Tuesday 27th September

This morning after a leisurely start, we walked towards the hop-on hop-off bus stop. Arriving at the end of the street we stopped by a small café which seemed to be the haunt of the students from the nearby university who were in large groups, all talking at once and making a great hubbub. Some did seem to be discussing study issues but most did not. We had coffee, lemon drink, a cannoli and a cornetto, both of the latter being filled with mascarpone and sat there a while. 

The busy cafe at the end of our street in Palermo.

Then it was on to the bus. We flagged down a shuttle bus which took us to the main stop for the Red Route. We boarded up on the top tier and set off around the city past buildings emanating from the many era of the city, Greek, Roman, Norman, and Arab, (not necessarily in that order). At the stop for the Royal Palace, we disembarked and walked to the box office to get tickets for access to the palace and the Palatine Chapel within.

We entered the palace through the gift shop!! And explored the first and second floors. Then we queued to enter the Palatine Chapel. This was, according to your taste, gorgeous or totally over-blown!! The decoration on the ceilings and walls are extensive, to say the least and the imagery very bold. It is, by any standards a remarkable building but to what extent the costs justify it, is a subject for debate. The link below gives a better description and many more photos of this amazingly decorated place.

Palatine Chapel

Just a sample of interior of the Palatine Chapel

After this we walked in the Palace Gardens and then sat for a drink at a small café. Then we lined up for the final part of our tour which was an ‘experience’ This involved entering a mirror-lined ‘infinity room’ and standing on a marker point very still. At this point a device was supposed to scan you and produce a link which would allow you to print out a 3-D image of yourself. MAC’s worked mine did not as the machine conked out when I was there, according to the lady attendant, because ‘I was too tall’!!! They promised to refund the euro 3 but we decided to make that a donation to the Palace. We left again through the book/gift shop and picked up a couple of souvenirs.

We then walked the short distance to the Cathedral where we entered briefly. Compared with the other churches we had seen, the cathedral is relatively austere. There were options to go up to the roof or down to the crypts but we decided not to do that.

We walked back to the bus stop we had disembarked from but had just missed a bus so had to wait there for some time until the next bus cane around. We took this bus until the stop where is interchanged with the ‘Blue Line’ During the remains of the Red Line trip we passed some magnificent old buildings as well as some less impressive ones built in the 1940’s and 1950’s. One of the most impressive was the Teatro Massimo which is one of the largest opera houses in the world. We also passed the Grand Hotel des Palmes which has an amazing and storied history which included Richard Wagner composing Parsifal during a long sty there, Mafia meetings and many, many celebrities and other strange goings-on.

From Wikipedia:

The Grand Hotel et des Palmes is a historic hotel in Palermo, Sicily, on the central Via Roma.

The building was built on the initiative of the Ingham - Whitaker family in 1874 and used as a private residence. The house was connected by a secret passage to the adjacent Anglican church. Initially, the building consisted of a two-story low body with an exotic winter garden that reached the sea.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the house was sold to the knight Enrico Ragusa, who in 1907 commissioned the transformation of Palazzo Ingham in the Grande Albergo delle Palme to the architect Ernesto Basile. It became a luxury hotel, symbol of the Belle Époque.
In November 2018 it was acquired by Algebris for roughly 12 million euros.

Notable people who have resided in the hotel include:

• Richard Wagner, the composer who in 1881 finished the composition of the Parsifal there;
• Raymond Roussel, the poet who lived there until his death;
• Charles Poletti, who for political and then military reasons for the duration of the conflict, turned it into a US headquarters during the Second World War;
• José Enrique Rodó, Uruguayan writer and essayist, who spent his last days there.

Waiting for the Blue Line bus to arrive gave us a chance to have a cold drink and a small slice of pizza. Then is was off on the Blue Line for a trip around the eastern part of the city and the English Garden and more of the Arabic parts of the city.

We disembarked at the Teatro Massimo and walked towards home along a crowded and busy pedestrian street, (when one says pedestrian, this does not preclude scooters, Vespas, and the odd car from intruding!). Near home we found a grocery store where we bought some pasta, cheese and later some wine to make dinner at home.

When we got home we started a laundry on the apartment's washing machine after having quite some fun trying to make it work. Then we prepared dinner using the meat left over from out Sunday night meal, some tomatoes, some tomato sauce and the bow-tie pasta we had bought. During the cooking process, we had a phone conversation with Kenan who will be coming to Italy in October and who wanted some advice on transportation and other issues. We tried as best we could to tell him what we recommended but it will be a culture shock to him, especially the traffic!! It is hard to describe the apparent chaos which occurs all the time on city streets and the speed with which drivers and riders travel even when surrounded by pedestrians who also seem unconcerned about the flying traffic swirling around them. On even the narrowest of streets, you can expect to encounter a car or a motor bike or scooter traveling at high speed!!

Then we enjoyed a pleasant pasta meal with a nice Nero D’Avola and some fruit and watched some Italian game shows on the TV. Then it was off to bed.