Marionettes and other bits
I actually wrote this a few days ago - sorry, been busy
You don't write anymore... I know, I know, so sorry to keep you waiting. The truth is we have been taking things a bit slower lately so there hasn't been as much to write about. Moreover every spare moment has been spent working on some freelance work which should be going live today freeing me up a bit.
As I write this, we're on the train to Napels from Palermo. Romantic, right? Pretty cool train trip as well; at some stage the entire train actually gets on a ferry to take us from Sicily to the mainland.
It also marks the end of the first phase of our trip - the Sicilian adventure - which starred Mum who we left at the bus stop on the way to the train station this morning.
Since I last wrote we've seen some Puppets, Sicilian Marionettes to be specific. One evening we went to a show put on in the last old puppet theater - Opera dei Pupi - which was slapstick enough that it didn't matter that I couldn't understand a word. Violently dismembered puppets is something everyone should see at some point.
I think it might have been about St George purely based on the fact that he slayed a dragon at one stage and there was lots of red and white. The detail in the puppets was remarkable, at the end of a fight the victor would sheath his sword.
Not having had our marionette fix, we also went to a museum - Museo Internazionale delle Marionette Antonio Pasqualino - which was just rooms and rooms of marionettes - a little creepy now that I think about it.
Moving on from marionettes, we finally got to go in to see Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio (sans wedding this time) which was filled with gold Mosaics that shimmered away. Definitely one of the better Norman-Arabic churches.
On a couple of occasions we ventured a little further afield. One day up to Monreale which is a little town perched on a mountain top behind Palermo and houses probably the grandest of these gold-lined Norman-Arabic churches albeit less impressive than the Capella Palatine. Lovely cloister too (are you hitting on me?)
Prior to that we caught a bus out to Castello della Zisa, a Norman-Arabic castle on the outskirts of Palermo that one imagines was once impressive. However they have done a fairly uninspiring job of restoring it leaving it feeling rather bland.
Our biggest, and only proper day trip, was to to Cefalú which is about an hour by train from Palermo. Again, very sleepy and dominated by yet another Norman-Arabic cathedral but with a Moorish fort topped mountain on one side and a beautiful sandy beach on the other it did stand out. I was cursing deciding not packing my toggs when I looked at the crystal clear water on what turned out to be one of the warmer days we'd had in a week or two.
So ends our time in Palermo. Really loved it and couldn't recommend it more. It was sad to say good bye to Mum but also nice to start our trip out on our own (and we'll bump into her again in a few weeks time in Bolongia).
