Sunday and our second full day in Palermo. Tomorrow is our outing to go to Dominica’s family’s home village. But today we are just in the city.
Today I went out for a really long walk doing a few miles around Palermo to get a feel for the place. I walked far enough from our apartment to find the metro stations, to explore different neighbourhoods and went really far south till the city was dropping off.
One of the big things that I found was that there were just no restaurants anywhere. I went on and on and found almost none. Loads of betting shops, though. Gambling is certainly a huge thing in Palermo.
So my discovery today is that Palermo is not that appealing to us. It’s not terrible, but it is not proving itself to be the city we’d be very likely to pick based on just the city itself. It seems to lack a lot of what we’d be looking for and so far the lack of Internet is not enticing, either. It’s a very convenient city, and there is a lot more that we need to see of it.
We got pizza again today. I know the people over there pretty well (and have a few of the owners on Facebook now) at this point.
This afternoon we walked to the north and explored more of the fancier, older part of the city and made it all the way to the port and the waterfront. It was mobbed with people trying to get to the beach, however, so we didn’t get to go to the water even though it was right there. It was a nice walk and we learned a lot more about the city.
We had lunch out on a side street in the semi-tourist area of Palermo. Luciana got a whole squid that she liked very much.
Liesl went for the more pedestrian pasta. She has been really digging the pasta ever since we were in Rome.
While out along the shore line we got ice cream and sat for a while. Then walked east and returned towards the apartment heading past the city’s botanical gardens which we stopped to walk though, as well. That was a nice time.
The kids were very tired of walking, after two days of walking around the city, by the time that we got back to the apartment. Good exercise, though.
This evening, while we had Internet access, we tried to buy tickets for the ferry going to Tunisia. We tried for hours but ended up having to give up on it. Between our Internet, credit cards and being from the US but being in Italy just made it impossible to get our ferry tickets. Very bummed about that.
The kids showered tonight. They loved the super cool shower at this apartment. It’s the coolest we’ve seen this year.
Tonight Luciana and I started playing Agatha Christie’s ABC Murders together. It looks like a pretty fun game. We played it a bit and she helped me look for clues and to solve puzzles. We had a good time. This is my kind of game, for sure.
Did some reading with the kids before bed. We are reading The Bobsey Twins together.