spotted a bakery across the street from the palace and we dived right in. We crabbed some local delicacies but not just any local delicacies; these are probably the most well-known Italian dessert(s) till the date (a fried pastry tube filled with sweet ricotta and some spices, a hint of chocolate on the top). Even the Godfather movie has a line “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli”!
After being full of energy
again, we continued to go around the city and found a lot of interesting
buildings and places to see. We were actually surprised how few sights there are in Palermo, considering the size of it. Nevertheless, our hotel was located right on one of the main avenues so
going to places was really easy. Just around the corner we could get ourselves
lost in a labyrinth of narrow streets leading to the harbor, which in the past
was one of the main playground for mafia.
In the night as we made our
way back from dinner, we spotted lots of people, just before our place, on the
little narrow streets- hallelujah- we had just hit the jackpot: Sicilian
party! The streets were full of bars and people, going from one to another
or just chilling somewhere in-between. We had quite a blast and finally after
being awake for what felt like forever, we hit the sack and slept tight.
