Palermo, Sicily

After the morning Colosseum tour in Rome, we caught the train down to Naples and boarded an overnight ferry to the island of Sicily. We initially planned to visit Naples and see Pompeii's archaeological site. However, our busy schedule didn't allow for an extra day in Italy. Turns out Naples is a massive dump so pretty glad we passed through without wasting the time. We booked allocated seats that turned out to be a great choice. The seats were in a large hall of seating and we were the only ones in there! From what I could tell, the rest of the passengers were in private cabins and had paid a lot more for the privilege. So with our unexpected privacy, we set up our sleeping bags across a row of seats each and had a decent sleep.

Our plan in Sicily was to hire a car and finally put to use the camp gear I’d been carrying this whole time. Basically half of my entire backpack is taken up by the tent, sleeping mat, sleeping bag and cooking gear so it was about time we actually used it.

We reached Palermo at 7 am. We planned to pick up the car the next day so this gave us a complete day and night to discover Palermo, the second-largest city in Sicily.

After living out of a bag for 3 months, Jessie and I were growing tired of constantly moving and unpacking/packing. We had already been to 5 countries in the past month. Every move we now made, we considered how hard the transit would be and how far we would have to carry our bags. I had arranged to drop our bags at the BnB I had booked at 10 am and then check in later in the day. When you're tired and have slept on seats all night, everything is harder. Our walk to the BnB through town was a punish. When we finally arrived at 10 am, I couldn’t get in contact with the host. Somehow I managed to open the door to the communal hallway of the apartment block which allowed us to dump our bags at the front door of the BnB which was good enough for us. At this stage we were both happy for someone to take all our gear and for us to start again from scratch 😂

We wandered back into the town and set about exploring the small streets and local Sicilian atmosphere. We wandered down along a street that looked like it should lead to a central hub and found a small alley with a few local bars serving food. With no menu available we took the gamble and accepted a guy's offer of their meat platter. We had seen a few of these street-side bars with what appeared to be a grill inside and a display cabinet of sausages and kebabs. Our meat platter turned out to be more of a case of “guess what’s inside” but fun nonetheless. What was more entertaining than the food was watching the same guy hustle the other tourists who dared wander down the same street and the banter between him and the chefs inside. Absolutely no idea what they were saying as they yelled at each other in Italian but that’s how it is I guess.

What we’ve definitely learnt is that most of the bars/restaurants dont open until later than we’re used to. The same street we had wandered down earlier looking for lunch had come alive after dark. The street had turned into a street party with hundreds of people out and about. We did a search of “best pizza” and made our way to a place that served pizza by the slice. With seats out on the street we treated ourselves to another pizza dinner and enjoyed the evening.Læs mere