I woke up this morning in complete darkness, pressed the button on the phone, 8:20am! I had slept 8 hours, my jet lag has finally expired, about time. Opening the window shutters allowed brilliant sunlight to stream in. I have a theory that it’s your brain being dazzled, not your eyes. You can keep either eye open, but not both, until you have adjusted. Quick shower, since breakfast is scheduled at 8:30. As I read once, the hotel towels were so large and fluffy that it was hard to close my suitcase.
Both Luigi and Irene were here to serve breakfast to Fiona and Brian, me, and the other couple who arrived a bit later. It was very good, as I have come to expect. Irene has a little French, and I have a very little French, but at least I could ask for milk in my Americano coffee. The other couple had fluent Italian, so English and Italian speaking groups formed naturally.
After breakfast the only shelf I could find to put my stuff was above the toilet and bidet. It brought to mind the Seinfeld episode where Jerry’s toothbrush fell in the toilet. First thing was to move the bike from the lane next door to a secure parking place nearby in Via Gagini. It took only about 5 minutes to ride there, but even that was drama packed. I turned right into Via Roma, following a car. I had thought Via Roma was one way, going more or less north, but a couple of vehicles in my lane were going south, so was I. Before long a Carabinieri on an Aprilia was abreast of me, demanding my attention. I stopped, but could not understand what he was saying. He seemed to finish, so I moved on, planning to turn left at the next major intersection. He accelerated and cut me off, and his partner stopped behind me. I was surrounded. This time I understood he was saying that this was a one way street. I pointed to the car stopped behind us, going in the same direction, and gestured puzzlement. Apparently this is a service lane. I pointed to a small side street about 10 metres ahead and gestured my intention to do a U-turn there. No, here. He strode into the street, held up his hand, stopped 2 lanes of moving traffic and ordered me to do a U-turn. Yes Sir! It was exactly what I wanted to do, to get to the parking station but it would have been impossible. After parking the bike, I walked back and looked at the sign, which said authorised vehicles only.
A bus went by, in the wrong direction, several ordinary cars too. I can only think he picked on me because being a civilian motorcycle I was by definition not authorised. The cars may or may nor be. I wandered off to the piazza to look at the Theatre, which is pretty amazing.
I realised I did not have a paper map, and that if anything happened to my iphone, I would be helpless. I couldn’t even find the BnB on a map, or name it. When in a city on foot, a real map is the only way to go. Returning to the BnB, and with Luigi pointing out on the map all the things to see, I decided to stay in Palermo another night. It will cost me a day in the Alps, but I’ll be there again next year, I’m not likely to be in Sicily for a long time. Luigi’s was booked out for the next night.
Outside, I consulted Booking.com and found a well rated cheap BnB about 3 minutes walk away. That was important, since I will have to lug all my stuff there, probably 2 trips. I went there, and booked it straight away from outside. I sat down at a cafe to learn my Italian numbers, and get another coffee. A guy with an accordion was playing the theme from “The Godfather”. To be honest, the cappuccino is better in Melbourne.
I had considered bringing a second phone with me as a spare. I should have. If I lost the iPhone SE, I’d mourn it, but at least I’d have a phone. The three indispensible things on a trip are passport, credit card and phone. From my experience on this trip, I’d have the Irish Vodafone SIM. It works everywhere (perhaps not so well in Australia), on their own Vodafone network. From Ebay it came activated and with roaming turned on, can be topped up with an international card on an English language website, tethering works, it doesn’t block VOIP, and it works in Switzerland.
Shortly after, I encountered Fiona and Brian, and was able to recount the story of my interesting ride. Then I wandered up to the Cathedral.
There I tried my email on the phone, the last update was hours before. I tried sending a test email and could not get to the mail server in either account. I logged into webmail and saw the emails I had expected to see. So this dodgy SIM blocks email. One of the emails was from Booking.com confirming that Luigi had agreed to the late check in. So he had waited until 8:30 pm for me. I spent a long time at the cathedral, realised I didn’t really want to run around looking at all the tourist sites, I wanted to sit and have a couple of beers. I took a short look at the cathedral interior, and decided to find an auto spares place and buy a new headlamp globe for the bike. There was one about 3km away. The idea of losing the remaining headlamp at speed on a winding road at night didn’t appeal to me. On the way to the store I wandered off Corso Tukory into a maze of small streets, looking for Via Oreto, and happened upon a street market with fruit, vegetable stalls and a cafe.
At the parts store, I ended up pointing at the headlamp globe of one of the bikes outside to demonstrate what I needed, and soon I had my H7 globe, and a spare. I found a Carrefours too, and bought a couple of things I had neglected to bring with me.
At this stage, it would have been good to have a bicycle to get around, walking is fairly tiring. I walked up to the Royal Palace, decided that I didn’t want to see the interior today, and instead headed for the Catacombs. I did note the public WC at the Palace. You never know when you’ll need one. The catacombs were off the edge of my tourist map, on Via Cappuccini. On the map, north was at the bottom right corner, which was somewhat confusing. At the Cimitiere, I happened upon a wedding at the chapel next door.
The Cimitiere sign said it closed at 2pm every day but Thursday, which was 4pm. This was Thursday, but it was 4:10. Maybe tomorrow. Back near the Royal Palace, there was a very nice looking cafe, and it was time for that beer. A bit of product placement.
Luigi had recommended seeing the Botanic Gardens, and also the dock area for food. I walked down there, the gardens were very nice, but there was nothing much in the way of restaurants near the docks. I sat down in a nice looking place not far away, asked for the menu and it turned out to be a crepe restaurant. So this was dinner.
Then back to Luigi’s where I found a note on my bed.
The shower worked OK, but it took ages for the hot water to arrive, and it went cold again quickly. So now I understand, it was the HOT water supply to central Palermo that was disrupted.
I spent hours adding photos. I have it streamlined a bit now, but Tumblr is rubbish. The ipad app doesn’t work at all, and the iphone app has no way of interspersing photos with text. The website is the only way, but you need to save after every photo in case it crashes, so it’s quite tedious. Don’t zoom the text, or you can’t scroll, and it will lock up and crash. I tried Chrome too, no better.