Sicily part one

It's surprising how little of the excitement in my life actually makes it onto the hallowed posts of STTR. For something that is meant, in part, to document this period of my existence, I rarely have the enthusiasm or inclination after an event to launch into grand detailed musings.

Sicily, however, was a trip we had been looking forward to since last December, and we crammed a hella lot into our week in the sun. I want to share that for posterity, and as such have decided to do a post about each day we were there - in order to break up the monotony of both writing and reading about it. So where to begin?

02/07/09

Day one in Sicily. The usual godawful start to proceedings with a 3am alarm call. Entertainment provided by drunken businessmen on the 4.09am Clapham-Gatwick service (who the hell can get leathered until that time and still make it into work the next day?!).

It's as true for me as it is for the majority of other travellers, in that nothing really beats that moment of arriving somewhere for the first time. I remember reading my Rough Guide to New Zealand way back in 2001, about the view from the plane as it arcs over the bay on final approach to Auckland - and then being almost beside myself with excitement as I looked through my Air New Zealand window to see it glistening beneath me.

Arrival in a strange land brings this amazing sense of the unknown, promises of adventure and the, well, foreign. I always stare out of the window of the plane as it taxis to the airport terminal, convincing myself that everything looks different to back home. No matter where it is - the vehicles are different, the airport workers are different, all is exotic and strange and not at all like home. In actual fact, of all man-made locations on earth, airports are probably the most stupefyingly generic - in fact they're actually designed to look the same so that people don't get disorientated or lost and end up being cavity-searched in the middle of the runway, rather than queueing for passport control.

No matter. Blessed with a friendly and altogether far-too-posh sounding Easyjet pilot on the way over ("for those of you on the left hand side of the plane, you may want to look out of your windows in a few moments as we pass Mont Blanc - I'll just drop the wing a little to give you a better look"), we landed in Palermo in the blazing heat of a July afternoon. A slow train journey into the city centre later (It's so Italian! The train is just sitting at a platform whilst that guy debates the necessity to buy a ticket with the inspector! Darling - the camera!!) and we'd arrived.

Palermo. The very name is enough to conjure up thoughts of bustling traffic, Il Padrino and shouty men doing business in medieval side streets.

We timed things to perfection, lugging our suitcases from central station, up Via Roma to our guest house - arriving a full 10 minutes after the start of the siesta. What to do? Faced with 5 hours to kill, 35C heat and some very heavy baggage, we did what any self-respecting Brit abroad would do. We found the nearest bar.

Dawdling over 2 beers by the Teatro Massimo allowed us to slowly get accustomed to the fact we were in Sicily at long last. After 5 months of abstinence, I succumbed far too bloody quickly to the thought of a cigarette but hey, I was trying to fit in. And something about smoking in that situation just seemed to make sense.



Having been politely offered the bill without asking (we were either drinking too much or too slowly, we couldn't work out which), we tottered back in the direction of our hostel. We were in for a shock.

Booking accomodation via Hostelworld.com, it appears, is no guarantee as to the quality of the establishment. We'd booked a double room with shared bathroom for a reasonable EUR 23.00 per person per night. All we wanted was it to be clean and for the air conditioning to work.

Imagine our surprise, then, as we walked up the stairs and into the foyer of the Palazzo Salvona. This ain't no hostel. This is plush.

The guest house is in one of the massive tenement apartments just off Via Roma, one of the main shopping streets in Palermo. It's been rennovated to an exceptionally high standard and our room, for which we had paid a relative pittance, had a huge bed, sofa, effective aircon and two huge windows (well, french doors really) which opened out onto balconies. Amazing. I highly recommend staying there if you're ever in Palermo - although ensure you get a room on the second floor, not the third (of which more later). The "shared bathroom" was next to our room. In fact, we had a his and hers as there were two. I expected a row of sinks and a couple of communal showers and toilet cubicles - these were palatial self-contained bathrooms. Go in, lock the door, and the whole place is your oyster. Have a little dance if you want to.

Following a recommendation from the receptionist, we found ourselves in Piazza Bellini later that evening, sitting outside a pizza restaurant and surrounded by Moorish architecture and neo-classical statues. A few Birra Morettis and a massive feed later, it seemed almost fitting when a busker turned up and started playing jazz on a trumpet. Less expected was when he launched into a lounge version of the theme from the Godfather. If the respectable men in suits at the next table took offence, they certainly didn't show it.